Ever wonder what separates a Stout from an Imperial Stout? Or what really is the difference between an English-style India Pale Ale and an American-style India Pale Ale? Or why isn't there an Indian-style India Pale Ale? Well, there's a handy guide that can help answer two of those three questions for you, and it's available for free on the world wide web. (The answer to the third question: Irony's sake.)

Back on February 14th, the Brewers Association released their annual Valentine's Day gift for beer lovers everywhere: the 2009 Beer Style Guidelines list. For those of you who prefer to be force-fed their hyperlinks, you can download the PDF file here.

I'm usually not big into guessing games, but how many different beer styles do you think the Brewers Association defines? Even avid beer enthusiasts might be surprised as the list continues to grow, but the casual drinker might want to add this one into their permanent trivia rotation: An easy way to impress your friends during your next happy hour. The answer after the jump... (I know, I feel guilty about forcing you to click through, too.)

Earlier this week, the Brewers Association released their 2008 Craft Beer Sales Numbers. The report is simultaneously exciting and humbling, and makes an extremely interesting read for casual drinkers, or those who are seeing more unique brews on their local store shelves but don't quite know what to make of it.

America is currently home to 1,527 breweries. (Almost makes you worried that one might be sneaking up behind you right now...) The Brewers Association deems 1,483 of those "craft breweries" -- consisting of large craft breweries, microbreweries and brewpubs. For those not great at math, that leaves 44 "non-craft" brewers. Further number-crunching shows us that over 97% of companies making beer are making craft beer. But what you need to keep in perspective is that 97% are only making 4% off all the beer consumed in the US. Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors and the like are still churning out the vast majority of America's suds.

So it's easy to see why, despite all the recent notoriety, craft brewers still have an us against the world mentality (with global conglomerates like InBev helping to up the ante). But despite this, for the seventh year in a row, the stats show all the craft brew hype hasn't just been a big public relations trick. Once again, craft brewers saw an increase in their share of the U.S. beer market, jumping a quarter of a percentage point. That might not seem like a lot, but it's significant: While non-craft beer saw a minimal 0.6% in growth last year, and imports dropped off 3%, craft beer saw a 5.8% growth rate. The top 10 beer brands all saw decreases in sales while craft beers staked out small but significant territory.

In other good news for beer lovers, the Brewers Association points out that a 2008 Gallup poll shows beer has once again taken a double digit lead over wine as America's alcoholic beverage of choice. One can surmise part of that increase may be a result of craft beers raising the profile of beer as an upscale beverage.

You can check out all the statistics for yourself here. Or true diehards and industry-types can head to the Craft Brewers Conference in Boston where a more extensive report will be released on April 22nd.

I'd like to think that in some small way beer geeks like my friends and I are to blame for this year's uptick in craft beer sales.

But I know that's a lie, since we usually stick to a few brands, Dogfish Head, Stone Brewing Co., Rogue, Harpoon, Heavyweight, etc. Aw heck, basically we drink any U.S. craft beer that's good, and available, on the East Coast. Of course, we've also been known to sample some fine non-U.S. brews, including Belgian Trappist ales.

Regardless of my crew's drinking habits the numbers speak for themselves. U.S. sales of craft beer grew 11 percent in the first half of this year compared with 2005, according to the Brewers Association.

Paul Gatza, a director of the group's professional division, says consumption "appears to be accelerating." Rest assured my friends and I will continue to do our parts to help aid this noble cause.

Last Friday, the winners of the 2006 Brewers Association World Beer Cup (aka "the most prestigious beer competition in the world") were announced in Seattle. This year's event was the largest on record, with over 2,000 entries coming in from almost 60 different countries. Beers were judged in 85 different categories, from "non-alcoholic malt tonic" to "fruit and vegetable beer" to "barley wine-style ale." A complete list of winners is available here.