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At time of writing it's St Patrick's Day (Happy Paddy's Day), so let's address some myths around Ireland's famous export.   “The same as a meal” - It’s often said of Guinness that it is “the same as a meal”, or heavily implied that it’s a rich and heavy drink to consume. This isn’t true. People do tend to drink with their eyes, and Guinness is a visually more imperious drink that it actually is in your mouth. Next time you have a Guinness, try to disassociate your taste buds from what you’ve been told and what you’re holding in...

This wintery time of year is more closely associated with darker and richer beers, their fuller body more comforting when a less refreshing beer isn’t as desirable. Styles such as stouts and brown ales are defined by their colour, but why are different beers different colours? Beer by definition is alcohol made from sugar extracted from malted barley, and it’s this key ingredient that shapes the colour of a beer. Malted barley, or malt as it’s abbreviated to, is made from barley that’s grown around the UK. It’s one of the few ingredients in UK beer that you can be...

Dry hopping is the process of adding hops to beer whilst it is in the fermentation vessel - sometimes while the beer is still actively fermenting, but more often just after. It’s done to give the beer a bright and pronounced hop character. This technique, and these characteristics, are completely synonymous with modern hoppy beers; any hoppy beer you encounter these days is almost certainly dry hopped. But dry hopping does create some issues for the brewer, and is the source of some potential complications worth considering. Extracting the aroma and flavour-giving oils from hops is more easily done at...

One major issue with dry hopping is quite a new one. Well, sort of. As brewers and beer drinkers alike have begun to crave the more fruity and fresh hop strains, hop processors have started reducing the time and temperature at which the fresh hops are dried, ready for breweries to use. Whilst this helps to preserve a better and fresher hop character, it’s created an issue where enzymes present in the hops that would normally be deactivated by a temperature spike in processing are now present in hops in larger quantities than before. These enzymes have a nasty habit...