Most beer styles can be said to have come from somewhere, even if their original form may have become obscured by time. Some are far more clearly associated with an area, a region or a country, and a few remain specific to one place.
A virtue and a curse of the internet age is the speed with which local traditions and specialities become global property, to be mimicked across the world. The beer styles included here are those that remain associated with a particular country or region.
Very few have a formal legal status that protects them from imitation or abuse. Most are now also made, usually in lesser form, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, and Lisbon to Yokohama, though to be appreciated in their authentic form they should be tried in their place of origin.
For those that are already widely mimicked around the world we have provided links to their primary listing. The few that remain truly local specialities are described in full.
Belgium
Belgium is the mothership of craft brewing. Its historic brewing habits have exerted more influence over the development of modern...
Finland
The legendary rye beer of southern and central Finland is by tradition a home-brew like no other. Impossible to export for its absence of...
Germany
When Bavaria joined greater Germany in 1871 one of the conditions of the deal was the adoption across the whole country of the Bavarian...
Italy
Italian craft brewing is a hotbed of creativity and has advanced massively this century. Despite, or perhaps because of not having any...
Poland
Poland ties with Spain and the UK as Europe's third largest beer producer, after Germany and Russia. Polish brewers make many different...
Folk beers of the Baltic rim
Small production, traditional farmhouse-style beers have been preserved better in the Nordic countries and Baltic states than elsewhere in...
Ukraine
In Cold War times the poster child of brewing in the Soviet bloc was Czechoslovakia, though East Germany, Poland and Ukraine were also...
Rest of the world
New beer styles are being invented all the time but history tells us that few of these outlive the seven year life-cycle afforded to many...
