It's time to be honest about styles

Given the number of BAs who insist that if it tastes hoppy to them it's an IPA regardless of what the brewer calls it, we should begin an education program at home.

 

Really? Which beers do they call IPA that aren't and how did they change the recipes (or which non-IPA recipes are they using) so they aren't IPAs?

So I guess you've not seen how many BAs call a Troeg's Nugget Nectar an IPA?

 

By your logic a rattlesnake and a chicken should both have the same name because the taste is pretty similar when stewed and tender.

It was the aficionados who began the obfuscation by calling the beer "Black IPA" and the brewers followed suit so they could sell their beer to folks like the BAs who want all hoppy beers to be called IPA.

 

I like when breweries name their beers such as, Lagunitas Sucks, Sierra Nevada Celebration, or Ruination. It gives it a unique feeling and you have to almost look up the style if not on the bottle. Instead of just Lagunitas IPA, Stone IPA, Odell's IPA. But I guess every brewery has to make their original first basic beer styles and name them as such.

 

Being an aficionado, I affectionately refer to the beers I like with pet names that I give them in private.

Seriously, although there is a lot of blurring between styles etc, I'd rather have the existng naming convention than styles such as hoppy, sour etc.

There was a similar thread recently (sorry too lazy to find it on iPhone) where sierranevadabill responded with some pretty solid logic as to why breweries do what they do.

 

What!?! Nugget Nectar isn't an IPA!

This is the best example of a misclassification. Clearly the brewer puts it in the Imperial Amber Ale category. But many still call it an IPA. This happens in the music world also. Van Der Graaf Generator's music is on the experimental Jazz/Fusion side. Yet they're still labeled in the "Progressive Rock" genre. I guess people like calling a beer what style they're familiar with. Like a Hoppy Schwarzbier might be under "Session Black IPL". It's not going to go away. I will just go with the flow. What makes me laugh is seeing an "Imperial Session" label.

 

I just LOL'd at the notion of sessionable imperialness as a quality in a brew. Maybe we should officialy rename the english word for oxymoron to aftokratorikisynodo

 

Why isn't Nugget Nectar an IPA?

 

You mean a beer can't really be a black rye kolsch?

 

Based on the number of "Zombie Dust is an IPA" comments on here I don't think Three Floyds got the memo.

IPAs are the big thing now and this country is driven by marketing.

 

Because its brewed as an Amber Ale with additional hopping. It’s basically the big brother of an Amber Ale with additional hops, malt and a bit more variety in the hops used.

 

Back to my soapbox.What we call styles used simply to be names.Pale Ales were brewed predominantly from pale malt for example. When we come to IPA , it's not at all clear what it means because over a couple of hundred years there has been evolution and change. It was initially the beer prepared for India, lower in strength but with more hops and greater attenuation than ordinary pale ales.But as time went on , IPAs began to appear in the domestic market, in fact most 19th century "IPA" never went to India.The domestic version was generally stronger, less hoppy and less attenuated than the export versions.Not all brewers bothered to label these as IPA ; Bass was a major example.IPA and Pale Ale became more or less one and the same with further confusion arising from the fact that customers insisted in calling it Bitter.So there were three names for the same beer yet the Earth continued to rotate on its axis.It didn't really matter at all.
Many bitters are still labelled as IPAs here.That's fully in keeping with the provenance of the style and is very well established.
To my knowledge there is no overarching beer style police or even an authoritative body to say what constitutes a style ; if there was it would be fairly busy as things have never stood still.My grandfather's beers were mild, bitter and porter/stout ; so are mine. But the beers they represent are nothing like the same.

 

You shouldn't be looking at Sierra Nevada then, you should be looking at the Vermont Pub and Brewery, because they are the ones that created the style and first called it a "Black IPA". And it is in fact a style. And there was another name for it, "Cascadian Dark Ale." Thankfully, people decided that was and is a stupid name, so "India Black Ale" became the name officially adopted by the Brewer's Association. Despite the fact that the Brewer's Association adopted India Black Ale, many breweries still use the name Black IPA, either because they don't want to create confusion by changing the name of a beer already in production, or because they think the name better conveys to the consumer what they should expect. So, first, direct your frustration in the right place, not at Sierra Nevada, but instead at Greg Noonan of VPB, the Brewer's Association, and all of the hundreds of brewer's currently making a Black IPA.

When you are done with that, then consider this. The reason a black beer can be a India PALE Ale is this. The "Pale" in pale ale refers as much to the malt bill as it does to the appearance. Inidia Black Ale still uses almost entirely pale malt, be it of the American or European variety. That, is why a black beer can be a variety of an India Pale Ale. An India Black Ale is simply an IPA with a small amount of dark malt added to change the color.

 

The irony here is over in a another thread, Sixpoint's to be exact, you have a bunch of BAs whining and crying that Sixpoint does not list style. Just a name to describe the beer, the IBUs, ABV, and SRM.

In the end it is near impossible to please any enthusiast crowd.

 

Date on that? (Approximate is/should be fine.) Thanks.

 

1888 and it was in Burton on Trent

 

I really doubt the Vermont Pub and Brewery was located in Burton on Trent in those days.

Did the brewery you refer to really call it "black IPA?"