Our famous beer began with a trip across Europe, when Goose Island founder (and unabashed beer lover) John Hall took a tour across the continent. Pint by pint, he savored the styles and selections of brews in every region, and thought to himself, “America deserves some damn fine beer like this, too.”

This beer has been aged in oak with applewood chips at our Chicago Brewery for a distinctive character and depth of flavour Jankoski continued: “Brewing locally gives a great freshness advantage, and with our ability to be directly and constantly involved with the brewing process we see this as the most ideal way to bring our beer to Australia. We have been involved every step of the way, giving direction on the brewing process and visiting the brewery to personally taste the beer for every trial.” In addition to a reshuffle of its top ten selling pub pours, the UK’s craft beer sector has seen brands transform under the strain of the Covid-19 pandemic. IPA is billed as an easy-drinking, any-time-of-day beer that will work a treat with BBQ food, whether that’s a juicy beef burger or a plant-based patty. The more tropical styles often lend themselves to spicy curries, too. How we testCraft brewing wasn’t widely known at the time, but upon return from his European sojourn, John set out to change all that. He settled down in his hometown of Chicago—a city perfect for craft beer, with rapidly evolving tastes and the largest system of fresh water on the planet. And then he got to brewing. I was never really into the whole ale thing, and just drank the usual lager you’d find in most bars or shops. But then I kind of wanted to experiment a bit. Designed for an all-day “session”, this class of beer won’t leave you with the same level of hangover as drinking something a whole lot stronger, leaving you clear headed enough for that early morning training session (or that’s the idea anyway). And because low-alcohol beer tends to have fewer calories, it can also help to reduce your calorie intake. For the purposes of this test, we’ve tried beers ranging from as low as 0.3% ABV (which is classed as non-alcoholic), through to 5% (which is slightly pushing the boundaries of what a session IPA truly is, but is still pretty light in the grand scheme of things). What does session IPA taste like? Straight off when I poured this the head was pretty big. It’s frothy, and it’s one you really have to pour slower unless you want a lot of foam at the top.

Jared Jankoski, Goose Island’s Brewmaster, said: “Goose Island Midway IPA is a lighter bodied dry hopped beer that we would call a ‘session IPA’ in the US. It has a pleasant balancing malt character, low to moderate bitterness and a unique, bright tropical hop aroma derived primarily from Mosaic hops. The result is very refreshing and enjoyable beer with a great hop aroma.”I had the first one and thought it was pretty nice, but when I went for another I found it quite weak. This is probably due to the fact that the first one I drank was after another beer, whereas when I tried it for the 2nd time it was my first drink.