Features

Peter Austin is hailed as the Father of Micro-brewing. Starting with Ringwood in Hampshire in the late 1970s, he built specialist craft breweries throughout the world. His greatest impact was in the United States and Britain where his legacy can be counted on the large number of small breweries operating today

Added: Thursday, January 9th 2014

Bosteels Brewery, dating from 1791, is older than its host country. It's still family owned and run by the sixth and seventh generations, Ivo and Antoine. They are renowned for their multi-award-winning Tripel Karmeliet, the idiosyncratic Pauwel Kwak served from a glass in a wooden shoe, and Deus, which reaches maturity in Champagne cellars in France

Added: Monday, December 30th 2013

Trappist monks at Westmalle Abbey near Antwerp in Flanders created a new Belgian style with their strong Tripel pale beer. But they also brew a flavoursome dark beer, Dubbel, in a brewhouse of startling Art Deco design surrounded by Gothic church buildings

Added: Thursday, December 19th 2013

Sean Franklin coined the phrase "hops are the grapes of brewing" and set out to create beers with powerful citrus character. Now his pioneering work in Yorkshire is being continued by the Fozard brothers with a helping hand from father Ian

Added: Tuesday, December 17th 2013

Inside the massive Greene King brewery in Bury St Edmunds a new small plant has been installed to produce small-run beers aimed at the fast-growing craft sector. The new range includes pale ale, IPA and porter and the legendary Strong Suffolk Ale

Added: Saturday, December 7th 2013

After intense lobbying, Marston's has restored Brakspear Triple to bottle-conditioned format. As with the great Trappist ales of Belgium (Chimay beers pictured) ageing in bottle gives beer greater depth of flavour

Added: Saturday, November 30th 2013

Petra Wetzel has taken Glasgow by storm. In the course of a few years she has built the success and reputation of WEST, a Bavarian-style beer hall with a brewery producing lagers and wheat beers to the ancient Pure Beer Law. Now she has funding to build a new brewery on the outskirts of the city

Added: Friday, November 29th 2013

The Mayflower on the south bank of the Thames marks the spot where the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for America in 1620. Lovingly restored, you can marvel at the beams, settles and latticed windows...and enjoy good ale and food

Added: Tuesday, November 26th 2013

The Val-Dieu and Bellevaux breweries in the eastern region of Belgium, near Liege, maintain the ancient traditions of brewing in abbeys -- Val-Dieu beers are pictured with the local Herve cheese -- and on farms. Val-Dieu has lost its monks and brewing is now conducted by a woman "brewster". Near Malmedy, Carla and Wil Schuwer from the Netherlands have opened a rustic brewery in the rolling Ardennes

Added: Friday, November 8th 2013

William Nicholson, a 19th-century gin distiller in London, was also a keen cricketer who helped fund Lord's ground. His company bought Victorian "gin palaces" that form the bedrock of modern Nicholson's pubs, which stages a major beer festival until the middle of November. Some of the pubs, such as the Coal Hole in London's Strand, have more humble origins

Added: Monday, October 21st 2013