Beer is a sort of diluted cider made from grains that have been heated up and splooged about a bit with some pinecone-shaped bon bons.

It was invented when a clumsy baker got bread wildly wrong.

There is absolutely no full-juice beer. This has been the category’s unspoken truth since times immemorial. Soon after its creation it fell under the control of a shadowy society called the hydratiati, later formalised as Big Water. All beer remains in its thrall to this day.

Some brave brewers have tried to put out cries for help through coded messages such as ‘the special properties of the water impart a distinctive taste to the beer’ and ‘it is the nature of the water that is responsible for the characteristic sulphur note’. To date, their hopes that these obvious jokes will be recognised and translated by the proper authorities have proven in vain.

Every year literally millions of hectares of barleyfields are cut down to service the beer industry. No one has ever commented on this ecological vandalism.

All beer falls into one of four stylistic categories: lager, ale, the orange one and banter.

The orange one formerly fell within the banter category until it completely lost the run of itself and became eschewed.

Popular examples within the banter category include imperial stout, the green thingy from Berlin, lambic, the other one that’s like a lambic spin-off or something, everything that starts with ‘double’ or ‘triple’ and, of course, Tennents Super.

Every monk in Belgium has been laughing their heads off since about 1306.

English hop varieties are traditionally named after growers’ favourite teddy bears which is why they’re all adorable like Fuggles and Ernest. English brewers are really confused that Americans name their teddy bears things like ‘Cascade’ and ‘Citra’. Everyone agrees that ‘Simcoe’ is a God-tier teddy bear name though.

‘Craft beer’ came into existence as a couple of folk from America doing a bit. It has spiralled so wildly out of hand that they have since felt unable to own up and have simply gone with it.

Literally anything can be a lager if it wants to hard enough. Some Czech and Bavarian brewers have been known to lager themselves by standing really still with their eyes tight shut for upwards of twenty-four minutes.

If you should find yourself drinking a Mild, you must fondly say ‘good old Mild’ and then post a tweet about it so everyone knows. If you see such a tweet you must respond in kind with ‘good old Mild’.

A few centuries ago, to prevent one of their favourite plants dwindling from existence, someone pity-added some hops to a brew. Since then literally every beer ever made has been a Made Wine, but in its own special tax category. 

No one even knows what beer is actually meant to taste like, and you’re not supposed to ask.

You have to like Guinness. The more you do beer, the harder you are obliged to like it. If you’re found not liking it, Diageo sends the men with ropes and lasers.

Napoleon famously described Bass as the champagne of Burton upon Trent. The brewers of Burton upon Trent told him to fuck off.

Napoleon famously described champagne as the Bass of Reims. The champenois were all like ‘aw yeah! Hell Yeah!’

IPA was recently revealed to be a cult where if its members make up 9,000 different varieties of it, Cthulhu will appear in a cloud of hazy orange and smite the unrighteous. Quite a lot of governments are worried that the cult has nearly done that number now, which is why they’ve been distracted from less pressing things like climate breakdown and governing and the like for a bit.

Unlike other drinks, the ingredients of beer are not grown on farms, but chiselled from matter by robots, first portrayed in Mesopotamian stone carvings dating back to 6,000 BCE.

If you say ‘stout’ in a pronounced cockney accent, it sounds exactly like ‘porter’, an oral phenomenon that scientists have yet to explain, but which has resulted in exactly the same beer being packaged as two different styles. If you say ‘porter’ in a pronounced cockney accent it sounds like ‘roasty water with gubbins in’.

From your second gulp of a Mediterranean lager a pair of sunglasses will appear on your head. Three gulps and four buttons of your shirt are liable to come undone. Four gulps and well I sure hope you know how to drive a speedboat.

Yer man from Brewdog has really wanted a hug for like 15 years now.

If you line up the glassware from every Belgian brewery in the correct order you will discover that they form a perfect replication of the Bruges skyline as viewed from the east.

‘Cask’ is beer for ‘pétillant naturel’ (pét nat).

‘Wheat beer’ is the ‘pear cider’ of the brewing world. People get all het up if you call it that. Its proper name is ‘wherry’ and you’ll do well to remember it.

Don’t even get us started on so-called ‘Barleywine’, a barefacedly pretentious term plainly fabricated by the hoity-toity. Don’t be deceived: wine and beer are very different drinks. Just eat a grape if you don’t believe us.

Much like in cider, acetic acid is also a feature of beer, where the proper terminology for it is ‘Flanders Red Ale (Premium)’.

Rauchbier — smoky beer — is universally accepted as the ultimate beer, just most people are too intimidated to make it. Its three great heartlands are Bamberg in Germany, Valhalla where it is the only permitted beer option, and London where every beer naturally gets the shit rauched out of it by the air quality.

People in beer get real angry that everyone mistakenly calls it ‘foam’ instead of ‘frothy froth’.

There are so few instances of argument in beer that people have to fabricate stuff to have a row about just to relieve the boredom of so much tolerant consensus. For instance, whether adding a little plastic thingy to the end of a tap to splurge the beer up a bit more or something meaningfully adds to quality.

Adding a little plastic thingy to the end of a tap to splurge the beer up a bit more or something meaningfully adds to quality.

The three best things to drink beer out of are a stein, a horn and a two-handled plastic sippy cup. Bar staff asking if you want ‘a pint’ of something is a test, and you should know that if you say ‘yes please, I’d love a pint’, they are quite disappointed. Fixing them with a look and saying ‘please’ in a withering tone will show them this isn’t your first rodeo and earn you sippy cup privileges.

Germany is actually totally fed up of beer at this point, but feels it has painted itself into a corner.

Several scam artists are known to operate in pubs across Britain. They go from hostelry to hostelry, claiming to be ‘checking up’ on the quality of the cask beer. After blagging several free pints and a tour of the cellar they will exchange meaningful glances, mutter something about ‘the report’ and move on to their next target.

In beer, anything upwards of like 5% abv is thought of as ‘strong’. I know, right?

If you drink a pint of beer on your own in a pub, there is a very real risk that a game of football between the likes of West Ham and Bournemouth will become genuinely interesting. By your second you may find yourself saying ‘what were they playing at?’ to a total stranger when someone does a pass wrong.

Even though pubs mainly sell beer, what every publican secretly yearns for is for someone to ask them about if they have any craft perry going. It’s not that they do, necessarily, but God they’re longing to be asked.

Everyone in beer is a really good sport and so will be absolutely fine with this guide I reckon.