I'll have a beer! But which beer?

The market for beer drinkers just got more complicated - and sophisticated - with the introduction of craft beers and ales.

Put bitter and hops and barley and lager together and you have — beer? Right. Then there’s craft beer — and no, that isn’t a Spellcheck mistake for draft beer, which is just lager, only fresher and not bottled, with no variants, no flavours and apparently no sophistication. Take that on the chin, beer drinkers.

Which is why I’m glad I’m not a beer drinker, though that’s no reason not to switch now that, like wine, or single malts, you can sample from a variety of beer flavours and indulge in some high-brow repartee instead of the kind of low-brow conversation beer drinkers usually get up to. For Indian beer, which is a mix of smelly barley malt, rice flakes and glycerine, seems to have had short shrift — at least till now.

For now there are five flavours that you can choose from if you’d like a gourmet beer that can be paired with the appropriate food. Created by brewmasters from the parent TVB Craft Brewing Company in India, along with Australia-based Nail Ale, Dunn and Pemberton brewing companies, Little Devils was launched this month in northern and western Indian markets, with Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi to follow.

TVB honchos David Home and Habeeb Kamaal have invested Rs 15 crore to brew the craft beers, but will spend Rs 50 crore to commission their own brewery in Himachal Pradesh. Distinguished from the mass labels in the market by superior taste and aromas that result in flavours and aromas reminiscent of bananas (it’s true, if you swirl the wheat beer you get a whiff of banana; you can also swirl the Indian pale ale, but not the other beers, showing that beer drinking is going to get more difficult, alas), caramel, coffee, freshly baked cookies and so on.

Priced between Rs 40-50 for each 330 ml bottle, Little Devils come in five flavours: Belgian wheat beer, light in taste and bitterness and therefore loved by women drinkers, served with a head of foam, and with salads; premium lager and strong, with a higher percentage of bitters than in domestic beers, mixing a variety of malts, and best with tandoori; and two ales, golden and Indian pale ale, best with very spicy food or rich desserts. A sixth “white” beer will be introduced soon, but by then, both Home and Kamaal hope they would have had enough converts to turn Indian beer drinkers into a nation of spoilsports — if it ain’t craft, it ain’t beer!