By Jeff Evans, chair of The International Beer Challenge

Anspach & Hobday The Pineapple Gose, 4.2%
Twenty years ago hardly anybody had heard of gose. These days this exhumed eastern German style is often found in craft beer bars. Essentially, gose is a wheat beer that shares certain characteristics with other types of wheat beer. On the one hand, it is sour like a Berliner weissbier; on the other it is seasoned with fruits or spices like a Belgian witbier. It also includes a light dosing of salt. Complex doesn’t even begin to explain it. This release from London brewer Anspach & Hobday is a very pleasant take on the style. There’s plenty of pineapple character throughout, without the fruit becoming overbearing, and it’s the same with the sourness, which is refreshingly tart and gently mouth puckering but not too aggressive. And the salt? Well, that is just nicely expressed in subtle undertones, rather than swamping the palate.

Duration Cuttin’ Grass, 4.5%

This beer from Norfolk’s Duration Brewery is described as an ‘Italian pilsner’. We’re not talking about a clone of Peroni or Moretti here: what this beer does is to echo the work of Italian craft brewers, in particular Agostino Arioli of Birrifi cio Italiano who, nearly 30 years ago, developed a beer called Tipopils which took pilsner off in a new direction. For Arioli, the key was the use of dry hopping – not just throwing quality German noble hops into the copper but also adding them after the boil to provide a more assertive aromatic bitterness. Duration has done the same here – and very successfully – utilising Saphir and Mittelfrüh hops to bring out floral and zesty lemon/ orange notes in the aroma and taste but leaving the drinker with a dry, increasingly bitter finish that calls them back for more.

Hook Norton Merula Stout, 4.2%
I need to declare a prejudice: I am not a fan of nitro stouts. After the impressive initial pour that brings up a thick, creamy head, I find them rather dull, as there’s little life left beneath the foam. But other people do like them and there’s clearly a market for beers like this, so I understand why Oxfordshire’s Hook Norton brewery has headed that way. Putting aside my criticisms of texture and carbonation, this is, at heart, an impressive beer. It’s based on a 19th-century recipe and the flavours are wonderful – bitter treacle toffee, dark chocolate and a light smokiness. The nitro treatment and inclusion of oats adds to the creaminess in the taste before a dry finish loaded with coffee-like roasted grains, which add to the bitterness. If I had to drink a nitro stout, this would definitely be one. It’s head and shoulders above some of the market leaders.

Indie Rabble Indie Pils, 4.2%

Indie Pils is a new core offering from Indie Rabble, a brewery established a couple of years ago in a railway arch beneath Windsor station. The brewers have high hopes for this beer, intending it to be “a simple, well-executed lager, free of fault, that could stand up against any macro offer but also against some of the craft lager specialists”. As this is an easy drinking, but still feisty, take on the European pils style, they should do well. The beer pours a bright golden colour and offers a welcoming combination of sweet pale malt and noble, herbal hops in the aroma. It’s rather dry on the palate, with peppery, bitter herb notes from the hops overshadowing the light cereal sweetness and there’s a light floral accent too. The finish is then very dry and bitter with a strong, peppery hop bite.