You can’t have failed to have heard of craft beers. Even if you’re not a fan of beer in general, I bet you’ve been tempted to try a craft beer, not just because it sounds so arty and niche, but because of its tantalisingly different flavour and attractively decorated bottle.
When you hear ‘craft beer’ and associated vocabulary such as ‘unfiltered IPAs’, ‘hipster hops’ and ‘mellow complexity’, you probably think of hipster types with full beards brewing the stuff in traditional, dark breweries. Maybe it’s just me, but there is something very warming about the concept of a craft beer.
What Exactly Is A Craft Beer?
As you’d expect with something so contemporary, there’s a certain amount of ambiguity surrounding the definition of a ‘craft beer’. The general consensus is that a craft beer is made in a small, independent traditional brewery. In other words, a craft beer is not brewed by one of the big corporations.
Originating in 1970’s America, and then slowly increasing in popularity in the UK over the last decade or so, craft beers are now well and truly established. Their popularity, in part, is due to originality of taste and appearance.
Beer enthusiasts will tell you that they’re very different to your average beer. For a start, they tend to have a lower alcohol content so you can drink for a longer period of time (at a festival perhaps) and feel relatively sober compared to drinking one of your ‘standard’ beers for the same amount of time.
Plus they’re brewed in a more traditional way, on a small scale and often contain an infusion of different tastes, such as citrus, which makes for an unforgettable taste.
Note that most craft beers are ‘India Pale Ale’ (IPA) which has a high concentration of hops and an increased bitterness. They’re a good match with most foods, especially Indian cuisine.
Supermarket Sweep?
The big supermarkets have cottoned onto the popularity of craft beers and see a lucrative market for selling them. A major plus-point of this is that you no longer have to venture into a pretentious hipster bar to try craft beers; you can now do so in the comfort of your own home (wearing your dressing gown and slippers if you so wish!).
See below for my top 5 craft beers sold both in supermarkets and from online beer specialists – and where you’re getting the best deal: (Pricing & links correct at time of posting)
Goose Island IPA, 5.9% alcohol
£2.00 at Sainsburys
£2.59 at Beer Hawk
Goose Island IPA has plenty of flavour owing to its fruity, malty-ness, with infused pine notes. Easy on the palate and one of the most popular and highly-rated IPAs out there.
Toast Pale Ale, 5% alcohol
£2.29 at Waitrose
£2.66 at Ales by Mail
A totally flavour-some Pale Ale brewed with the usual hops, barley and yeast and bread…yes, that’s right, bread. The very idea of craft is the ability to add most edible foods/liquids into the mix to produce a fabulous tasting drink.
Stone Go To IPA Berlin, 4.7% alcohol
£1.90 at Tesco
£2.39 at Beers of Europe
Zesty orange aroma with flavours of grapefruit, lemons gives this beer a strong hoppy charm.
Oskar Blues Pinner IPA, 4.9% alcohol
£1.80 at Tesco
£3.19 at Beers of Europe
With its fresh flavour, it’s been described as more like a lager than a typical IPA. However, it is gorgeously citrussy with subtle hoppy notes.
Yeastie Boys Gunnamatta Earl Grey IPA 6.5% alcohol
£2.39 at Waitrose
£3 at Forest Wines
How interesting does this sound?! Earl Grey combined with Indian Pale Ale? It’s tangy, sweet and has citrus overtones. Plus, the herbs and spices make it a veritable palate explosion!
Why Pay More?
We can see that the supermarkets are winning hands-down in the price wars with the online retailers.
Supermarkets, buy their very nature, buy big and sell cheap (ish), so we shouldn’t be surprised that they’re able to price-cut the online retailers by as much as 50 per cent. Of course, some people may argue that the craft beer movement has sold its soul to mass consumerism, but it’s inevitable that this would happen to something so good: what starts out as underground almost always becomes mainstream.
Bear in mind that supermarkets sell only a small fraction of the craft beers that the online retailers do. So if you’re looking for something more specific and different, then look to the online retailers first.
