Here’s a trick question. What is the best place in the world right now to drink beer, based on range of styles available, number of brands available, and, most important, taste?

Germany? No.

Great Britain? No.

Belgium, where all those monks make beer? Good guess, but wrong again.

It’s right here in the good ole U.S.A.

“Impossible!” cry certain kinds of people, mostly European (or worse, Australian or Canadian) beer snobs oblivious to the beer revolution that has taken place in America over the last quarter century. Since the early 1980s, when we were down to three main national brands (Bud, Miller, and Coors) and a few dozen regional beer makers, beer has made a remarkable comeback.

This is mostly thanks to “craft beer” makers operating small-production brewpubs or microbreweries, who started brewing beer for palates that had grown weary of the homogenized stuff that big beer makers were turning out. Today, 1,436 breweries (including brewpubs) populate the American beerscape, producing an astonishing array of beer styles and choices.

True, many of these breweries have only local or regional distribution. But beers from a growing number of the top 50 craft brewers—Boston Beer Co. (maker of Sam Adams) and Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. among them—are available nationally or pan-regionally. And anyone really serious about beer could travel the length and breadth of America for a year and still not make much of a dent in the nation’s continually growing beer list. (I know, because I tried this.) Just do some simple math. Let’s say that each of the 1,436 breweries (or brewpubs) offers an average of six beers (and I think that’s conservative). That’s edging up toward 9,000 beers to choose from.

So, you’re a Bud drinker (or a repentant European beer snob) shocked by these revelations? Don’t be alarmed. You can join the enlightened beer conversation, and the fun, simply by learning a few new-beer fundamentals and asking some intelligent questions. You might even become a “beer geek,” as craft-beer aficionados self-deprecatingly refer to themselves.

First thing to know: Beer is made using a simple recipe of water, malt (usually kilned barley), yeast, and hops. But the great river of beer divides into two streams: lager and ale.

Bud is lager. So is Coors, so is Miller, so is Heineken, so is Corona.

Guinness is ale. So is Bass. So is Sam Adams Honey Porter and Sierra Nevada.

What’s the difference between lager and ale? And what about pilsner?
On the flavor front, consider this music analogy: Lager is like smooth jazz and Top 40 and, now and then, great classical music; ale is funk, salsa, even heavy metal. Pilsner is simply a style of lager originating in the Pilsen area of the Czech Republic.

As for where the flavor originates, it basically comes down to yeast.

Ale is the world’s original beer, brewed by pharaoh and Pilgrim alike. It’s the beer of Shakespeare and the British pub; the beer beloved by Ben Franklin. It’s also the favorite style of modern American craft brewers. The very first ale was no doubt brewed accidentally in some lost millennium when free-ranging yeast “spoiled” a batch of grain that some hunter-gatherer had left soaking in water. It wouldn’t have tasted like much but, ah, the buzz.

Ale yeast’s main virtue is that it ferments at room temperature—so, ale can be made almost anyplace. The yeast does its work at the top of fermentation tanks, gobbling up sugars and throwing off byproducts, notably alcohol but also some earthy, fruity compounds. It is less ravenous than lager yeast, and leaves behind more fermentable sugars. Thus, ales can taste quite complex—too complex for some palates.

Lager, meanwhile, didn’t commercially exist until the early 1840s, but now it rules the world. About 95 percent of all beer consumed on earth is lager.

What explains this?
Again, the yeast. Though its origins are murky, lager yeast, one theory holds, is a mutation of wine yeast. It was discovered accidentally (again) by German brewers tired of their ales souring in the summer heat. These brewers started storing their ales in caves, where at some point a batch got fermented by mutated yeast and produced a beer that was lighter, crisper, and drier. Modern chemistry would prove that this is because lager yeast leaves fewer byproducts in the beer. Lager yeast has one major drawback, however. It only ferments at cold temperatures—meaning, until mechanical refrigeration, it could only be made in caves or cellars.

Lager was an instant success in Europe. Not only was it crisp and refreshing, but owing to the development of pale malt in the 19th century, it was golden and clear, unlike dark, cloudy ales. Lager was introduced to these shores very shortly afterward, by immigrant brewers with names like Anheuser, Busch, Miller, Coors, and Pabst, and basically chased ale from the landscape—until the craft brew revolution of the 1980s. (Even today, ale is a fading style in Britain and only really thrives in Belgium, thanks to those monks. Germany and the rest of Northern Europe are lager dominions.)

Is the lager made by early German brewers the same as the lager made today?
Not quite. Bud, Miller, and Coors make a style now known as American light lager.

The main distinction between American light and original American lager (and traditional European lager) is the use of so-called adjuncts—mainly corn or rice—as a replacement for or supplement to barley malt, which is expensive. The move away from pure barley malt may have begun as a response to shortages at various times. But the beer—lighter in color and taste—caught on, and the big brewers have stuck with adjunct formulas.

So Bud and its ilk are bad?
Bud’s not my favorite, but I’ve drunk many a pleasurable one on a hot day at the beach or ballpark. These beers are brewed to very high standards; the issue is their recipes. The great virtue—and weakness—of this style is that it’s inoffensive to most palates. Add talking-frog or hot-bar-chick advertising campaigns and you can sell a lot of it. Indeed, half of all beer sold in America is made by Anheuser-Busch; Miller and Coors account for another 25 percent.

So beer geeks hate lager?
Not exactly, but many disparage American light lagers as watered down, homogenized versions of the robust beers that immigrant German brewers brought here. A growing number of craft brewers are making old-style lagers with lots of barley malt and hops, hewing to the traditional European formulas. (Smuttynose Portsmouth Lager is one tasty example.) And if you want to impress a beer geek, ask him or her to recommend a black lager. It’s really just a lager made with dark-roasted barley malt.

What if don’t like ale? I find Guinness too thick and Bass too bitter.
I don’t like all ales, either, but ale covers such a wide spectrum of styles and flavors that if you like beer at all, you’ll eventually find something to drink. Pale ale, a style popularized by Sierra Nevada, has some lager-like qualities: It’s golden in color and crisp in flavor. So does Kölsch, though you’ll have to look harder to find it, since not many craft brewers make it. If you come across a Kölsch called Hollywood Blonde, grab it—it’s incredibly smooth.

How can I sound beer savvy to a bunch of beer geeks?
Ask, “Are you a hops fan or a malt fan?”

These are the two major camps in the ale-drinking world: imbibers of lighter-colored and lighter-bodied ales, like pale ale and India pale ale (I.P.A.), which traditionally have a moderate to high hops content; and stouts, the dark ales, of which Guinness is the best-known example.

Great. But what are hops and why are stouts dark?
Hops are the flower cones of a vine related to the nettle and the marijuana plant. They give beer a mildly bitter bite and floral overtones. Stouts (and black lagers) contain barley malt that was roasted differently—the darker the malt, the darker the beer.

How do I know if I’ve become a beer geek?
When you pick up a bottle of India pale ale and are annoyed if the I.B.U. rating isn’t on the bottle. (If you have to ask what an I.B.U. is, you aren’t a beer geek yet.)