Craft Beer Styles Explained

There are now more craft beer styles than most people can name, and the tap lists at good bars keep growing. This guide cuts through the noise. Whether you're at a 40-tap craft bar in Brooklyn, navigating a Belgian brewery menu, or just trying to graduate beyond the same lager you've ordered since university—these are the styles worth knowing, what they actually taste like, and what to ask for when you're standing in front of a wall of unknown beers.

The Ale Styles That Matter

Ales are the engine of the craft beer movement. Fermented at warmer temperatures with top-fermenting yeast, they produce a wider range of flavours than lagers and are generally what breweries are most excited about. Here are the styles you'll encounter most, and what defines each one.

IPA (India Pale Ale)

The IPA is the dominant force in craft beer, and for good reason. Originally brewed in England and shipped to India for soldiers, the style is defined by bold hop character and bitterness. Modern IPAs come in several flavour profiles. West Coast IPAs are crisp and resinous, with pine and citrus notes and a clean finish. Hazy IPAs (also called NEIPAs for New England IPA) arrived in the mid-2010s and changed everything—they're cloudy, juicy, soft, with tropical and fruit-forward hop flavours. A Session IPA delivers similar hop complexity but at a lower alcohol content, making it approachable for an afternoon at the bar.

What unites them is the hop obsession. Breweries use different hop varieties—Cascade, Mosaic, Citra, Simcoe, Amarillo—to create entirely different experiences from the same style name. If you're new to craft beer, an IPA is where the adventure starts. Fair warning: they're bitter, and that bitterness is the point.

Pale Ale

The pale ale is the gateway drug to craft beer and one of the most underrated styles. It sits between a basic lager and the intense bitterness of an IPA, offering real complexity without assault. You get hop character—a blend of citrus, stone fruit, and sometimes herbal notes—balanced with a malt sweetness and a body that feels substantial but not heavy. Pale ales are approachable, drinkable, and often the best thing on a tap list for someone trying to understand why craft beer matters. Order this if you're uncertain at any bar.

Stout & Porter

Dark beers demand respect. Stouts and porters are brewed with roasted malts that give them their black colour and coffee, chocolate, and burnt sugar flavours. The main difference: porters use brown malts and tend toward chocolate notes, while stouts use black patent malt and roasted barley for a drier, more bitter character. But these lines blur constantly.

Within stouts, there are meaningful subcategories. A Dry Irish Stout (think Guinness) is thin-bodied and crisp, with a sharp bite. An Oatmeal Stout adds oats for a smoother, creamier texture. An Imperial Stout is seriously heavy—high alcohol, intense roasted character, sometimes with chocolate or vanilla undertones. Drink a stout on a cold evening or after dinner. Don't drink it when you want something light.

Belgian Ales

Belgian ales are where beer becomes philosophy. These aren't just beverages—they're expressions of monastic tradition, wild yeast, and centuries of European brewing obsession. The yeast strains used in Belgian brewing produce distinctive fruity esters and spice notes that define the category.

A Saison (farmhouse ale) is light, dry, and often spiced with grains of paradise or coriander. It was originally brewed for farmworkers, meant to be quaffable in the summer heat. A Tripel is stronger, golden, with a dry finish and a complexity that masks the high alcohol content—it tastes like nothing until suddenly it hits you. A Dubbel is the sweet, dark, fruity cousin, full of raisin and plum notes despite being lower in alcohol than a Tripel. These require patience and respect. They're also the beers most likely to convert people who claim they don't like craft beer.

Lagers, Wheats and Beyond

While ales dominate the craft conversation, lagers and wheat beers deserve serious attention. Lagers are fermented slowly at cold temperatures with bottom-fermenting yeast, producing clean, crisp, often delicate flavours. A Czech Pilsner is floral and hoppy with a sharp bite—the ancestor of all pilsners and still the gold standard in the style. A German Pilsner is similarly hop-forward but slightly more malt-sweet. Both are things of beauty when done right.

Wheat beers split into two camps. A German Weizen is brewed with 50% wheat malt and fermented with special yeast that produces distinctive clove and banana notes—it's refreshing, fruity, and often hazy. A Witbier (Belgian white beer) uses wheat plus spices like coriander and orange peel, creating something herbaceous and lightly sweet. A Dunkel (dark lager) is malty, slightly sweet, smooth, and criminally underrated. If you see one on tap, order it.

Sours and Wild Ales The Fastest-Growing Category

Ten years ago, sour beers were niche obsessions for extreme beer geeks. Now they're everywhere, and for good reason. A Berliner Weisse is light, sour, and historically brewed in Berlin—it's refreshing and slightly funky. A Gose is a German sour that adds salt and coriander for a unique savoury-sweet-salty combination that sounds wrong until you taste it. Both are meant to be drunk young and fresh.

Lambics and Gueuzes come from Belgium and represent the most extreme end of sour beer. Lambics are spontaneously fermented with wild yeast from the environment—each year, each barrel is different. A Gueuze is a blend of lambics of different ages, creating complexity and funk that takes years to fully appreciate. These aren't for everyone, but they're essential for understanding what beer can be.

The modern kettle sour is a newer style where brewers deliberately sour the beer before boiling, then add hops and other flavours. You get the sour character without the unpredictability of wild yeast. Many breweries are using this method to create accessible sours—fruited sours with berries, stone fruits, even tropical notes. These are where sour beer begins for most people.

What to Order First at a Craft Beer Bar

You're standing at the bar. There are 40 taps you've never heard of. You have no idea what to order. Here's the playbook. If you're uncertain about your preferences, ask for a Pale Ale. It's reliable, it's interesting, it won't alienate you. If you like bold flavours and aren't afraid of bitterness, go IPA. If you want something unusual but don't want to commit to lambic funk, ask the bartender for the house sour—most good bars have one, it's usually creative, and it's a great conversation starter.

The most important thing: talk to the bartender. A good craft beer bar is staffed by people who actually care about beer, have tried everything on the list, and want you to have a good experience. Tell them what you like, what you've tried before, what flavours appeal to you. Don't be shy about it. These people live for this conversation.

If you hate whatever you order, finish it—you're supporting the bar—but then ask for a recommendation for something different. This is how you learn. A good bar will steer you right. A bad bar will try to upsell you on the most expensive thing. Vote with your patronage and trust the staff at a place that's curated a real selection rather than just filling a tap wall with names.

The final truth: there's no shame in ordering the same beer twice. If you find something you love, own it. Craft beer culture can feel intimidating because there are always new styles and new breweries. But beer, at its core, is simple: find what tastes good to you and drink it. The rest is just noise.