THE BATTLE OF THE BEERS

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In THE BATTLE OF THE APPLES, honeycrisp apples easily won with granny smith, fuji and golden delicious apples lagging behind next in the poll.

It's now the turn of beer to do battle! Beer is one of world's oldest alcoholic drinks. And according to Max Nelson, the author of The Barbarian's Beverage, beer is the world's third most popular drink behind water and tea.

Generally, beer can be divided into ales and lagers. Top-fermented ales are generally darker and heavier than bottom-fermented lagers. Don't ask me what top- and bottom-fermenting means as it's enough for me to know that there are tops and bottoms in the Beer Drinking, Savouring and Marvelling (BDSM) community.

This poll is only concerned with different types and not different brands of beer.

For my poll, rather than just having one ale category, I've included many different types of ale such as Belgian ale (knockout strong beer), bitter, mild, pale ale, porter and stout. I've also included different types of lager such as pilsner, pale lager, American malt liquor (stronger than the average American lager) and German Bock (a dark lager). However, unlike for ale, I have included lager as a poll option because there are far more different types of lager than ale. Different countries and regions within countries often have their own distinctive lagers. If you walk into a bar in any country and ask for a beer, you're very likely to be served with a lager but their own bottom-fermented lager. Top that!

Also I've excluded alcohol-free beer, craft beer, home-brewed beer, low alcohol beer, organic beer, real ale and wild beer as poll options. Craft beers, which seem to be taking over the beer market with their trendily silly names, are beers that aren't mass-produced but brewed in microbreweries. Real ale, as zealously policed here in Britain by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), is beer brewed by traditional methods. And wild beer is beer brewed with wild yeast. The reason for excluding them as poll options is that all types of beer can be served up as alcohol-free, craft, home-brewed, low alcohol, organic, real and wild.

The last caveat is that, despite their names, I'm excluding ginger beer and root beer as beers but including barley wine as a beer.

I've tried most types of beers. My favourite beers are Belgian ale (in moderation of course), bitter (though drunk more in my younger days than now), India pale ale (aka IPA) and Scotch ale, with pilsner being the best beer I've had - see photo below of my favourite pilsner, the Czech Staropramen beer. I prefer draught beer but at home I'll always drink bottled over canned beer - canned beer reminds me too much of crowded student parties where you had to stash away the cans of beer you brought to the party so others wouldn't find and drink it!

My least favourite beers are barley wine, fruit beer, herb and spiced beer, malt liquor, mild, porter, stout (unless it's a draught Guinness served up in a bar in Ireland) and wheat beer. But American, Australian and British lagers are some of the worst beers I've drunk. Budweiser, Carling, Castlemaine XXXX, Coors, Foster's and Skol lager are just alcoholic, cold beers without any body and taste.

What are your most and least favourite beers?
Have you brewed or do you brew your own beer?
How many beers does it take to get you tipsy and then drunk

I've never brewed my own beer and, to be honest, I've never enjoyed home-brewed beer made by others. Leave it to the experts, I say!

Three beers get me nicely tipsy, and six beers get me drunk. And when I say beers I mean pints of beers, not bottles, cans or steins. I've never been able to take my beer and usually the gentlemen's toilets in a pub ends up with my beer. Perhaps bars and pubs should recycle the urine and turn it back into beer!

Below is a poll where you can anonymously select your most favourite beer. Unfortunately only one pick is allowed in the poll.

But a poll on this site can only have 20 answer options. There was no room for black beer (aka Schwarzbier), blonde ale (aka golden ale), California common beer (aka California steam beer), golden ale (aka summer ale), honey beer, Kölsh, old ale (including Altbier), rye beer (including Roggenbier), Scotch ale, smoked beer, wood-aged beer (aka barrel-aged beer) and vegetable beer. Hopefully I've covered all the popular beers as poll options. I never want 'other' to win as that's a sure sign of a badly designed poll.

I think lager will win this poll hands down, but pale ale and pilsner may come next.

Please see the first comment below to see what has won each battle so far.

Staropramen pilsner beer - the Czechs do good beer:

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