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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.

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

Welcome to the 2013 30 Days of IPA!

OK, it's not officially April yet, but a nice Easter Sunday is too good to waste!  So, slightly ahead of the official "first day" of 30 Days of IPA the Peartree is playing host to a tun of brewers - they've set up at the back of the beer garden, and several different takes on both cask and bottled IPA are flowing, including Deuchars Imperial, a new take on Caledonian's classic, and a very citrusy Rye based IPA.

There's also a collection of Easter Eggs hidden around the garden, with some special prizes attached to a few of them.

Anheuser-Busch (AB), the brewers of the American Budwesier brand amongst others, are being sued in a Philadelphia court over claims they "routinely water down their beers".  The claims come from several ex-employees who allege that water is added at the end of the brewing process to reduce the ABV by between 3 and 8 percent of the claimed levels.

The case is still ongoing, so we won't speculate any further on these specific allegations, but let's have a look at the issue of watering beer down in general:

The world of brewing has a new boy by the name of Bruce Dickinson.  If you've not heard of him before, he's a fairly remarkable chap.  He's written several books including The Adventures of Lord Iffy Boatrace.  He's a national-level fencer who has coached some of the best in Britain.  He's an expert on the phenomena of spontaneous human combustion and he's a qualified Boeing 757 pilot, callsign E

This year's Cask Report is out, and as always there's some interesting reading amongst the plethora of industry facts and figures.  Overall, it's an optimistic and encouraging picture: while we're in the middle of a recession and many high street names have gone out of business, the cask ale market in the UK is experiencing growth, with a 1.6% increase in sales during 2011, and cask ale overtaking nitrokegs for the first time in recent history.

[UPDATED] Think you've got what it takes to make a highly scientific analysis of several different kinds of beer? Fancy a geeky tasting session? In Edinburgh on the evening of the 25th of April?  Get in touch now to book your place!