What’s the story behind IPA? What’s the difference between porter and stout? How is lager different from ale? What’s a wheat beer? What beer goes best with burgers, with fish, with pasta, with curry, with cheese? What’s an Old Ale? What on earth is a Grozidskie? Beer drinkers have dozens of questions. Educate them, educate your staff to answer customers’ questions, and encourage customers to try beers they might never have gone for, and you’ll sell more beer.

I am an experienced and highly knowledgeable educator on beer and beer styles, and an expert and award-winning beer communicator covering everything from tutored tastings to presentations to social media to PR to press to broadcast media to books,  and with considerable in-depth experience of the hospitality trade sector in the UK. I am a speaker at conferences about beer from Denmark to the United States, my articles on beer have appeared in publications from Hong Kong to the United States, and been translated into Italian, German, Danish and Spanish, and my writings are used in the coursework of the Master of Food degree at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenza, Italy.

I am one of the leading authorities on the history of British beer and the development of British beer styles, and a multiple award-winning writer on beer: my books include Beer: The Story of the Pint (2003), Amber Gold and Black: the History of Britain’s Great Beer Styles (2010) and Strange Tales of Ale (2015) and I have been a winner four years running, 2011-2015, at the British Guild of Beer Writers annual  awards, including Online Beer Communicator of the Year and Beer and Food Writer of the Year.

Beer educator services to pubs, bars, breweries and restaurants include
● Staff training
● Customer education
● Tutored tastings
● Beer and food matching
● Menu planning
● Events planning

Courses available include:

Beer Styles for Beginners

A quick two-hour course talking about why beer styles are important as a way of engaging customers and encouraging them to try different beers, what the most important beer styles are, and the answers to the most common questions servers are likely to be asked, such as “what’s the different between ale and lager?”, “what is an IPA?” and “what’s the difference between porter and stout?”, with interesting facts about the different styles that servers can pass on to customers when they’re talking to them.

Beer styles for experienced servers

A half-day course looking at beer styles in depth, their individual origins and histories, why those styles developed, what roles ingredients from hops, yeast malt and additives, and different brewing methods, play in individual beer styles, how different brewers today interprete the same beer style, such as IPA or Imperial Stout (with tastings), what glasses suit different beer styles best, a look at lesser known beer styles and a brief study of beer styles and food pairings, designed to give the server a good grounding in the story of beer styles. Each participant goes away with an information-packed book on beer styles to enable them to consolidate their knowledge at home.

Beer styles and food matching

A half-day course looking at matching beer and food, from snacks and simple lunches through to full five or six-course menus, together with suggestions for planning beery gastronomic events.

 

Advanced beer styles

A full day’s course looking at beer styles in depth, from pale ale to stout to lager too barley wine, teasing apart the different families of beer, how they interact and overlap, how they have developed over time and how we got to where we are today, with a look at the sociological changes that led, for example, to the replacement of porter with mild, then bitter and then lager as Britain’s most popular beer, and a strudy of the craft beer revolution and what it means to beer styles today.

If you would like to discuss working together, please get in touch: