If you’ve ever looked at a beer menu and seen “hoppy” and thought, Okay, but… what exactly is hopping? - you’re not alone. “Hoppy” is one of those beer words that brewers use casually, while everyone else is left wondering whether the beer contains an unusually enthusiastic rabbit. Hoppy simply means the beer has a noticeable character from hops. Hops are the small green flowers added during brewing. They help balance the sweetness of malt, add bitterness, and most importantl

You sit down at a brewery. The menu arrives. Suddenly, you’re looking at words like ABV, IBU, dry-hopped, unfiltered, sour, sessionable and wondering if you accidentally opened a chemistry textbook. Don’t worry. You’re not expected to know all of it. A craft beer menu is basically telling you what the beer is going to taste and feel like before you order it. Once you understand a few terms, choosing a beer becomes much easier. ABV: How Strong Is It? ABV means Alcohol By Volum

Have you ever taken a sip of a wheat beer and thought, why does this taste like banana? There’s a good chance there isn't a banana anywhere in the brewery. This is particularly common with German style wheat beers such as Hefeweizen. You can get aromas of ripe banana, banana bread, bubblegum and even a little clove. And all of this can come from the yeast. When we brew a wheat beer, the ingredients themselves are fairly simple: malted wheat, barley, hops, water and yeast. The

As I'm writing this, I've got a pint of our Mexican Lager sitting next to me. Mexican Lager One of my favourite parts of brewing a new beer is finally getting to sit down with a pint and think back through all the little decisions that got it into the glass. Every beer has a story, and this one started long before we milled the first bag of malt . It started with a simple idea. Not another beer launch. Not another themed menu. A proper Mexican festival. For almost two weeks,

Some collaborations start with a detailed plan. Others start with a conversation that gets repeated over the years. "We should brew something together sometime." That was pretty much the story of Pulped Fiction. I've known Lynette(Brewmaster) from Flying Fox for quite a while now. Like most brewers in India's craft beer industry, our paths have crossed regularly over the years at festivals, brewery visits, industry events, and over countless beers shared between shifts. Every

A small habit quietly changed the way I understand beer. Nothing dramatic, no new ingredient, no advanced technique. Just a pause before the first sip. For the longest time, I drank beer the way most people do. The glass arrives, you lift it, you drink. Simple, efficient, almost automatic. And honestly, there is nothing wrong with that. But somewhere along the way, inside breweries, during tastings, in those slower moments around tanks and fresh pours, I started waiting. Just

The Myth of the Liquid Loaf If I had a rupee for every time someone told me, “I love craft beer, but I am watching my waistline,” I would probably have enough to brew another experimental batch by now. The beer belly is one of the oldest and most stubborn ideas in drinking culture. It makes beer sound like some kind of magnet that ignores basic human biology and heads straight for your stomach. As a brewer, that explanation never made sense to me. Brewing is chemistry, not ma

Every now and then, a collaboration comes along that just clicks. It feels less like a partnership and more like two crafts connecting at the right moment. That's exactly what happened with Oktoberfestbier, our special brew made with Lavonne Cafe , one of Bangalore's most loved patisseries led by Chef Avin Thaliath . If you've ever stepped into Lavonne, you know what I mean. That first inhale - butter, caramel, freshly baked croissants, and maybe a hint of rye from the bread

Every city has its rituals. In Bangalore, one of them is gathering around a pint of fresh, carefully brewed beer. Over the years, this city has grown into India's craft beer capital - not just because of the number of breweries, but because of the stories each glass tells. And this September, those stories converged into one big adventure: The Bangalore Craft Crawl 2025. Now that the crawl's over, the city feels a little different. Maybe it's just the hangover of good memorie

Let's talk bitter truths, shall we? In any other context, "bitter" sounds like something you'd avoid, but in beer? It's liquid gold. And that, my friends, is the magic of IBUs – International Bitterness Units – the little number that explains the tasty bite in your beer. As a brewer obsessed with the science of flavor, I can tell you these little numbers are like the secret code that unlocks your beer's personality. They're not just some brewing technicality; they're the diff

I’ve been meaning to bring up this topic on the blog for a while now. It’s something that I’ve been noticing it happening at most...