American-Style-X on label

Guys, I am just not buying into the American style xyz beer thing.

Knock yourselves out.

Cheers!

 

Interesting. You buy into the BJCP that does use some of that American style stuff. Whats the problem with proposing systematic elaboration of that?

 

Tom, I attended the presentation that Gordon Strong gave at the 2014 NHC as regards the proposed update process of the BJCP style guidelines. I think if you attended this presentation you would have a better appreciation here.

Cheers!

Jack

P.S. FWIW, the style guidelines I refer to just as much (maybe more) is the Brewers Association style guidelines and the EBSA style guidelines.

 

That's nice, but I didn't and will have to wait for publication.

Meanwhile I know they use American to differentiate some related styles from others and that some of the styles differ from others only on the basis of lines drawn through fuzzy areas to separate them.

That's what I've got to go on until the revisions appear.

Edit: and regardless of how often you do cite the BJCP guidelines as a source, you do, which is an endorsement of them, just as is my use of American.

 

“…you do cite the BJCP guidelines as a source,..”

Yes, I do indeed use BJCP guidelines as a source. I also use Brewers Association style guidelines as a source and I also use EBSA style guidelines as a source.

Cheers!

 

Rock Art brewery has an IPA called American-Belgo IPA

 

What if a Japanese brewer made a saison with Belgian yeast and added strawberries? Would it be 'American style' ?

For the record I agree with the OP, but I like to ask annoying rhetorical questions...

 

Your motivation for making that post maybe was to deliver a light hearted joke but you are actually making a very valid comment. The US is not the only brewing nation that has craft breweries that are 'thinking outside the box'. To attribute making beers a bit differently from older styles, or 'traditional' if you prefer that terminology, to being solely an American effort is a myopic point of view. It could very well be a brewery in Denmark which makes a Saison with a unique fruit (or other unusual flavoring). Should that beer made by a Danish craft brewery be classified as being an American style Saison? Is the broader solution that any Saison brewed in country x which has an unusual ingredient be called a Country X style Saison? Will the net result be that we have:

• American style Saison
• Canadian style Saison
• Japanese style Saison
• Danish style Saison
• etc.

Cheers!

 

Can't speak for the OP since he's mostly looking for who uses misleading labeling, but using the tentative criteria I was experimenting with in my post way back when, it depends.

But switch from Saison to the Doppelbock as it's "simpler" to start with:

If they were using the German Doppelbock as their target I'd call it a German-style Doppelbock.
If they were using the Americanized Doppelbock as their target (e.g., the all C hops example I was playing with above) I'd call it an American-style Doppelbock.
If they used Wasabi to replace most of the noble hops I'd call it a Japanese-style Dopplebock.

If there were no American-style doppelbock as in my example and they used the wasabi I'd still call it a Japenese-style Dopplebock.
If there were no American-style doppelbock as in my example and they used all C hops I'd think the dust would probably settle out with it being called a Japanese-style Doppelbock.

Implicit in this are the criteria

Where did the style originate.
Which country is brewing it.
Is there a meaningful major deviation from the target beer. (Recognizing that the basis for determining what is meaningful and major still have to be thrashed out, but that seems in principle possible given the types of decisions made in the past about styles and and naming.)

Also implicit in this is the need to run through a number of example to see how they work. (Never seen a taxonomy that worked without a hitch from the get-go. :-)

Seems like it might fly, but....

 

Search of the word Wasabi brought up these:

• Wasabi Pale Ale
  Hoppy Brewing Co. | Sacramento, California

• Doctor's Orders Vaccine - Wheat Wasabi Porter
  Doctor's Orders Brewing | Sydney, Australia

• Cucumber Wasabi
  Shebeen Brewing Company | Wolcott, Connecticut

• Retired - Mr. Miagi's Wasabi Stout
  BrewDog | Fraserburgh, United Kingdom (Scotland)

• Retired - California Rollin Wasabi Brew
  CB Craft Brewers | Honeoye Falls, New York

• Wasabi Ginger Saison
  I & I Brewing | Chino, California

• Retired - Wasabi Brew
  CB Craft Brewers | Honeoye Falls, New York

• Wasabi Biiwasa No Ruby
  Niigata Beer Co. | Niigata-ken Nishikanbara-gun, Japan

• Retired - Wasabi Dry
  Miyamori Brauhaus | Iwate-ken Tono-shi, Japan

Classify each of these, if you will, according to your above post?

 

Interesting list but unfortunately got to get up at 5 tomorrow morning and so I've not got the time this evening to accept the challenge nor to look up the additional information that is needed in some cases. e.g., for example some do not seem to clearly indicate whether they are modifications of some target style, some have only one example in the database and not enough information about the brewer's intent. But with luck I'll see about tackling it tomorrow. Best way to see if a taxonomy works.... :-)

 

That's exactly what I was getting at.

HUH?? That's easier?? Are you crazy? (I know you're not crazy...)

You have changed my mind on this issue though. I now think adding American or any other nationality-based descriptor to a beer is a waste of valuable print space on a beer label. Just call it a saison or a dopplebock and do whatever you want to it. I'll figure out for myself it's any good or "to style" traditionally or otherwise.

If Americans (meaning the US) have the right to claim a beer style and/or descriptor I would entertain "American" to mean heavily hopped. When I read the OP and saw "American Style..." my brain immediately thought hops, then we got into all this nonsense about strawberries and wasabi.

...and this a thousand times!

 

Herb and Spiced Beer. Easy.

 

There is neither intention nor need to be restricting the country in which the "-style beer" is brewed to the US. Nor was that ever proposed. (Remember examples are just that, they not definitions, restrictions or exclusions, and it is not possible to list all possible examples in limited time and space. Nor am I willing to take the time to do so.)

So the Danish beer would be called "American style" if and only if the brewer's target or intent was to brew an example of an American beer. (Which would could include both a style originated in the US and an American version of a beer style that originated elsewhere.)

So, if the Canadian or Japanese or Danish brewery used as its target a Belgian-style Saison it would be labeled "Belgian-style" and if they were starting from the Belgian target but introducing a major modification or innovation on the style it would be called a Canadian-style Saison or a Japanese-style Saison or a Danish-style Saison, etc.

The precedent for at least part of this already exists in that there is an American style Pale ale, an English style Pale Ale, a Belgian style Pale Ale. Could that mean a proliferation of X-style Pale Ales (where X stands for country)? Absolutely, but that has been happening for years and so is nothing new. There already exist, for example, brewerys in more than one country where they brew a Belgian-style Pale Ale, or an American style Pale ale, or etc. There are already breweries in more than one country where they brew an English-style IPA, and/or an American-style IPA. (And though they are not recognized as styles, consider the number of debates that have erupted over the years about whether West Coast IPAs are or are not superior to East Coast IPAs.)

The real point is to have the brewer indicate clearly in the name of the beer or other additional labeling information whether they consider their beer to be a replication of a style orginating elsewhere or to be something inspired by a style originating elsewhere

 

Well the point of this exercise for me is to explore and understand the implications of a number of ideas I've heard suggested or complained about on this site for some years now. And one of the ways of doing that is to develop a rapid prototype of an alternative to what is in place now and "run it up the flagpole and see who salutes or shoots" and what their reasons are. And the prototype has to have a reasonable degree of complexity since it is very unlikely that any taxonomy of something like beer will be developed with a univariate solution. I prefer to avoid the Saison topic simply because it is quite ill defined and basically originates as a "summer beer brewed for field hands in Belgium to drink on their lunch break." Whereas Doppelbock is a recognized style that exists within much narrower limits and much clearer boundaries between it and other styles.

You might be comfortable with a generic style name but many others are not and sometimes get quite irritated when they buy and review a beer that does not meet their expectations. And certainly your initial thought about "American-style" is one shaped your experience and is a good example. Consider the Doppelbock I mentioned. If you bought something simply labeled Doppelbock that you'd never had before and were expecting rich malt character backed up by some earthy bitterness you might be surpised to find yourself drinking something with the rich malty caracter sharing center stage with the C-hops. Could well be you'd quite enjoy it and be able to describe how it deviates from Doppelbock style, but wouldn't you prefer to know in advance that you were buying an American-style Doppelbock?

And while currently American-style typically means lots of hops there is no reason to expect the term won't/can't change its meaning over time to become broader. For example the term "beer" in what is now the UK once meant something like a "brewed beverage using hops."

 

Tom, you stated in this latest post: “…or other additional labeling information…”

In a prior post I stated: “I personally would endorse breweries providing more descriptions on the packaging…”

In that prior post I also made some ‘suggestions’ concerning the Doppelbock style of:

· “Doppelbock brewed with Centennial hops”

· “a list of ingredients on the bottle of Doppelbock that list “Centennial Hops”.

Cheers!

 

No taxonomy of beer styles will ever be perfect because beer labels are marketing, not a factual recitation of the attributes of the beer. This thread is a perfect example of how relying on the marketing terms on the label poorly guides us to an accurate representation of what is in the bottle or how it relates to other beers with similar labeling. We can argue about what beers should be labeled for academic purposes but it has little real world implications because brewers are not required to follow any sort of taxonomic rules in labeling their beers, outside of a handful of appellation protections and trademarks.

 

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/13307/110961/

I have no idea what this is though, but it's American style? Maybe it has white pepper, strawberries or American yeast. They really should just list the recipe on the side of bottle.