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Now isn’t that the question? Let’s start by talking about some of the times that are not good times to drink craft beer. How about at the end of a five hour party when you’ve had your fill and couldn’t tell lager from washing up liquid. For breakfast is another time that isn’t ideal, if you’re drinking beer with your morning cereal you’ve probably got issues bigger than craft beer can solve.

Now some good times. Ironically, when you aren’t planning to drink a lot is a good one. Craft beer is more about quality than quantity so you won’t be chugging back craft beers for too long. Given the high alcohol levels of a lot of craft beers you wouldn’t have too long a night if you tried. Therefore, as you are more likely to sip than slug craft beers you can make a bottle of craft beer last a lot longer than you average pallid lager. This might seem like a bad thing for a beer salesman to say but we want you to enjoy the experience and come back rather than be found down the alley behind the nightclub groaning 'never again' as your lurid green alcopops come say 'Hello' one more time.

There are two truly great times to drink craft beers. The first is at home, in a quiet moment. Not necessarily alone, but when you have time to sit and savour the moment.

The other, and probably even better, time to drink craft beer is with food. For too long now it has been assumed that the only thing that you can drink with good food is wine. Now, nobody is going say you shouldn’t drink wine. Some of us might offer the opinion that only the insane drink Chardonnay as it tastes like iron filings, but without doubt there are some pretty fine wines out there. However, a bottle of wine is the easy choice. Also, wine isn’t really the answer.

When eating food you need to think how the flavours of your dish will be accentuated and heightened by the flavour of what you are drinking. With wine it’s red with meat and white with fish and not much more – OK, we’re being a tad facetious but the general point still needs making.

Because beer is made from two major flavour components, these being hops and malt, whereas wine is made from one, namely grapes, the options are far, far wider. Indeed, those mathematicians amongst us can see that the options are actually squared. As similar hops grown in different locations and climates can adopt different characteristics just like grapes you don't need to break out the log tables and abacus to recognize that beer has a very wide palette to work from. Also, because portion sizes with beer are smaller the chances to marry specific beers to a specific dish are also higher.

And what does that mean? Well, it means you have greater possibilities with beer than you ever have with wine or any other beverage.

Spicy Thai soup? Think about a Hefeweizen where the clove and banana scents can stand tall against the heat of the chillies. Roasted lamb with mint sauce? The fragrance and bitterness of an IPA cuts through the sweetness of the lamb with ease. Belgian chocolate tart? The only option is a Russian Imperial stout, delivering roasted chocolate malt flavours that melds with the cocoa flavour perfectly. And the beauty is there in front of your eyes, with a three course meal you can take three different beers to pair with the courses. Just three small bottles of beer offers opportunity to experience something that it would take a serious amount of drinking to achieve with the vino.

Indeed, with wine, unless you have a group of four eating all the same courses food pairing becomes a very heavy night indeed. Hey, we repeat, wine is good. You won’t get laughed at for drinking wine, even by us. But beer is just better, it has a wider palette to work with and nobody will convince us otherwise.

To find out lots, lots more about craft beer and to start to understand why we are aggressively passionate about it all you are probably better going off to our sister site, www.highway49.co.uk (but we admit we're still papering the walls on that one at the time of writing. Have a look and if the paint isn't quite dry we advise you have a craft beer, relax and come back in a few weeks.)

Alternatively, send us a mail and we can talk all you want about craft beer. Be warned, we’re hopheads, we can get a little boring about all this stuff but I am sure you will bear with us and take the bits that are useful to you.

info@bainbridgebeers.co.uk

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