International Beer Day 2022: Celebrate with subscription boxes, beer kegs, recipe books and more
From Irish porters to bevs brewed by women, honour the occasion with some of our favourites
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Your support makes all the difference.Beer lovers, listen up. International Beer Day is an annual occasion, held on 5 August, for celebrating your favourite brews. And what better way to do so than by raising a glass?
It was first started in 2007 in Santa Cruz, California, with the purpose of celebrating the craft of brewing, and has since expanded into a worldwide event.
Beer drinkers are encouraged to support breweries, bartenders, and of course, try out a varied selection of beers from around the world.
While you can always support your local pub, exploring new brews at home has never been easier thanks to beer subscription boxes highlighting small and independent producers through specially curated edits.
Ideal for being the host with the most, beer dispensers and mini kegs mean you can quite literally have your brews on tap, while low and no alcohol or gluten-free beers mean noone need miss out. We’ll cheers to that.
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Whether you’re well versed in the many different types or are looking to expand your horizons, we’ve got you covered for the best beers you can drink, as well as gifts for beer lovers and subscription boxes to try.
Best beer dispensers and kegs
To experience your local at home, consider opting for a beer dispenser or mini keg which deliver pints on tap.
Choose a simple plastic tap and tower dispenser for quick beer access, or go the whole hog and install a system to carbonate and chill your usual. In our guide to the best, our favourite was the PerfectDraft Hoegaarden starter kit (£225, Beerhawk.co.uk). The plug-in machine holds over 10 pints and our tester noticed how the “easy-pour pints were perfectly smooth.”
A close contender was the Krups the sub draught beer tap (£125, Beerwulf.com) that was rated the best compact beer dispenser.
Our reviewer said: “Load a beer ‘torp’ (holding just under four pints) into the sub, feed a rubber tube through to the tap and your perfect pint is almost ready to be poured. Speed the process up by keeping subs in the fridge first and the machine will take them colder, to 2C. Really stylish and compact, it’ll take up the same space as a four-slot toaster. The drinks pour well, with a bit of practice on glass-tilting required to get the right size of head on a pint.”
For something smaller, Timothy Taylor Landlord pale ale mini keg was crowned top dog in our mini keg review. “We really liked the smell of it; soft and sweet, and it has a full yet sweet taste with a lingering hop to it” our tester praised.
Best beer brewed by women
The landscape of the brewing industry is changing – it’s now bursting with women head brewers, brewery managers, beer sommeliers, bottle shop owners, bar owners and bloggers.
From butterscotch ales to citrus-sharp sours, milkshake stouts to mouth-watering IPAs, women are brewing some of the best craft beers and real ales available today.
In our round-up of the best beer brewed by women, the Queer Brewing Co existence as a radical act (£27, Beerhunter.co.uk) took the top spot. While it’s unavailable at the moment, Wild Card Brewery’s magonia fresh hop NEIPA (£5.20, Wildcardbrewery.co.uk) came in a close second.
“It’s syrupy, rich and is a beautiful tropical fruit bowl in the mouth, with pineapple, mango and papaya being the heavy hitters, ending on a sherbet-style sweetness” our reviewer said.
She added: “It’s not overwhelmingly sweet though, with the smooth, thick body making it a delight to drink.”
Best Irish beers
In recent years there has been an explosion of choice in Northern Ireland and the Republic, as wave upon wave of exciting, boundary-pushing breweries have opened their doors. You can get a taste without the airfare via ordering online, as we discovered in our round-up of the best Irish beers.
We loved 8 degrees Brewing full Irish IPA (€2.50 or £2.15, Molloys.ie) which is made using local barley, something our tester found gave it a “full, biscuity body with a hint of sweetness, while a quartet of hops – amarillo, cascade, citra and simcoe – ram it full of fruity grapefruit and lime flavours with resinous pine and a dry, herbal bitterness.”
Best beer subscription boxes
While discerning drinkers can of course get their fix at shops, supermarkets and the pub, we don’t think these outlets can beat the reach of specialists who make it their business to search high and low for new and exciting beverages.
As such, allow us to introduce you to the myriad of subscription boxes offering regular drop-offs to your door; and with them the chance to discover fantastic products that are often from small, independent or far-flung producers that you may not have otherwise come across.
We love the BeerBods beer club (from £10 per month, Beerbods.co.uk), which offers members’ beer tastings in the BeerBods online community. When you join, you open one beer per week on a Thursday evening, after receiving the story of the week’s pick in an email, then tune into their social channels for a live tasting.
The first box contains four beers for the month ahead as well as an exclusive branded glass, all for £10.
Alcohol free beer
If you’re looking to enjoy beer without the ABV, Athletic Brewing upside dawn alcohol-free golden – which also happens to be the first brewery in the US making only alcohol-free beer – was our writer’s favourite in our review.
Touting the taste as uncannily similar to the real thing, they said: “This organic, vegan ale pours a pale, lemony gold colour and is as refreshing on the palate as its looks suggest, with a subtle nuttiness, like pistachio, and a hint of honey adding body.”
Gluten-free beer
Beer is made with barley and/or wheat which means, in theory, it’s not on the menu if you’re gluten intolerant. But there are plenty of brewers producing gluten-free beers, from bitters and stouts to IPAs.
Touted as having “good body and well-balanced flavour with bold, tropical notes”, our tester liked Arbor’s motueka most of all, which has been “de-glutened with an enzyme, and samples are then verified at an independent lab and confirmed to contain less than 20ppm gluten.”
Best beer gifts
If you know a beer lover whose birthday is coming up, there’s no shortage of ideas, from a home-brew garden kit to a book on how to cook with booze, in our guide to the best beer gifts.
One of our favourites is The Gluttonous Gardener beer garden (£30, Glut.co.uk). If the beer lover in your life is also a dab hand in the garden, a homebrewer, or both, this “grow your own beer” kit is a great way for them to indulge in their interests from the ground up.
Their beer garden, grown from seeds, will contain hops, naturally, as well and coriander and meadowsweet, and will be crowned with the all-important personalised slate.
We would also highly recommend The Beer Kitchen by Melissa Cole (£9.36, Amazon.co.uk), a cookbook designed for those who want to merge their love of the hoppy stuff with their culinary passions.
Recipes calling simply for “beer” didn’t cut the mustard for award-winning writer Melissa Cole, so she took things further… much further.
She breaks down the science of why you should cook and pair your food with beer, and gives numerous suggestions alongside more than 70 inventive recipes that guarantee a boozy feast.
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Enjoy regular new bevs with our best beer and cider subscription boxes