If you are looking for a specific established beer style, click on it to find a link to the relevant part of our website. If the one you seek is missing, please let us know.
Find individual beer styles
read more
Tim Webb
Other authentic lagers
While the heritage of cold-conditioned beers is not as many-layered as that of ales, there appears nonetheless to have been a tradition of lagering some beers that goes back to the 15th century, and it is likely that at least some of these beers will have been conditioned by self-selecting lager yeast.
Stronger lagers
In the back catalogue of central European brewing is a cluster of styles of stronger lager, known collectively as Bockbier. While nowhere near as well-known as their lighter cousins, they have amassed respect both for range and for their quiet assertiveness
Dark lagers
In the same year that Anton Dreher first made an amber lager at his brewery near Vienna, his friend and colleague Gabriel Sedlmayer the Younger first made a dark one at his family’s Spaten brewery in Munich.
Amber lagers
Beers had been lagered over summer for centuries in Alpine caves before the emergence of factory-made examples around 1840. The first few of this new breed pre-dated Pilsener by a couple of years and were darker, in varying degrees.
Blond lagers
The homelands of authentic blond lagers are the Czech Republic, Germany and Austria, though the global spread of the various styles in the late 19th century encouraged a few classic examples in other countries.
About this guide
There is no correct way to classify or categorise different types of beer. What we have attempted to do here is to try to bring together the major established beer styles of the world and make some sense of them. Nothing is set in stone and this is a living document.
Session, sampling & sipping beers
Beers have many purposes. Some are for quaffing with your mates in a bar while you get on with the serious business of conversation. Some are minor works of art in their own right. Others should be sipped, to assist with thinking.
Industrial versus craft
Since earliest times, brewers have been caught between supplying two conflicting demands. Beer needs to be good enough to savour, and cheap enough to afford. Craft brewers concentrate on the first, industrial brewers on the second.