I just found this awesome website with countless gifts for wine lovers. If you know a wine lover, or would like to treat your wine-loving self to a gift, you’ve got to check out TheTipsyGrape.com. I have ordered quite a few items from here and have written some short reviews to help you choose what to buy. There are dozens of items I have not ordered, and I cannot wait to continue shopping here.

Chrome Heart Stopper. This is a beautiful and decorative way to preserve your wine after it has been opened. Although a stopper does not keep it fresh forever, I have used this for over 24 hours and the wine still tasted great afterwards. This stopper is gorgeous and would make a great anniversary or Valentine ’s Day gift.

Private Preserve Spray. I ordered this because I had never heard of it before and thought it would be innovative and fun. To be honest I did not expect it to work. You simply spray the top of an open wine bottle and the inert gasses prevent oxidization, keeping the wine fresh. I’ll admit I was chicken to try this for too long, but I did leave the bottle for about 18 hours and the wine still tasted great afterwards. I am curious to see how long I can keep an open bottle of wine fresh using this product.

Cork Pops Legacy III. This is another item I bought out of curiosity. It works great! This wine opener has a needle that you insert into the cork and then press a button that pressurizes the bottle using inert gasses and the cork simply pops out. I really thought this was too good to be true, but it worked! I was also worried about having to buy too many gas cartridges but each cartridge can open about 60 bottles of wine!

Bottle Bunch Hanging Rack. I spent a while choosing which rack to order. The website has 10 different ones. I opted for this one because I never keep more than six bottles of wine at room temperature and I thought it looked pretty nifty. I thought it would be easier to install, since it hangs from the ceiling, but it took my boyfriend a while to get it up there. Now that it’s hanging I really enjoy it and I have gotten so many compliments on it.

Cork Candles. These are so cute! They look like corks, but they are candles. You put them in the top of an open wine bottle so you don’t need a candlestick and it really looks pretty neat. I would say this is the item I have gotten the most compliments on so far, everyone who has seen them asks where I got them. They’re not super cheap but they’re not a fortune either. They are totally worth the money in my opinion.

These are my favorite items so far, I will continue to try more wine accessories as I shop the site more. For now, I’m waiting on my next shipment. I have some art and clever magnets on the way.

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You may often hear words such as ale, lager, pilsner or bock thrown around, without really knowing what they mean. Even if you are an avid beer drinker, you may only know the names of the beers you like, and not fully understand the different types of beer. Here is a simple guide to the different types of beer as well as some basic facts that every beer drinker should know.

For starters, you should know that beer has four main ingredients: water, hops, malted barley and yeast. The variables that determine the type of beer are what kind of malt and hopes are being used, the amount of malt and hops in the beer, the methods of adding the hops to the beer and the type of yeast being added to it. Specialty beers can have added ingredients such as fruit, sugar or spices.

Most beers are either lagers or ales. Ales taste fuller and more complex than lagers and are brewed using a special kind of yeast that sits on top of the beer at first before sinking to the bottom. In order to brew ale, warm temperatures are desirable. The warm temperature allows the yeast to multiply quickly. There are several popular types of ales, which vary in terms of their hops and malts. Pale ale, Scottish ale, Belgian Strong Dark Ale, Porter, Imperial Stout, English Bitter and Barley wine are all examples of ales.

Lagers are drier in taste and have less alcoholic content than ales. Lagers are also lighter in both color and taste than ales. Lagers need to be brewed in cool temperatures and the yeast collects in the middle before sinking to bottom. Lagers are referred to as bottom fermenting. American Lager, Pilsner, Bock, Oktoberfest, Helles and Dunkel are popular examples of lagers.

Specialty beers can be a version of ale or lager or sometimes a hybrid of the two. What makes it a specialty beer is added ingredients. Fruits or vegetables can be added to ale or lager to make a specialty beer with a specific taste. Although this is fairly new in the United States, Belgians have been adding fruits and vegetables to their beer for centuries. Common fruits to add to beer include raspberries and apricots. Herbs or spices can also be added to any type of beer. Again, this is a fairly new practice in the United States but has been common practice in other countries. Smoked beer is another type of specialty beer. Originally, smoked beer is made by smoking the malt over a wood fire and letting the malt absorb the smoky flavor but home brews are often made using liquid smoke.

Now that you know the basic types of beer you can feel comfortable learning which ones you enjoy. You can also try to brew your own beer and experiment with different recipes for different types of beer. There are more complexities to beer than mentioned in this article, so feel free to do further research.

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