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This beer trivia quiz has 148 free questions with answers and starts with the fundamentals every drinker should know: the four ingredients, mashing and wort, ale versus lager yeast, the 1516 Reinheitsgebot and where Pilsner comes from. It then moves into craft beer trivia: New Albion and Anchor, the 1978 law that legalised homebrewing, Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams, Dogfish Head, Fat Tire, Arrogant Bastard, the birth of the hazy IPA and the billion-dollar buyouts of the 2010s. Easy questions suit a pub round or brewery tour; the harder ones on definitions, dates and founders will test homebrewers and beer geeks. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
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Q 01What are the four basic ingredients of beer?
Water, Barley, Hops, Yeast
Water, Barley, Hops, Yeast: water makes up most of the drink, and its minerals shaped regional styles, soft Bohemian water suiting pale lager and Burton's gypsum-rich water bitter pale ale.
Q 02Which ancient civilisation left some of the earliest beer-brewing records, including a hymn to Ninkasi?
Sumerians
Sumerians: the Hymn to Ninkasi, written around 1800 BC, doubles as a brewing recipe, and earlier Sumerian tablets already record many distinct barley and emmer beers; brewing there was largely women's work.
Q 03The German Beer Purity Law, or Reinheitsgebot, was originally enacted in 1516 in which German region?
Bavaria
The Reinheitsgebot, a famous regulation limiting beer ingredients, was first proclaimed in Bavaria in 1516 by Duke Wilhelm IV.
Q 04What type of yeast is typically used for brewing lagers and ferments at colder temperatures, usually settling at the bottom of the fermenter?
Saccharomyces pastorianus
Lagers are brewed using Saccharomyces pastorianus (lager yeast), which is a bottom-fermenting yeast that works at cooler temperatures, resulting in a cleaner, crisper flavor profile.
Q 05In brewing, what is the sugary liquid drained from the mash tun called, before it is boiled with hops and fermented?
Wort
Wort is 'sweet' until the hops go in and 'bitter' afterwards; grist is the milled grain that goes into the tun, and trub is the sludge left in the kettle.
Q 06Beer in clear or green bottles turns 'skunky' when exposed to what?
Light
Light: ultraviolet and blue light break down hop iso-alpha acids into 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol, a sulfur compound closely related to those in skunk spray; brown glass blocks most of it.
Q 07What brewing process steeps grain, lets it germinate, then dries it to convert starches to fermentable sugars?
Malting
Malting is the process where cereal grains, typically barley, are steeped in water, allowed to germinate, and then kiln-dried. This activates enzymes that convert the grain's starches into the fermentable sugars needed for brewing.
Q 08Which beer ingredient contributes bitterness and aroma and acts as a natural preservative?
Hops
Hops, the cone-shaped flowers of Humulus lupulus, add bitterness and aroma, and their alpha acids inhibit spoilage bacteria; before hops spread, brewers bittered beer with herb mixtures called gruit.
Q 09The banana and clove notes in a Bavarian Hefeweizen come mainly from which ingredient?
The yeast strain
The yeast strain: clove-like 4-vinyl guaiacol and banana-like isoamyl acetate are by-products of the Bavarian weizen yeast's fermentation, not of the wheat malt, hops or water.
Q 10Top-fermented ales ferment in which temperature range?
15 to 25 °C
15 to 25 °C: ale yeast works at these warmer temperatures and throws off fruity esters of apple, pear or banana; lager yeast ferments colder, around 7 to 13 °C, for a cleaner beer.
Q 11Which three ingredients did the 1516 Reinheitsgebot, the German Beer Purity Law, allow?
Water, Barley, Hops
Water, barley and hops: yeast went unmentioned because its role was not yet understood, so brewers reused sediment from the last batch, and wheat was excluded partly to reserve it for bakers.
Q 12Which of these is NOT one of the four classic European 'noble' hop varieties?
Cascade
The classic four are Hallertau, Tettnanger, Spalt, and Saaz, all central European. Cascade was bred in Oregon and released in 1972; its grapefruit character became the signature of American pale ales.
Q 13On beer writer Michael Jackson's five-level serving scale, pale lagers get the coldest rating, 'well chilled', at about what temperature?
Q 21Under the Brewers Association's definition, an American craft brewer produces at most how many barrels a year?
6 million
6 million barrels a year is the Brewers Association cap, raised from 2 million in 2010; a craft brewer must also be at least 75% owned by a craft brewer, and 'microbrewery' meant under 15,000 barrels.
Q 22Which 1976 Sonoma brewery served as the blueprint for America's small-scale craft breweries?
New Albion
New Albion, founded in Sonoma by Jack McAuliffe in 1976, closed in 1982, but its hand-built small-batch plant inspired Sierra Nevada's Ken Grossman and a generation of American microbrewers.
Q 23IPA originated in Britain as a strongly hopped pale ale brewed to survive the voyage to where?
India
7 °C (45 °F)
7 °C (45 °F) is 'well chilled' on a scale that climbs to room temperature, 15.5 °C, for barley wine and strong Trappist ales; below about 10 °C chilling starts to blunt the palate.
Q 14What is the process of steeping milled malt in hot water so enzymes convert starches to sugars called?
Mashing
Mashing: brewers call the water 'liquor' and the milled grain 'grist', and the vessel is the mash tun; sparging then rinses the spent grain to recover the last of the sugars.
Q 15Which Bavarian brewer produced the first batch of Pilsner Urquell on 5 October 1842?
Josef Groll
Groll's golden, clear lager was a sensation in an era of murky brown beer, and 'Pilsner Bier' was registered as a brand name in 1859. Sedlmayr and Dreher pioneered Munich and Vienna lagers instead.
Q 16Under BJCP style guidelines, a Double IPA's alcohol by volume starts at about what level?
7.5%
7.5% is the BJCP floor for Double IPA, with the range running to 10%; Vinnie Cilurzo is credited with inventing the style at Blind Pig Brewery in Temecula in 1994 and later brewed Pliny the Elder.
Q 17How much beer did workers on the Great Pyramids at Giza get as a daily ration?
Four to five liters
Four to five liters a day: the thick, low-alcohol brew was as much food as drink, made from lightly baked loaves of dough crumbled into water and left to ferment.
Q 18Which top-fermenting yeast species is commonly known as 'ale yeast'?
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Saccharomyces cerevisiae clumps and rises to the surface as it works, which is why brewers once skimmed it off the top to seed the next batch.
Q 19A German Weizenbier that has been filtered clear of the sediment that normally clouds it is sold as what?
Kristallweizen
Kristallweizen means 'crystal wheat': it is filtered to remove the yeast and wheat proteins that cloud a Hefeweizen, the unfiltered version.
Q 20What do brewers call the corn, rice and other grains used alongside malted barley?
Adjuncts
Adjuncts: unmalted grains such as corn and rice, used as flakes, grits, flour or syrups; rice gives some American lagers their light body, and syrups go straight into the kettle.
George Hodgson's Bow Brewery near the East India Docks was among the first exporters, helped by an 18-month credit line.
Q 24Sierra Nevada Brewing was founded in 1980 by two homebrewers in which California city?
Chico
Chico: Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi opened the brewery there in 1980, naming it for the mountains Grossman loved hiking; its Cascade-hopped Pale Ale became America's best-selling pale ale.
Q 25Which heir to an appliance fortune bought San Francisco's failing Anchor Brewing in 1965?
Fritz Maytag
Fritz Maytag, of the washing-machine family, paid a few thousand dollars for 51% of Anchor in 1965 and rebuilt it; Sapporo bought the brewery for $85 million in 2017 and closed it in 2023.
Q 26Which US president signed the 1978 bill legalising homebrewing?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter signed H.R. 1337 in October 1978, exempting home-brewed beer from federal excise tax from February 1979; within months Charlie Papazian founded the American Homebrewers Association.
Q 27Which company, founded by Jim Koch in 1984, brews Samuel Adams?
Boston Beer
Boston Beer Company, founded by Jim Koch in 1984, brewed its first Samuel Adams Boston Lager from a 19th-century recipe of Koch's great-great-grandfather Louis Koch, a Cincinnati brewer.
Q 28Dogfish Head's 60 Minute IPA takes its name from what?
The time hops are added during the boil
The time hops are added during the boil: 60 Minute IPA is 'continually hopped' for a full hour; the Milton, Delaware brewery also makes 90 Minute and 120 Minute versions and merged with Boston Beer in 2019.
Q 29Fat Tire, a Fort Collins brewery's flagship ale, is named after a co-founder's brewery bike trip through which country?
Belgium
Belgium: co-founder Jeff Lebesch toured Belgian breweries by fat-tired mountain bike in 1989 and came home to found New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins in 1991, naming its flagship amber ale after the trip.
Q 30Which beer, launched in 1997, carries the label taunt 'You're not worthy'?
Arrogant Bastard Ale
Arrogant Bastard Ale, Stone Brewing's 1997 strong ale, told drinkers 'You're not worthy' on its label; Stone had opened in San Marcos, north of San Diego, in 1996.