It's time to be honest about styles

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/430/97797/ Possibly the worst purchase I've ever made, tastes akin to natty ice and is twice the price. Used to be called kentucky light but they've seemed to trick first timers into thinking this is a kolsch.

 

Hey, I just cut and paste what is written by the bro's. Don't fault me for the wrong information.

 

My first sip of Helles in Munich.

 

Barley malt and water

Everything else is either up to interpretation, or otherwise optional.

 

The more beer styles the better I say-
Never one to nitpick, I don't mind at all that an Imperial Porter is really a Stout.

 

I saw a Texas brewery had released an "Indian Black Lager" at a liquor store today What the hell is that? A hoppy schwarz, the dreaded BIPA with a lager yeast, something completely different? I have no idea. It means absolutely nothing. I really wish breweries would stop using "India/n" for something hoppy when it means nothing. Though I know plenty of people that will only buy a beer with that word...so I guess they know how to market.

 

Works for me. They can't put it on a sign if it isn't true.

 

I'm right with the OP on all of this , I've thought for years we make restaurants call cheeseburgers something else because every place I eat they taste different and I always feel ripped off when one doesn't taste just like the other...............

 

And the rest of the world? The Germans have a legal classification of "Obergäriges Lagerbier." Literally top fermented lagers.As already mentioned by other posters in this thread Germans do not use the word "ale" to describe their top fermented beers.
The reason is pretty obvious.German and British brewing went their separate ways and had little in common.Their top fermented beers were completely different from British brewed ones so why use the same name? They had their own words thank you very much.
Even in Canada;

My own opinion FWIW is that some years ago most UK imports were ales.These were the styles adopted by the emerging craft brewers and homebrewers.Top fermented of course.
Then they turned their attention to porters and stouts.These are brewed using the same technology as ales and even could use the same yeast.The assumption was therefore made that stout and porter were ales.There was no apparent reason to think differently even though ales and stouts were always listed separately in the US too.
It's a bit like the tendency to use the word "English" rather than British. So-called "English IPA" ignores the fact that Edinburgh (which if you didn't know is in Scotland not England) was once the second biggest brewer of IPA on the planet.

 

I'd say an "Imperial Porter" is no different than an imperial stout, except dryer and with a more roasty flavor. I see stouts as have more residual sugars than porters.

But of course, there are exceptions to be found in both porters and stouts.

 

Now I understand why all those beers tasted the same to me last time I was in London. I thought my taste buds were being jingoistic.

 

I get what you're saying (here and other posts) about the ale/lager dichotomy being largely due to misconceptions and development of new brewing conventions. But doesn't every country do that? Just like "German and British brewing went their separate ways and had little in common" I don't think you're saying that makes one of them wrong about what an ale or a lager is. In American brewing the consensus is that the yeast used makes it fall in one of the broad categories of ale or lager. In America we would call a hefeweizen an ale, in Germany they wouldn't. To make a linguistic comparison, we have typfehlerkorrekturflussigkeit here too, but we call it White Out.

I agree with your reasoning that this probably started as a misunderstanding of the brewing terms of other countries, but I feel like that's just how things developed here and that's now what ale and lager mean in America. England and Germany (and a bunch of other countries) did their thing first and they deserve their props, but American brewing has developed its own language and history.

 

We need to organise a a blind 'Style Off' whereby anyone who intends to devote hours and days to this never ending mind numbing argument must blindly sample a beer from each of the 71 different styles, and then assign the correct style to the correct beer. Anyone getting less than a perfect score must shut the fuck up about style. Forever. Perfect scores however would automatically make you a BA Administrator.

 

Best post so far in 2014 ! Thanks

 

And it must be a mass live tasting!

 

Whilst y'all be arguin' styles and such, I thinx meself and my Scottish (Zimbo) and English (Marquis) brothers are gonna have a beer and shoot sum darts and maybe even quibble over a game of chess. Hell, we may even invite that old cranky codger from New Yawk, Tut.

 

Now that sounds like a plan.

 

Tex Mex, my friend. Yum frikkin yum. Best in the world. All you gotta do is cross the mighty Mississippi. We have world-class beers at our disposal, too.

 

Style nomenclature has become a bit ridiculous in the US. I know this much....

If I sit down with a stout, a hefeweizen, an IPA, a gueuze, a Belgian quadrupel, and a bitter.....I am confident I could tell you which beer was which....

If I sit down with an IPL, an IPA, and an American pale wheat ale/amber ale/pale ale/red ale/red ale/barleywine/strong ale......I'm not sure I'd be able to tell the difference between all of them. The latter is all about marketing, while the former is actually about style designation.

 

We've got this little place in my town- El Camino Real- on this side of the big river and it's got no Tex, pure Mexico, and it's outrageously good and cheap. I drink Modelo Negro draft with complete gusto. Some kinda Mexican/German hybrid- what would you call it by style? Big cheers!