Beer

Beer is, quite frankly, wonderful stuff. First brewed in Egypt about 5000 years ago, those ancient Egyptians were obviously about more than monuments, tombs and agriculture. They were civilised. After a hard day of irrigation or pyramid-building in the scorching and dusty heat, it must have been a blessed relief to repair to the Pharoh's Head or the Ibis in Hand and indulge in a refreshing glass of fermented grain juice.

There's a huge amount to ramble on about when discussing beer. This page is conveniently divided into neat and tidy sections to help you navigate.

• Types of beer
• Brewing it
• Drinking it
• Other beer-related stuff

For more information on Britain's beer heritage, how best to enjoy it and what various national and multinational corporations and the government are doing to destroy it, why not vist the Campaign for Real Ale site?

Types of beer

Before we go any further, I'd better mention that when I refer to beer, I don't mean ale, bitter, dark beer or whatever. I'm referring to all products made by fermenting grains. Yes, I sometimes drink lager (of which more later).

Beer is generally classified as top or bottom fermenting, depending on where the yeast sits during the brewing process. Top fermenting beers include mild, bitter and stout - what are usually referred to as ales. Bottom fermenting beers require a colder fermenting temperature and are usually referred to in the English-speaking world as lagers, although this covers a wide variety of styles including the ubiquitous clear golden Pilsner.

If you favour darker beers as your regular tipple, you tend to be told what you're getting from the pump by the beer name. Names such as Best Bitter, IPA or Pale Ale tell you more-or-less what the stuff in the glass is going to taste like, and how strong it's going to be. Lagers, on the other hand, have no such helpful labelling system. Until now, that is. Under forthcoming EU proposals, the appellation lager will no longer be valid within the European Union, and yellow fizzy beer will have to be sold under one of the following labels:

• Cooking lager
  Lager with a strength of less than 3.5% by volume. Also, any lager of previously unheard-of brand sold in Netto or Aldi. Any particularly tasteless lager of greater strength may also be classified as cooking. All products from mainstream American breweries fall into this category.
• Table lager
  Lager with a strength of 3.5% or greater, but less than 5% by volume. This is the most common type of lager for prolonged drinking sessions, examples including Fosters and Carling (try a blind tasting of these two on tap - is there really a difference?). In wine bars, table lager is often labelled as Lager du maison and costs £4.50 per pint.
• Fighting lager
  Any drinkable lager with a strength of 5% or greater, but less than 7.5% by volume. Fighting lagers tend to be marginally more individual then their lesser cousins but do take note if you think you're being vaguely continental and serfistikated by drinking them; most are brewed under licence in Northampton. How very glamorous.
• Lager concentrate
  Any lager with a strength of 7.5% or greater by volume is technically a concentrate and should not be drunk neat. Half-litre cans of Kestrel or Tennants Super-Strength can safely be diluted to provide up to five individual drinks. Lager concentrates were originally developed as a means of saving your back when going to bring-a-bottle parties.

Brewing

To my mind, brewing beer isn't as exciting as it's made out to be (and certainly not as exciting as drinking it). I've seen the inside of a fair few breweries, big and small, and the best thing is invariably the free samples at the end. In this respect, avoid the Bass Brewery and Museum in Burton-on-Trent. Lots of stuff to look at including steam engines, big horses and a fantastic mock-up of a "modern" pub interior circa 1970, but a distinct lack of freebies. Perhaps thay're ashamed at the way the quality of Draught Bass has spiralled downwards over the past 10 years.

Both the Carlsberg and Tuborg breweries in Copenhagen are generous on the freebie front, and you get to wander through the automatic bottling hall at Tuborg, which is a sight to behold. Speaking of Danish breweries, the range of beers they produce greatly exceeds the rather insipid Eurofizz known as Carlsberg across much of the world. Tuborg Rød ("Red") and Gammel Carlsberg ("Old") are good dark lagers, and the celebration beers produced at Easter and Christmas are always worth hunting out.

Many of Britain's most famous breweries were a product of the Industrial Revolution or Victorian entrepreneurial spirit. As such, they were housed in the sort of buildings that Fred Dibnah might have got excited about. I remember walking past the old Chesters brewery at the bottom end of Salford and thinking "Their mild's not up to much, but it's a hell of an edifice." It was closed even then and I suspect it's been knocked down or turned in to somewhat poncy apartments with little ceremony since.

To be continued...