How to become a beer drinker

It may come as a surprise to some, but there's more to beer than the generic ones that come out of bottles and are chugged down with a view to getting as drunk as possible in the shortest amount of time.

There is a culture to beer, almost as complicated as that of wine (there's a little less of the swirling and sniffing""although, to be perfectly honest, this wouldn't be completely out of place).

First, to begin the crash course, a few definitions. Beer: a yeast-fermented beverage brewed from malt and flavored with hops. (Hops being the dried flowers of a vine called the 'hop'. They contain a bitter oil that gives beer its characteristic taste.)

Ale: beer other than lager, stout or porter. Lager: a light, effervescent beer (think probably 99 per cent of every beer you've ever drunk); stout: a strong, dark beer made with roasted malt or barley (Guinness being the perfect example), and porter: a dark brown bitter beer brewed from malt partly charred or browned; lighter and slightly more bitter than stout.

So (to fill the definitions out a little), ale is the generic term used for all top-fermented beers (a style invented by English brewers); both porter and stout are kinds of ale; porters are always dark, sometimes smell of coffee and usually have a high alcohol content.

Stout is popular mostly in Ireland and more surprisingly, the West Indies. There is fruit-flavoured beer (famous in Belgium) "" don't dismiss these as the beer equivalent of Bacardi Breezers; they're surprisingly good.

So, carrying forth the wine analogy, here's some beer etiquette (there're two words you never thought you'd hear together).

For instance, drinking beer out of a glass is very important, so that you can enjoy its colour and aroma, so try not to stick to the canned goods all the time.

According to Rishabh Sharma, the bar manager of Ricks, Taj Mansingh, New Delhi, "The glass should be chilled, and so should the beer... at approximately four degrees."

Beer goes with almost any kind of spicy food, which is why it should be much bigger than it is in India. We know that beer is a staple with Goan food, but try it also with spicy curries, and South East Asian food "" Sharma suggests anything tangy and juicy, such as chicken satays or mutton balls.

Also, try and branch out "" maybe if we're all a bit more open to the idea, we could bring in more non-lager beers into India.

Karan Bilimoria, the CEO of Cobra Beer, says, on the launch of the UK's number one curry beer in India: "India is the smallest beer market in the world; we've even been overtaken by China. And lager is definitely the most popular beer in the world; in 1960, only 1 per cent of beer in the UK was lager; 99 per cent was ale. Today, two-thirds of all beer drunk in the UK is lager. Once beer becomes slightly more popular here (and for that we need the government to jump on board; we need more availability, affordability and a level playing field), I'm sure all kinds of beer will come into the market."

Sharma agrees: "Lager is definitely the easiest kind of beer to drink. Since we're a relatively young beer-drinking nation, and most of what we get here is lager, we've become stuck in our ways. But in a couple of years, when the Indian consumer becomes a little bit more beer savvy, I'm sure the Guinnesses will make their way out here."

And now that summer's coming up, it's time to bring out the shandies, possibly the only kind of beer cocktail that seems to be acceptable, even among beer aficionados.

Last point: please don't ask for calorie-free beer. Resign yourself to the fact that beer has calories. If you want fewer calories, drink less beer.