The best craft beers: the best beer and ale revealed

There’s no debating that this is one of the best IPAs around. Jaipur has won over 100 awards worldwide including Gold at the World Beer Awards.

Jaipur tastes great on cask, keg and bottle, and is now available in stunning bright orange cans making it a perfect fridge filler. The blend of six different hop varieties such as Cascade and Centennial give it a big hit of aroma, bitterness and flavour in true American IPA style.

A black IPA is something of an illusion beer but it’s more than just a trick and it’s very unusual to find one in a core range line-up. While it looks like a porter or stout, the beer is heavily hopped to provide the big hit of citrus hoppiness you expect from an IPA.

However, there are no less than seven malts used here for a blend of flavour including bread, caramel along with, importantly, bitter chocolate and coffee. This one is balanced perfectly and has a smooth, creamy texture, too.

New England style IPAs have become hugely popular in the last few years. This is an India Pale Ale but not as you know it.

Unlike Jaipur, it’s thick and hazy thanks to the addition both oats and wheat. The triple dry-hopping treatment means the juicy stone-fruit flavours are not exactly subtle. As the name suggests, you’ll either love or hate it but there’s only one way to find out.

The Bristol-based brewers have created what has quickly become the go-to lager of the craft beer world. A crisp and clean beer that will quench your thirst any time you crack open a can thanks to the expert blend of German pilsner malt and three varieties of hops.

Fun fact: Lost and Grounded's hand-drawn labels make a panoramic scene when you put them all side-by-side.

There are a number of beers challenging for the title of UK’s best pale ale but Deya’s has to be the winner.

Now in new colourful labels but the beer inside remains the same with a slightly hazy appearance and a soft and pillowy body. It’s quaffable with peachy, apricot aromas and tropical fruit flavours but there’s just enough of a bite from the alcohol to keep things in check. A true modern classic.

Now we don’t actually suggest you have this instead of your morning brew, but Broken Dream is a breakfast stout, meaning it has been brewed with oats and coffee.

This is a thick and luxurious beer with a deep and complex flavour. As well as oats, there are six different malts including a smoked variety. There’s also lactose which adds to the body and flavour.

Siren won CAMRA’s Supreme Champion Beer of Britain 2018 for Broken Dream which now comes in 330 and 440ml nitro cans making it extra smooth and creamy.

Nestled in the railway arches in Hackney, Five Points is quietly making some of the best beer in the UK.

Railway Porter provides a huge punch in the face (in a good way) of aroma and flavour with more than just notes of burnt toast, chocolate and coffee. Dark and delightful, yet this beer is still somehow incredibly smooth and drinkable.

You won’t find Bermondsey’s The Kernel posting iceman pours on Instagram or various other cliche craft things. But this seemingly unassuming beer with it’s simple brown paper label is one of the most loved and influential of the last decade.

A beer for any occasion, it’s the benchmark for lower abv beers and is the brewery’s version of cask in a bottle or keg getting second fermentation for additional flavour. The abv varies slightly with each batch, as do the hops that go in but regardless, it’s incredibly flavoursome and full-bodied for such a simple beer.

Refreshingly quaffable and resolutely reliable.

Oregon Trail is Elusive Brewing's flagship beer, named after the educational computer game, complete with charming 8-bit artwork. After winning country gold at the World Beer Awards for best American IPA, it’s one of the UK’s best West Coast IPAs.

Generously hopped with Simcoe, Chinook and Columbus fop varieties, it provides a classic high level of bitterness for the style. This balances out the biscuit and caramel sweetness of the malt. It’s piney and resinous in spades with citrus, grapefruit and tropical aromas and flavour.

Look out for limited edition single, double and triple versions of Oregon Trail including Red IPA and Black IPA siblings.

In a blind taste test, Easy Trail came out on top as the best session IPA, although you’d be equally happy with the ones we tried from the likes of Northern Monk, Rooster’s and Redwillow.

Narrowly pipping it, Easy Trail fits the bill perfectly for the style having been ‘inspired by leisurely walks through rural Scotland’. More than just a suitable abv, it has a balance between a light biscuit malt flavour, a medium level of citrus bitterness and is rounded off with a slightly creamy apricot yoghurt body.

It’s a fridge-filler you’ll want to go grab another of as soon as you take your final sip.

Yes, you read the name of this beer correctly. It is indeed a Berliner Weisse sour with flavours based on the Greek dip.

Originally a beer from defunct brewery Mad Hatter, this sour moved to Orbit with head brewer Paul. It’s made with real yoghurt, cucumber juice, mint (as a sort of dry hop), as well as more typical beer ingredients. And it tastes exactly like its namesake.

Tart and zingy without being lip-smackingly sour, it’s clean and refreshing on a hot day. If it sounds a bit nuts, it sort of is but it works and goes well, unsurprisingly, with Greek food.

One of the undisputed best pale ales in the UK, Sonoma from Manchester’s Track Brewing certainly fits the bill as a ‘fridge filler’. It's a beer you always want to have in stock. And at 3.8% you won’t need to stop at one can or pint.

It’s super easy to drink. A crate with friends whether you’re camping or watching sports will go down tremendously well without thinking about the alcohol level. However, take some time and this naturally hazy pale is complex with all kinds of flavours coming from a trio of hops - Mosaic, Centennial and Citra - providing layers of tropical fruit and citrus with balanced bitterness.

A pint on cask at the brewery’s taproom overlooking the tanks is a must.

We’ve had to wait a few years for it but London Black has finally arrived in cans. Anspach & Hobday’s nitro Porter has taken the UK by storm, solidifying itself as the independent alternative to Guinness.

It's inspired by the brewery’s traditional 6.7% abv London Porter. But London Black is more sessionable at 4.4%. With a widget in the can, the tiny nitro bubbles cascade beautifully resulting in a thick, creamy and inviting tan head and the character is bold with coffee and chocolate as the predominant flavours.

Moreish and comforting, it’s a hug in beer form.

Edinburgh’s Vault City is one of a handful of specialist sour breweries and has quickly gained traction for all manner of fun, bonkers and brilliant beers. Most are one-offs but Triple Fruited Mango is brewed all year round.

The recipe has been tweaked to a more sessionable 4.8% abv down from 6.2% but it’s still jam-packed with Alphonso mango juiciness with a thick approaching-smoothie-like body. It’s in the middle of Vault’s new 1 to 5 sour scale so it’s certainly tart but won’t blow your head off either, making it a great gateway beer to the world of sours.

No decent craft beer list is without a Belgian beer and Duvel is a true classic. There are only four places in the UK you can get it on draught but you’ll find it tastes just as good, if not better, from a bottle where it undergoes secondary fermentation.

It’s a strong blonde ale with a fruity flavour and distinctive hop profile. If you like regular Duvel, make sure to check out the Citra Triple Hop version for a modern twist.

You can think of this as a 'pudding beer' but you don't have to have it after dinner. It's silky smooth, chocolatey and moreish with a nice hit of vanilla.

It’s called a milk stout due to the addition of lactose sugar. This gives it a sweet and think texture akin to a milkshake. Well-balanced ingredients make it sweet without being sickly and thick without being cloying. The perfect milk stout.

Lambic is not a style for everyone but if you enjoy the sour end of the beer scale then this is a classic.

The style is Belgian and undergoes spontaneous fermentation from wild yeast. A Gueze is made from blending young and old batches together. The sourness here is mellow followed by a long dry finish, giving it a champagne-like quality.

Drinking this beer is considerably more enjoyable than trying to pronounce it. If it seems daunting, try the kriek (cherry) version first.