With more than 2,500 craft breweries in America, it’s the best time in the country’s history to be a beer drinker. It’s also the most confusing. Each month, dozens of new breweries join the hoppy fray, devising bitter IPAs, rustic saisons, inky oyster stouts, sour wild ales—just about anything brewers can dream of, they can cook up in a brew kettle.

To help clear confusion and arm drinkers with the tools they need to understand, and confidently order, just about any available brew, I penned The Complete Beer Course (Sterling Epicure, 2013). Your first lesson is to learn these 20 beer terms, which will take you from expert to novice in a snap.

Written by Joshua M. Bernstein (@JoshMBernstein)