193 Fun Facts About Beer

What are the four basic ingredients of beer?

Water, Barley, Hops, Yeast: water makes up most of the drink, and its minerals matter so much that soft water suits pale lagers and hard water dark stouts, which is how regions came by their styles.

Which ancient civilisation left some of the earliest beer-brewing records, including a hymn to Ninkasi?

Sumerians: the Hymn to Ninkasi, written down around 1800 BC, praises the beer goddess step by step through the brewing and is often read as a recipe; brewing there was largely women's work.

Besides limiting beer's ingredients, Bavaria's 1516 Reinheitsgebot also capped what?

Beer prices: the decree opens by capping a measure of beer at one pfennig in winter and two in summer, and only afterwards turns to the ingredients rule it is famous for.

What sets a 'session' beer apart from other beers?

Lower alcohol: the idea is that you can enjoy a few over one long drinking session and still have your wits about you, a habit the name probably owes to British pubs.

In brewing, what is the sugary liquid run off the grain called, before it is boiled and fermented?

Wort is boiled, which sterilises it and stops the enzymes working, and then cooled so that yeast can be added to turn its sugars into alcohol.

Beer in clear or green bottles turns 'skunky' when exposed to what?

Light: ultraviolet and blue light break down hop iso-alpha acids into 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol, a sulfur compound closely related to those in skunk spray; brown glass blocks most of it.

In malting, barley is soaked and then left to do what before it is dried?

Sprout: malting tricks the grain into starting to grow, so it makes the enzymes a brewer will need, and drying then stops the growth before the seedling can go any further.

Which British pub drink is made by mixing beer with lemonade?

Shandy: cutting the beer with an equal part of lemonade roughly halves its strength; the name is short for 'shandygaff', an older mix of beer and ginger beer.

The banana and clove notes in a Bavarian Hefeweizen come mainly from which ingredient?

The yeast strain: clove-like 4-vinyl guaiacol and banana-like isoamyl acetate are by-products of the Bavarian weizen yeast's fermentation, not of the wheat malt, hops or water.

Top-fermented ales ferment in which temperature range?

15 to 25 °C: ale ferments at about room temperature, while lager needs cold, which is why German brewers once packed their lager cellars with river ice and were barred from brewing in summer.

Which three ingredients did the 1516 Reinheitsgebot, the German Beer Purity Law, allow?

Water, barley and hops: yeast went unmentioned, probably because brewers simply carried it over from one batch to the next, and wheat was left out partly to keep it for bakers.

Which American hop, bred in Oregon, gave American pale ales their signature grapefruit aroma?

Cascade, named after the Cascade mountain range, made its name in 1975 in a San Francisco brewery's Liberty Ale, a pale ale that set the pattern for the American style.

Which British savoury spread is made from yeast left over from brewing beer?

Marmite: a German chemist, Justus von Liebig, showed that brewers' leftover yeast could be concentrated, bottled and eaten, and the spread has been made from it since 1902.

What is the process of steeping milled grain in hot water so enzymes convert starches to sugars called?

Mashing: the mix is held warm rather than boiled, in steps between about 45 and 78 °C, because each of the grain's starch-splitting enzymes works best at its own temperature.

Bavarian brewer Josef Groll made his famous clear, pale lager in 1842 in which Bohemian city?

Pilsen: townspeople fed up with local beer that kept spoiling built a new brewery and hired Groll, and his pale lager gave the world the word 'pilsner'.

Russian River Brewing's celebrated Double IPA is named after which Roman author?

Pliny the Elder: brewer Vinnie Cilurzo, credited with making the first Double IPA in 1994, chose the Roman naturalist because he is thought to have left an early description of wild hops.

About how much beer did each worker building Egypt's Great Pyramids receive as a daily ration?

About 4.5 liters: the four to five liters a day, handed out in three servings as part of the builders' pay, were as much food as drink.

Which yeast species, also the one used to bake bread, is the top-fermenting 'ale yeast'?

Saccharomyces cerevisiae clumps and rises to the surface as it works, which is why brewers once skimmed it off the top to seed the next batch.

How does a German Kristallweizen differ from a Hefeweizen?

It is filtered: Kristallweizen, 'crystal wheat', has had the yeast and wheat proteins that cloud a Hefeweizen strained out, so it pours as bright as a pale lager.

What do brewers call the unmalted grains and sugars used alongside malted barley?

Adjuncts lighten a beer's body, which suits pale lagers; German brewers in America first turned to them to thin out the protein-heavy six-row barley they found there.

An American brewer still counts as a 'craft brewer' while making up to how many barrels a year?

6 million barrels: the Brewers Association calls that 'small', though it is about 3 percent of all US beer sales, and also requires that under a quarter of the brewer be owned by a big drinks company.

Which brewery, founded in 1976, served as the blueprint for America's small-scale craft breweries?

New Albion, founded in Sonoma by Jack McAuliffe and two partners, survived only six years, brewing its last batch in 1982, yet Sierra Nevada's founders credit it for their own start.

George Hodgson's Bow Brewery won fame shipping its hoppy pale ale to British drinkers in which country?

India: Hodgson's brewery stood two miles up the River Lea from where the East India Company's ships loaded, and he gave their captains 18 months' credit, so his was the ale they carried.

Sierra Nevada Brewing was founded by two homebrewers in which California city?

Chico: Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi pieced the brewhouse together there from discarded dairy equipment and scrapyard metal, and Grossman named it for the mountains he loved to hike.

Which heir to a family fortune bought San Francisco's failing Anchor Brewing in 1965?

Fritz Maytag, of the washing-machine family, heard the brewery was about to shut, bought 51% of it for a few thousand dollars and made reviving it his mission.

Which US president signed the 1978 bill legalising homebrewing?

Jimmy Carter signed H.R. 1337 in October 1978, exempting home-brewed beer from federal excise tax from February 1979; within months Charlie Papazian founded the American Homebrewers Association.

Which company, founded by Jim Koch in 1984, brews Samuel Adams?

Boston Beer's first Samuel Adams lager was adapted from a family recipe that Jim Koch's father dug out of a trunk in the attic, the lager his great-great-grandfather Louis Koch had brewed in St. Louis.

Dogfish Head's 60 Minute IPA takes its name from what?

The time hops are added during the boil: founder Sam Calagione rigged a vibrating tabletop football game over the kettle to shake hops in at a steady rate, the trick behind continual hopping.

The American ale Fat Tire is named after a brewery co-founder's bicycle trip through which country?

Belgium: co-founder Jeff Lebesch pedalled from brewery to brewery there, then went home to Fort Collins, Colorado, and started New Belgium Brewing with Kim Jordan in 1991.

Which San Diego County brewery launched Arrogant Bastard Ale in 1997 with the label taunt 'You're not worthy'?

Stone Brewing says the recipe began as a mistake by co-founder Steve Wagner, one the founders loved but thought too aggressive to sell until the brewery was 17 months old.

Heady Topper, the double IPA that set the template for hazy New England IPAs, comes from which Vermont brewery?

The Alchemist: John and Jen Kimmich opened a cannery for the beer in August 2011, the very month that flooding from Hurricane Irene destroyed their Waterbury brewpub.

The Great American Beer Festival, founded by Charlie Papazian in 1982, is held annually in which city?

Denver: the festival began in 1982 as a side event at the American Homebrewers Association's annual conference in nearby Boulder, before it made the state capital its home.

What is a 'growler'?

A jug for carrying draft beer home: the name is said to come from the growl of gas escaping the lidded metal pails that drinkers once used to carry beer back from the saloon.

Which Chicago craft brewery, maker of Bourbon County Stout, sold itself to a global beer giant in 2011?

Goose Island: brewmaster Greg Hall filled used Jim Beam barrels with imperial stout to make Bourbon County, one of the first bourbon-barrel-aged beers and the model for many since.

How much did Constellation Brands pay for San Diego's Ballast Point brewery in 2015?

$1 billion: four years later Constellation sold Ballast Point to Kings & Convicts, a Chicago-area brewery, for an undisclosed sum that industry observers put at a fraction of the price.

Founders Brewing's celebrated KBS stands for what?

Kentucky Breakfast Stout: the coffee-and-chocolate imperial stout is aged in bourbon barrels in old gypsum mines beneath Grand Rapids; an April-only release until it went year-round in 2020.

Which Michigan brewery, maker of Two Hearted Ale, began as a homebrew shop in 1983?

Bell's: Larry Bell brewed his first beer for sale in a 15-gallon soup kettle in 1985, and Two Hearted takes its name from a river in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Which California brewery, founded by Tony Magee in 1993, lost its 'craft' status after selling a half share in 2015?

Lagunitas: Heineken bought half in 2015 and the rest in 2017, and the US trade body counts a brewer as craft only if less than a quarter of it belongs to a big drinks company.

What is the craftsman who makes the wooden casks traditionally used for beer called?

A cooper heats or steams wooden staves until they bend, then binds them with hoops; breweries such as Guinness once employed their own coopers to build casks and vats.

Despite its name, Munich's Oktoberfest now begins in which month?

September: the first festival, for a royal wedding in 1810, was held in mid-October, but the start has since moved forward, so that only its last days now fall in October.

Arthur Guinness's 1759 lease on Dublin's St James's Gate brewery was signed for how many years?

9,000 years, at £45 a year, for a disused brewery; the lease no longer applies, because the company went on to buy the site outright.

The Guinness logo is modelled on which instrument?

The Trinity College harp: Guinness registered its right-facing harp as a trademark in 1876, decades before the Irish state adopted the same instrument as its emblem in 1922, facing the other way.

Which gas did Guinness start using in 1959 to give its beer a creamier head?

Nitrogen forms far smaller bubbles than carbon dioxide, which is what makes the head so creamy; Michael Ash, a mathematician turned brewer at Guinness, worked out how to serve beer with it.

Guinness boss Hugh Beaver missed a shot at which bird, starting the argument that inspired the Guinness Book of Records?

The golden plover: Beaver missed one on a 1951 shoot on the North Slob in County Wexford and could not find a reference book settling whether it was Europe's fastest game bird.

Which twin brothers co-founded the Guinness Book of Records in 1955?

The McWhirters: Norris and Ross McWhirter, twin sports journalists running a London fact-finding agency, compiled the first Guinness Book of Records, published in August 1955, to settle pub arguments.

Gerard Heineken's first brewery, bought in Amsterdam in 1864, was called De Hooiberg, which means what?

The Haystack: the brewery dated from 1592, and Gerard Heineken was just 22 when he bought it, having set out the plan in a letter to his mother the year before.

Budweiser is brewed with which grain alongside its barley malt?

Rice goes into the brew alongside barley malt, and the beer is then lagered on beechwood chips, boiled beforehand so that they add almost no flavour of their own.

Adolphus Busch was the first American brewer to keep beer fresh using what?

Pasteurization: Busch adopted Louis Pasteur's heat treatment in the 1870s, the first American brewer to do so, and paired it with refrigerated railroad cars from 1876 to ship Budweiser nationwide.

Which breed of draught horse hauls the Budweiser beer wagon?

Clydesdales have pulled the Budweiser wagon since 1933, when August Busch Jr. gave his father a team to mark the end of Prohibition; a rotation of them lives at the St. Louis headquarters.

Which Mexican beer's adverts are typically set on a beach?

Corona has been two beers in one since a 2013 antitrust settlement: the Corona sold in the United States comes from a different company from the Corona sold everywhere else.

Stella Artois was launched in 1926 in which Belgian city?

Leuven: Brouwerij Artois brewed it as a Christmas beer and named it Stella after the Christmas star; the brewery took its own name from Sebastien Artois, its master brewer from 1708.

Carlsberg's founder named the brewery, opened in 1847, partly after which member of his family?

His son: Carl Jacobsen was five when the brewery opened on a hill outside Copenhagen; father and son later fell out so badly that Carl set up a rival brewery of his own.

Which Chinese beer comes from a brewery founded in 1903 by an Anglo-German company?

Tsingtao: Germany had held the surrounding bay on lease since 1898, so the Hong Kong-based founders put German master brewers in charge; a Japanese brewer bought the plant in 1916.

Which is the oldest brand of beer in Japan, first brewed in 1876?

Sapporo: a government commission developing Hokkaido opened the brewery in 1876 and put Seibei Nakagawa, who had learned the craft in Germany, in charge of its first lager.

Which Japanese beer, launched in 1987, set off a craze that rival brewers rushed to copy?

Asahi Super Dry set off Japan's 'Dry Wars', as rivals hurried out crisp, less malty lagers of their own, and it became the company's flagship beer.

What do brewers call the rocky foam that crowns beer at the height of fermentation?

Kräusen is the foamy head that builds on fermenting beer; brewers also add a dose of still-fermenting beer to a finished batch, a trick called 'kräusening', to condition it naturally.

Which Coors brand, launched in 1978, is nicknamed the 'Silver Bullet'?

Coors Light got the nickname from its plain silver can; the name itself was a revival, first used by Coors in 1941 for a weaker beer that lasted only a year.

Miller Brewing was founded in 1855 in which city?

Milwaukee: Frederick Miller, a brewer from Riedlingen in Germany, bought the small Plank Road Brewery, then a few miles outside the city, reputedly having carried his own yeast across the Atlantic.

Which American beer was first sold as Best Select?

Pabst Blue Ribbon: from 1882 the brewery tied a blue ribbon round the neck of its Best Select bottles; whether the beer truly won the 1893 Chicago World's Fair prize its label long boasted of is unclear.

Which is the oldest operating brewing company in the United States?

Yuengling: David G. Yuengling founded the Eagle Brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, in 1829, and the family-owned company has run continuously since, surviving Prohibition on near beer and ice cream.

Which Italian lager did a Japanese brewer buy from the world's biggest brewer in a forced sale of European brands?

Peroni: the seller had to shed it, with two other European breweries, to win regulators' approval for its takeover of SABMiller, the group that owned them.

The key on the Beck's logo comes from the coat of arms of which German city?

Bremen's coat of arms shows the silver key of St. Peter, patron saint of the city's cathedral; Beck's used the arms as its logo, then in 1884 adopted a key of its own slanted the other way.

Grupo Modelo, the Mexican brewing giant behind Modelo Especial, was founded by immigrants from which country?

Spain: the founders were Spanish immigrants led by Braulio Iriarte, who owned bakeries and a flour mill in Mexico City; after he died, fellow founder Pablo Díez, from León, and two partners bought out his heirs.

Imperial stout, a strong dark beer exported from 18th-century London, is said to be named for which country's court?

Russia: London brewers shipped the strong stout east, where it is said to have been a favourite at the court of Catherine the Great; a Russian royal warrant later let one shipper call it 'Imperial'.

Stout began as the stronger version of which dark beer?

Porter emerged in London in the early 1700s and is said to be named for the street and river porters who drank it; its strongest versions were sold as 'stout porter', later just 'stout'.

Murphy's and Beamish, long-standing stout rivals to Guinness at home, are both brewed in which city?

Cork: Beamish & Crawford began brewing there in 1792 and Murphy's followed in 1856; since the old Beamish brewery shut in 2009, both stouts have come from the same plant.

Bock beer is said to take its name from a Bavarian mispronunciation of which town?

Einbeck: this Lower Saxony town's strong beer was copied in Munich, where its name is said to have been slurred into 'ein Bock', a billy goat, hence the goat on many bock labels.

Lambic beer is brewed in the Pajottenland region southwest of which city?

Brussels: lambic brewers leave the hot brew overnight in open, shallow pans called coolships, so that wild microbes drifting in on the night air, not added yeast, start the fermentation.

Which sparkling Belgian beer is made by blending young lambic with lambic aged two or three years?

Gueuze: the young lambic still holds unfermented sugars, so the blend ferments again in the bottle, and it is lively enough to be sold traditionally in champagne bottles.

Altbier is a copper-coloured beer associated with which German city?

Düsseldorf: 'alt' means old, for the top-fermenting method that was normal before lager took over Germany, though the beer is then matured cold, much as a lager is.

Gose beer breaks the Reinheitsgebot by including salt and which spice?

Coriander: Gose, from Goslar and later Leipzig, is brewed with coriander seed and salt alongside lactic souring, and German law allows it as a regional specialty exempt from the Reinheitsgebot.

Which was the first Trappist brewery outside Europe, opened in Massachusetts in 2013?

Spencer Brewery was opened by the monks of St. Joseph's Abbey, long known for their jams, after they sought advice from Trappist brewers in Europe; they shut it down in 2022.

The dubbel style originated in 1856 as a strong brown beer at which abbey?

Westmalle: its monks first brewed a strong brown beer in 1856, and after the recipe was reworked as Dubbel Bruin in 1926, breweries everywhere copied it until 'dubbel' became a style of its own.

Which Ruhr city's pale 'Export' lager became the favourite of its coal and steel workers?

Dortmund: the pale, slightly stronger Export took shape in the city's breweries in the 19th century, boomed across Germany after the Second World War, then fell from favour in the 1970s.

Doppelbock was first brewed in Munich by which order of friars?

Paulaners: the friars of St Francis of Paola brewed a strong beer at their Munich monastery, later named Salvator, which is said to have served as 'liquid bread' while they fasted.

Rauchbier gets its smoky flavour from malt dried how?

Over an open flame: the malt dries above burning beechwood, as most malt once did; when smokeless hot-air kilns took over in the 18th and 19th centuries, Bamberg's brewers kept the old way.

Napoleon's troops reputedly dubbed which city's sour wheat beer 'the Champagne of the North'?

Berlin: Berliner Weisse is a cloudy, tart wheat beer of only about 3.5% alcohol, so sharp that it is often served with a shot of raspberry or woodruff syrup.

Bass No. 1 Ale was the first beer to be marketed as which strong style?

Barley wine: the name marks an ale as strong as wine, and when a San Francisco brewery took the style to the United States in the mid-1970s it wrote 'barleywine' as one word, fearing 'wine' on a beer label would upset regulators.

Which company trademarked the term 'steam beer' in 1981?

Anchor Brewing registered 'Steam Beer' as a trademark in 1981, so other brewers call the style California common: lager yeast fermented at ale temperatures in shallow open pans, a Gold Rush-era San Francisco method.

The first Oktoberfest, in 1810, celebrated whose wedding?

Ludwig I and Therese: Crown Prince Ludwig married Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen on 12 October 1810, and the horse race held on the meadow five days later, named Theresienwiese for the bride, began Oktoberfest.

What does Munich's mayor shout after tapping the first keg to open Oktoberfest?

'O'zapft is!' ('It's tapped!') has opened the festival since 1950, when mayor Thomas Wimmer needed 17 blows by the city's count, 19 by others, to tap the keg; only after the cry do the other tents start pouring.

Bass Brewery's red triangle holds what distinction in Britain?

First registered trade mark: registration opened on 1 January 1876, and legend has it that a Bass employee queued overnight outside the office to be first in line with the red triangle.

Which amendment repealed US Prohibition in December 1933?

The 21st Amendment, ratified on 5 December 1933, repealed the 18th; beer had already returned that April, after Congress legalised 3.2% brews, and crowds gathered outside breweries to celebrate.

Krueger, the brewery that sold the first canned beer in 1935, was based in which New Jersey city?

Newark: the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company first sold its cans far from home, in Richmond, Virginia, on 24 January 1935, and they went down so well that rival brewers soon followed.

Which company introduced the recyclable aluminium beer can in 1959?

Adolph Coors Company launched its two-piece aluminium can in 1959 in a 7-ounce size and paid customers a penny for every can they returned for recycling.

After London's deadly 1814 beer flood, the disaster was ruled what?

An act of God: with no one held to blame, the brewery owed the victims' families nothing, and Parliament later refunded the duty it had paid on the lost beer, which saved it from bankruptcy.

In London's 1814 beer flood, several victims died at an Irish family's what?

Wake: the family was mourning a two-year-old boy when beer from a burst brewery vat swept into their St Giles cellar, and eight people died in all in the slum behind the brewery.

Which Bavarian brewery cites a brewing licence of 1040 in claiming to be the world's oldest?

Weihenstephan: the former Benedictine abbey at Freising dates its brewing to a licence of 1040, though the document behind it is now considered a later forgery; the state has run the brewery since 1803.

Lager takes its name from a German word meaning what?

Storage: lager is short for German Lagerbier, beer brewed for keeping, because it was stored for months before drinking, which gave its slow, cool-fermenting yeast time to finish and settle.

Beer pong is believed to have originated at which US college?

Dartmouth: the paddle version of beer pong emerged in the college's fraternities in the 1950s and 1960s, played on a real ping-pong table; the throwing version that spread nationwide came later.

By what other name is beer pong known?

Beirut: the throwing version of beer pong, played without paddles, picked up the name at East Coast colleges in the 1980s, reputedly a reference to the bombings of the Lebanese civil war.

Which Mexican beer's adverts starred a bearded adventurer billed as 'The Most Interesting Man in the World'?

Dos Equis: actor Jonathan Goldsmith played the role until 2016, when a farewell advert sent him on a one-way trip to Mars; the beer began as Siglo XX, marking the new 20th century, hence the two X's.

Isinglass, used to clarify beer, is obtained from what?

Fish swim bladders: isinglass is collagen from the dried swim bladders of fish, originally only sturgeon; stirred into cask beer it binds yeast and drags it to the bottom.

What is the hollow plastic ball called that releases gas inside a can of stout to create a creamy head?

Widget: Guinness brewers patented the idea in 1969 but let the patent lapse, and only after work restarted in 1984 did cans fitted with the device reach shops across Britain in 1989.

What does the IBU scale measure?

Bitterness: the IBU scale counts bitter compounds called iso-alpha acids, not how bitter a beer tastes, so an imperial stout at 50 IBU can seem less bitter than a pale lager at 30.

What instrument measures the specific gravity of beer before and after fermentation?

Hydrometer: a weighted glass float that rides higher in dense, sugary liquid; comparing readings taken before and after fermentation shows how much sugar has turned into alcohol.

The saying 'mind your P's and Q's' is said to derive from which beer measures?

Pints and quarts: in one popular theory, bartenders chalked up drinkers' pints and quarts as p and q and had to mind the tally, but the Oxford English Dictionary calls the phrase's origin unknown.

Kriek, a Belgian lambic beer, is fermented with which fruit?

Sour cherries: brewers traditionally used a tart Belgian variety, left whole in the lambic for months so that the fruit's sugar ferments out and the finished beer stays dry.

What is the bulging pint glass designed to stop rims chipping called?

Nonik: the 'no-nick' glass, patented in the United States by Hugo Pick in 1913-14, has a bulge below the rim that also improves grip and keeps stacked glasses from sticking together.

International Beer Day is celebrated on which day?

First Friday of August: Jesse Avshalomov dreamed up International Beer Day in California in 2007 as a day to thank the people who brew and serve beer, not just to drink it.

Which country became the world's largest consumer of beer in the 21st century?

China became the world's largest beer consumer in the 21st century, and its Snow brand, though sold almost only at home, grew into the best-selling beer brand on Earth.

Which Trappist beer has repeatedly been rated the world's best on RateBeer?

Westvleteren: the monks of Saint Sixtus Abbey say they brew to live rather than live to brew, making only enough to fund the abbey and selling it by reservation, which keeps bottles scarce.

Besides beer, the Trappist monks of Chimay make what?

Cheese: Chimay's monks have made cheese since 1876, fourteen years after founding the brewery in 1862, and some wheels are washed in the abbey's own beer.

Which Trappist ale gets its distinctive flavour from wild Brettanomyces yeast added during maturation?

Orval: the brewery adds Brettanomyces, a local wild yeast, during a three-week maturation; the brewhouse opened in 1931 to help pay for rebuilding the ruined abbey.

Which wheat beer, usually served with an orange slice, was created in 1995 at a baseball stadium's brewery?

Blue Moon: the beer is brewed with orange peel, and its brewers say the orange slice on the glass is there to heighten that citrus aroma and taste.

Which artist's 1751 prints set healthy, prosperous 'Beer Street' against the ruin of 'Gin Lane'?

William Hogarth issued the pair to support the Gin Act: Beer Street's drinkers thrive on English ale, while Gin Lane's are destroyed by the cheap foreign spirit.

Red Stripe lager is brewed by Desnoes & Geddes in which country?

Jamaica: Desnoes & Geddes began in 1918 when two shopkeepers merged their businesses to sell soft drinks; they later opened a brewery in Kingston and introduced Red Stripe in 1928.

Tiger Beer, launched in 1932, comes from which country?

Singapore: Tiger was the island's first locally brewed beer, and its slogan gave Anthony Burgess the title of his first novel, Time for a Tiger, set in 1950s Malaya.

Singha, the Thai beer first brewed in 1933, takes its name from which creature shown on its label?

A lion: the Singha is a powerful lion of Hindu and Thai legend, and since 1939 the bottles have also carried the royal Garuda, a mark of approval given only to long-trusted firms.

Which tall glass with a bulb at its base holds about 2.5 pints?

Yard of ale: the glass is about a yard long, and near the end the beer left in the bulb rushes out at once and splashes a careless drinker, which is why downing one is a pub challenge.

What punishment did Hammurabi's code set for tavern-keepers who overcharged for their drink?

Drowning: law 108 had a tavern-keeper who cheated on the price of drink thrown into the water, and law 110 went further: any 'sister of a god' who opened or even entered a tavern was to be burned.

Hops belong to the same plant family as what?

Cannabis: hops (Humulus lupulus) and cannabis are both in the family Cannabaceae; only female hop plants, which bear the resinous cones, are grown commercially.

Which Dutch beer is known for the swing-top bottle it kept when rivals switched to crown caps?

Grolsch: founded in 1615 in the town then called Grolle, the brewery refused the crown cap when it became standard, its boss insisting he alone decided what his beer went into.

Bière de garde is a farmhouse ale traditionally brewed in which French region?

Nord-Pas-de-Calais: bière de garde, 'beer for keeping', was brewed in farmhouses in the cool of early spring, then kept in cold cellars to be drunk when the weather warmed.

Which animal features on the labels of the Delirium range from Huyghe Brewery?

A pink elephant: seeing pink elephants is the proverbial hallucination of the very drunk, a fitting badge for a strong ale named after delirium tremens, the condition said to bring such visions on.

What does 'Duvel' mean in the Flemish dialects of Ghent and Antwerp?

Devil: the strong ale was first sold as Victory Ale to mark the end of the First World War, until a drinker in the 1920s reputedly called it 'a real devil' and the nickname became its name.

Milkman Pierre Celis revived which Belgian beer in the 1960s after its last brewery closed?

Hoegaarden: Pierre Celis revived the village's white beer after its last brewery, where he had helped as a boy, closed in 1957; a fire in the 1980s forced him to sell up, and he started again in Austin, Texas.

Samuel Smith's, established in 1758, claims to be the oldest brewery in which county?

Yorkshire: Samuel Smith's Old Brewery in Tadcaster dates from 1758, the town's gypsum-rich well water made it a brewing centre from the 14th century, and the brewery ferments in stone 'Yorkshire squares'.

Fuller's Griffin Brewery, home of London Pride, is in which London district?

Chiswick: beer has been brewed on the site since the 17th century, and in 2019 Fuller's sold the brewery for £250 million, leaving the company to run its pubs and hotels.

Which Canadian brewer was founded in London, Ontario, in 1847?

Labatt: John Kinder Labatt bought into a London, Ontario, brewery in 1847; in 1934 company president John Sackville Labatt was kidnapped for ransom and freed after three days.

Which brewery, run by the Oland family since 1867, is Canada's oldest independent beer maker?

Moosehead: Susannah Oland began brewing in Nova Scotia in 1867; after the 1917 Halifax Explosion destroyed the family brewery and killed her son Conrad, the Olands rebuilt the business in New Brunswick.

Which US president bought a homebrewing kit and had White House chefs brew a honey ale?

Barack Obama paid for the kit himself, and the kitchen's Honey Ale, made with honey from the South Lawn beehive, is thought to be the first beer ever brewed in the White House.

Hitler's failed 1923 putsch began at which Munich beer hall?

Bürgerbräukeller: on 8 November 1923 Hitler burst in with armed stormtroopers while Bavarian leader Gustav von Kahr was speaking and fired a shot into the ceiling to announce his revolution.

Scottish-born Skol lager became a top seller in which country?

Brazil: Skol began at a brewery in Alloa under another name and was renamed in the late 1950s to sound Scandinavian; brewed under licence across the Atlantic, it grew into one of that country's biggest brands.

Cobra Beer was created in 1989 as a smoother, less gassy lager to go with which food?

Curry: Karan Bilimoria found ordinary lager too gassy to drink with a meal, so he launched Cobra while £20,000 in debt and delivered the first cases to restaurants himself.

Under what name is Budweiser Budvar sold in the United States because of a trademark dispute?

Czechvar: Budvar uses the name in the United States and Canada, where its American rival owns the Budweiser mark, while in most of Europe the tables turn and the American beer is sold as 'Bud'.

The Yakima Valley, heart of American hop growing, lies in which state?

Washington: the Yakima Valley, with Oregon's Willamette Valley and western Idaho, is where US hops now grow; before Prohibition the crop was centred as much on New York and California.

Which Scottish company sold its 55% beer The End of History in bottles encased in stuffed animals?

BrewDog made only 12 bottles in 2010, freeze-distilling the beer to 55% and pricing each taxidermy-wrapped bottle at £500 or more, and billed it as one of the strongest beers ever produced.

Beerlao is brewed from which locally grown ingredient?

Jasmine rice: Beerlao pairs the local grain with imported malt; its brewery started brewing in 1973 and was nationalised when the new government took power in 1975.

Castle Lager traces its origins to which 1886 event?

The Johannesburg gold rush: Charles Glass began brewing for the miners who flooded the Witwatersrand after gold was found in 1886, and his Castle Brewery became the seed of South African Breweries in 1895.

Which Munich brewery did Duke William V found in 1589 to end his household's reliance on imported beer?

Hofbräuhaus: William V founded it on 27 September 1589 purely to supply his own household, and ordinary Munich drinkers were not admitted until a royal decree opened it to the public in 1828.

Which title, created by brewer Ray Daniels, is the beer world's answer to the wine sommelier?

Cicerone: Ray Daniels set up the certification because servers were calling themselves beer sommeliers with no test of what they knew; its exams now run in four levels up to Master Cicerone.

Kölsch has held EU protected status since 1997 for beer brewed within 50 km of which city?

Cologne: under the 1986 Kölsch-Konvention, signed by 24 local brewers, and the EU protection that followed in 1997, breweries elsewhere in the EU may not sell their beer as Kölsch.

What is the tall, thin 200 ml glass in which Kölsch is traditionally served called?

Stange: the word means 'pole' or 'rod'; waiters called Köbes carry the small glasses in a circular tray called a Kranz and keep bringing fresh ones until the drinker puts a beer mat on top.

Brasserie Dupont, a Walloon farm brewery, is best known for which beer style?

Saison: Dupont's version won fame abroad after American importer Don Feinberg began shipping it in the 1980s and, when puzzled drinkers asked what it was, called it a farmhouse ale.

Coors has brewed since 1873 in which Colorado town at the foot of the Rockies?

Golden: the founders turned an abandoned tannery there into a brewery in 1873, and the plant that grew from it is billed as the largest single-site brewery in the world.

The Radler, a beer and lemon-soda mix, takes its name from the German word for what?

Cyclist: in the best-known tale, innkeeper Franz Kugler mixed beer with lemon soda for the cyclists riding out to his inn near Munich in the 1920s, though the drink is recorded as early as 1912.

Bottle-cap inventor William Painter urged which salesman to invent something customers would throw away?

King Gillette took the crown cork inventor's advice to heart: he devised a razor whose cheap blades were thrown away when dull, so that customers kept coming back for more.

Bass and other pale ale brewers grew up in which Staffordshire town with gypsum-rich water?

Burton upon Trent: the gypsum in its well water suited pale ale so well that brewers elsewhere still 'Burtonise' their water by adding the same salts.

Michelob, developed by Adolphus Busch in 1896, takes its name from a market town in which country today?

It was conceived as a 'draught beer for connoisseurs'; the town is Měcholupy.

Which beer, launched in 1982, was America's top seller until Modelo Especial overtook it in 2023?

Bud Light, introduced in 1982 as Budweiser Light, lost its lead amid a consumer boycott in 2023, and by September 2025 a sibling brand, Michelob Ultra, had taken the top spot in turn.

Which American lager has long been advertised as 'The Champagne of Beers'?

Miller High Life: launched in 1903, it was nicknamed the champagne of bottle beer within three years for its lively fizz, and its clear, tapered-neck bottle still copies the wine's.

Which Mexican drink mixes beer with lime juice, hot sauces and spices in a salt-rimmed glass?

Michelada: recipes vary by region, from just beer, lime and salt to versions with Worcestershire or soy sauce and Clamato, and big US brewers now sell ready-made 'chelada' versions.

Which swamp animals sounded out the syllables of Budweiser's name in a 1995 Super Bowl commercial?

Frogs named Bud, Weis and Er did the croaking, in a commercial directed by Gore Verbinski, who went on to make the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films.

Which lager's Orson Welles-voiced adverts hedged that it was only likely the best in the world?

Carlsberg's tagline was written in 1973 for the British market by Tony Bodinetz at the KMP agency, and Welles liked the adverts enough to keep his fee to a minimum.

Which tropical bird, drawn by John Gilroy in the 1930s, became the best-known mascot of Guinness adverts?

The Toucan was the star of a Gilroy menagerie that also sold the stout with a kangaroo, an ostrich, a seal, a lion and their zookeeper.

Which Mexican beer's adverts starred Jonathan Goldsmith as the suave, bearded Most Interesting Man in the World?

Dos Equis sales are said to have risen 22% during the campaign, at a time when sales of other imported beers in the United States fell 4%.

Which lager's British television adverts imitated European cinema while boasting about its high price?

Stella Artois began the run with adverts based on the 1986 French film Jean de Florette, all set to a theme inspired by Verdi's opera La forza del destino.

Which beer's adverts had retired athletes like Bubba Smith bicker over which of its two virtues mattered more?

Miller Lite hired ex-athletes and tough guys like crime writer Mickey Spillane to win over blue-collar drinkers, and Advertising Age ranked the campaign the eighth greatest in history.

Which lager, brewed in San Antonio from 1940, proudly bills itself as the national beer of its home state?

Lone Star's sales got a lift in the 1970s from the Austin music scene, thanks to promotions manager Jerry Retzloff's close association with Willie Nelson.

Spuds MacKenzie, the party-loving mascot of 1980s American light-beer adverts, was played by which dog breed?

A Bull Terrier named Honey Tree Evil Eye played Spuds, and the mascot, portrayed as male in the adverts, turned out to be female.

Which animals charge out of the waves in Guinness's 1999 advert Surfer, once voted the best ad of all time?

White horses burst from the surf because the advert was inspired by Walter Crane's 1893 painting Neptune's Horses; Jonathan Glazer shot it in Hawaii over nine days.

Which Minnesota brewery sold its beer for decades with a dancing cartoon bear named after the brand?

Hamm's bear danced through pastoral scenes to the brewery's jingle, and Advertising Age called him the key to one of the century's best ad campaigns.

Which Irish red ale was sold abroad as Kilkenny because foreign drinkers struggled to pronounce its real name?

Smithwick's dates to a brewery founded in 1710 on the site of a Franciscan abbey, where monks had brewed ale since the 14th century.

Murphy's and Beamish, the two stouts that long rivalled Guinness on home turf, both come from which Irish city?

Cork's Beamish and Crawford, founded as the Cork Porter Brewery in 1791, was the largest brewery on the island in the early 19th century.

Which name for stout layered over pale ale is avoided in Irish pubs because it recalls a hated British force?

Black and Tan was the nickname of a notorious paramilitary force sent by the British during the War of Independence; the same drink also goes by the name half and half.

Guinness looks black in the glass, but the brewer officially describes the stout as a very dark shade of which colour?

Ruby is the official shade, produced by roasting a portion of the grain, which also gives Guinness its characteristic taste.

In the early 1960s Guinness built its first African brewery in which country?

Nigeria got the plant at Ikeja in Lagos, and the Guinness made there is brewed with a proportion of sorghum alongside the usual malt.

Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan to form which London-based drinks giant, owner of Johnnie Walker?

Diageo's invented name, devised by a branding consultancy in 1997, joins the Latin word for day to the Greek root for earth.

Which staple of statistics did Guinness brewer William Sealy Gosset publish under the pen name Student?

The t-test appeared under a pseudonym because Guinness, fearing its competitors, ruled that researchers' papers must not mention beer, the company or the author's true name.

Dublin's Guinness Storehouse, housed in a former fermentation plant, is built around an atrium shaped like a giant what?

A pint glass is the atrium's shape, and visits end in the seventh-floor Gravity Bar, where a pint of the stout comes with views across Dublin.

The gently flared glass traditionally used for a pint of Guinness takes its name from which flower?

Tulip glasses suit the recommended double pour, in which the glass is held at a 45-degree angle and filled three-quarters full before being topped up.

Before taking over St. James's Gate in Dublin, Arthur Guinness founded his first brewery in which County Kildare town?

Leixlip was where Guinness set up after working at his stepmother's public house, helped by a bequest from the bishop who employed his father.

The word lager comes from the German for what, a nod to the time the beer spent maturing in cool caves?

Storage is the literal meaning, because the beer was kept before drinking in the same cool caves in which it had been fermented.

Which amber lager, long served at Munich's Oktoberfest, was brewed in spring because summer brewing was banned?

Märzen was brewed in March, a little stronger than usual, so that it would keep while a 1553 ordinance forbade brewing from late April to late September.

Which animal often appears on bottles of bock, a strong German lager whose name doubles as the word for it?

Goat labels are a visual pun, and an 1882 Baltimore Sun article claimed that bock left drinkers as frisky in their gambols as the animal itself.

Belgian witbier traditionally gets its citrus note from the dried peel of which fruit?

Orange peel is the classic witbier flavouring, and brewers of the style often use raw, unmalted wheat rather than the malted grain of German wheat beers.

Kriek lambic is traditionally fermented with a rare Schaarbeek variety of which fruit?

Cherries of the sour Morello type go into kriek, and as the Schaarbeek variety has grown scarce some brewers have switched to other sour kinds, sometimes imported.

Which regal word was added to the name of the strong stout that English brewers shipped to the Russian court?

Imperial marked the strong stout that Thrale's Anchor Brewery in London created in the 18th century for export to the court of Catherine II of Russia.

Chicha de jora, the Andean beer that had ritual uses in the Inca Empire, is brewed from which crop?

Maize is germinated to release its malt sugars, then boiled and fermented for several days, traditionally in huge earthenware vats.

Compared with pale ale, amber ale is darker and maltier thanks to which type of specialty malt?

Crystal malts give amber ale a colour running from light copper to light brown; a London brewer, Collier Brothers, applied to trademark The Amber Ale as early as 1876.

Scottish ales graded 60, 70 and 80 are named after a 19th-century invoicing system that used which old coin?

Shilling categories tracked strength, and the 70 and 80 grades are known in Scottish pubs as Heavy and Export.

Sahti, a farmhouse ale whose mash is filtered through juniper twigs, is a traditional beer of which Nordic country?

Finland's sahti runs through the twigs into a trough-shaped tun called a kuurna, and the cloudy result has a distinct taste similar to banana.

Which president signed the Cullen–Harrison Act, bringing back 3.2% beer months before Prohibition ended?

Franklin Roosevelt signed it within weeks of taking office, and 7 April, the day the beer flowed again, is still celebrated in the United States as National Beer Day.

Budweiser was introduced in 1876 by Carl Conrad and Co. of which city on the Mississippi River?

St. Louis's future beer giant was a brewery on the brink of bankruptcy when a prosperous soap manufacturer bought into it in 1860; his son-in-law later pioneered refrigerated rail cars.

Which short-lived brew, launched in 1977, was promoted by the famously thirsty brother of the sitting US president?

Billy Beer flopped fast: its maker, Falls City Brewing, announced in October 1978 that it was closing, and the celebrity pitchman was said to drink another brand in private.

Which Founding Father left behind a handwritten recipe for small beer made with bran and molasses?

George Washington's recipe was for a weak, cheap brew that colonial North Americans favoured over stronger and more expensive beer.

Which wood, cut into chips and placed in the aging vessel, has long been used to lager Budweiser?

Beechwood chips are boiled in baking soda for seven hours beforehand, so the wood adds little to no flavour of its own.

Which brewery, once the largest in the US, ruined its name in the 1970s by cheapening its beer with corn syrup?

Schlitz first became the country's largest beer producer in 1902 and swapped the title with the makers of Budweiser several times during the 1950s.

Which Wisconsin beer baron captained Lake Michigan steamers before buying into his father-in-law's brewery?

Frederick Pabst married Maria Best, daughter of brewer Phillip Best, and bought into the family firm after a shipping accident, becoming its president in 1873.

What nickname stuck to the pointed metal opener needed to pierce the flat-top beer cans sold from 1935?

Church key was probably an irreverent joke about drinking, built on the opener's likeness to a big church-door key; the term first meant a simple tool for prying caps off glass bottles.

Which Prohibition-era near beer from Budweiser's makers took its name partly from a Slavic word for beer?

Bevo was by far the most popular cereal beverage of the dry years, selling more than five million cases a year at its early-1920s peak.

Which Detroit brewery, founded by a German immigrant in 1850, long sold its lager as fire-brewed in copper kettles?

Stroh's adopted the technique after a tour of famous European breweries, and in its early days the beer was sold door to door.

Which 1977 road comedy follows a bet to truck 400 cases of Coors from Texarkana to Atlanta in 28 hours?

Smokey and the Bandit turned its beer run into the second-highest-grossing film of 1977 in the United States, behind only Star Wars.

Strange Brew, the 1983 comedy about the beer-loving McKenzie brothers and Elsinore Brewery, loosely reworks which play?

Hamlet gives the film its Elsinore setting, though the villain here is Brewmeister Smith, who plans to take over the world by lacing the beer with a mind-control drug.

In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the alien drinks beer at home while Elliott, psychically linked to him, gets drunk where?

At school, the tipsy Elliott sets free the animals awaiting dissection in his biology class and kisses a girl he likes.

In Jaws, Captain Quint crushes an empty can of which lager, a design the brewery later reissued?

Narragansett brought back its 1975 can design in 2012 on the strength of the scene, played by Robert Shaw.

In The World's End, Gary King reunites his boyhood friends to finish which 12-pub crawl through Newton Haven?

The Golden Mile had beaten the friends as teenagers in 1990, when they failed to reach the final pub, which gives the film its title.

Which country star co-wrote and starred in the 2008 comedy Beer for My Horses, based on his own hit song?

Toby Keith plays a deputy sheriff in small-town Oklahoma, in a film directed by Michael Salomon, who had made many of his music videos.

Which comedy troupe, also behind Super Troopers, wrote and starred in the 2006 drinking-games film Beerfest?

Broken Lizard's story sends two brothers to Munich during Oktoberfest to scatter the ashes of their German-born grandfather.

In Shaun of the Dead, at which pub do Shaun and Ed plan to wait out the zombie outbreak?

The Winchester is Shaun's favourite pub, where a heartbroken Shaun had got drunk with his slacker best friend the night before the dead rose.

In the 1988 Australian comedy Young Einstein, the hero splits the atom in order to put what into beer?

Bubbles are the family dream: Einstein's father tells him that whoever manages to get them into beer will change the world forever.

Which Australian comedian played an earthy Aussie abroad in London in Foster's lager adverts on British television?

Paul Hogan made the adverts during the 1980s, the decade in which he broke through in film as Mick Dundee in Crocodile Dundee.