What makes a great IPA? You've got to get the water right for starters, either by getting incredibly lucky with your local geology or by adding the required mineral balance.  Then there's the barley - where's it grown?  What's the soil like?  Did we have a wet summer?

Add the roasting, the yeast, the fermentation temperature and a myriad of other variables, and suddenly it's all a bit complicated.

There are lots of things you shouldn't really do to a cask ale.  Spending seven weeks on a boat, being rolled around on the sea and subjected to swings in temperature are just a few of them, we broke pretty much every rule in the book.  But to our pleasant surprise and all-round relief, the beers coped admirably with everything we threw at them.

The three qualifying rounds, one each for our Indie, Punk and Alternative categories, were hotly contested, but in the end there were just four places available in the Grand Final at Bannermans.  The three winners from the earlier round (The Darren Hendrie Band, Skeletons and We Came From The North) were joined by The Alibis as the judge's favourite wildcard entry.

The Great Edinburgh Beer Experiment sails on!  Or not, as the case may be...

Our three casks of experimental IPA have now been on board the Scottish Fisheries Museum's lovingly restored Reaper (left) for just over a month.  They've been gently rocked (and more violently pitched on a couple of occasions), subjected to swings in temperature (although the Scottish spring has been significally cooler than equatorial waters) and generally exposed to all the hazards of life