Who was Michael Jackson?

He helped to start the craft beer revolution, and like the Carl Linnaeus of beer, journalist and author Michael Jackson coined the word 'beer style', and defined the aromas and flavors of the styles.

"My name is Michael Jackson, and I'm on a world tour," the short, portly, bearded Yorkshireman used to tell his audiences. "But I don't dance, I don't wear one white glove and I don't drink Pepsi." Like his American namesake, however, Michael Jackson was a global superstar – at least in the world of beer, where, ten years after his death in August 2007, he is still regarded as probably the most influential beer writer ever. Jackson's books and articles opened up drinkers and brewers both in his native Britain and across the Atlantic to possibilities far beyond mass-produced lagers and ales. Perhaps most importantly, he was the person who coined the term "beer style", categorising beers in a way that, 40 years on from when Jackson started using "style" as an easy-to-understand way of labelling and describing different beers, is now ubiquitous, but was revolutionary at the time.