I dont understand: distaste for hops

That is an awesome statement!!

The first thought that popped into my mind is all of the angst that some BAs have concerning US craft brewed Kolsch beers. About how they do not taste like the beers brewed in Cologne (Koln) Germany. They view the fact that US craft brewed versions sometimes have 'uncalled for stuff' to the beer (Clown Shoes Mango Kolsch comes to mind) as abominations. I had a pint of Clown Shoes Mango Kolsch and I really enjoyed drinking that beer even though it was not like a Cologne brewed Kolsch.

I don't know whether the concept of "Brewing with style" will be popular with the BA community but I really like and support that maxim.

Cheers to you sir!

 

I think it has a bit to do with one's own diet. Yes some of this is just personal preference anyway, but what builds our preferences?

For me, I grew up with a ton of traditional southern food. Deep or skillet fried food, dishes cooked in various pork (bacon grease, fatback, ham hock), lots of black pepper and seasonings, dense sweet desserts baked with lard. I think of this food as being very savory, hearty, sweet and generally umami. We had very little bitterness in our diet.

Grapefruit is of course very bitter, but for me the bitterness is overwhelming. Not to compare IPAs to grapefruit, but I often get that same overwhelming bitterness response from an IPA. With a proper preparation grapefruit can lose some of the bitterness and I think this is true of IPAs also. There are some IPAs I enjoy and generally the bitterness subsides as I continue to consume them, so I don't hate them outright.

So looking at other beer styles in comparison to foods, I see porters and stouts as being very heavy and dense. Sours have a lot of different things going on (depending on the style). But these styles don't present much bitterness from hops.

Just my take on why - yes, I've spent some time thinking about this

 

So, you would be perfectly fine with a brewer releasing an ale of a very pale yellow hue, using six different hops and a single neutral malt, labeled as a doppelbock?

Beer covers a significant amount of ground when it comes to the actual experience. So much so, that it has begun to be classified, now that we are in an era where worldwide exposure of those experiences is now not only possible, but commonplace. As such, we've begun assigning terms to classify the experience one can expect from a particular beer - I'm sure we can all agree that, as a general rule, an IPA is quite a different experience from a doppelbock, which is distinct from a biere de garde. The style becomes a shorthand for "here's more or less what you should expect".

What many of us don't appreciate is a brewer intentionally taking one of those general style descriptors, and going very far outside of it without providing any indication they have done so. Hefeweizens with prominent hop bills and not much going on in the ester department, for example - why call that a hefeweizen, when there's the term "pale wheat ale" out there? The aforementioned example of a pale, hoppy doppelbock with no real malt flavors - there's probably a much better shorthand descriptor that could be applied. Anyone picking that up based on the style descriptor would be quite surprised at the contents, regardless of how well the brewer had made the beer.

At the end of the day, it is about enjoying the beer experience. The styles are a convenient shorthand to help us get the experience we want to enjoy. Intentionally muddying them, and not indicating that on the packaging...that gets problematic for people like me who cannot appreciate hops, or people who have a similar reaction to Belgian yeast, and so forth.

 

Well stated. Many here think the same. The real problem with "bastardizing" a beer style to set their brewery apart from the crowd is that other brewers soon feel the need to do the same to keep up. This process is fed by consumers who are constantly seeking gimmicky concoctions and express disdain for beers that remain true to style, even when they are stellar examples. As this insidious process continues it becomes increasingly harder to find the classic beer styles. Everything gets tricked out in an endless game of one upmanship.

An example of this silliness is a local brewery who put out a barrel aged, maple pecan, porter on cask. Blechhh. Way over the top.

 

LOL. That is taking it to a bit of an extreme, and nowhere near what I was suggesting or intending to express.
Per your examples, just last night I spotted "Casper White Stout" in my local liquor store and yes, it did make me laugh out loud (a guy working in the store heard me and in classic non-sequiter defense and with a bit of a grimace, said "What!!! It tastes like chocolate.".

Anyway, yes, of course we expect stout and porter (which technically are not even really separate styles if you want to get technical or historical) to be brown or black. Of course we expect a pale ale to be somewhere between blonde to deep amber/copper (historically, and if you're fussy about such things, more towards the amber/copper).

Really what I was getting at was that the obsession over "styles" and (although it wasn't really referenced in preceding posts) the idea that a new "style" can be invented and declared because someone has added an extra bushel of hops to a traditional brew is a bit goofy because true "styles, after all, evolve over time and acceptance by the audience; young and green American IPA is a good example of that since it does seem to now be a category all its own.

As far as ingredients go, the flavor is more important than strict adherence to any malt or hop bill.
Someone actually once tried telling me (quite vehemently) that a true English Ale can not be made with American hops or malts (when in fact, that's exactly how some very traditional ones were made in England as long as 100-150 years ago). And the very best Scotch Ale I ever tasted was actually made with a very large proportion of Munich malt.

My points were essentially that 1) It's all gotten a bit 'nitpicky' (almost comically so); 2) It's all about what's in the glass and what meets one's own particular level of approval or compliance; 3) There is no governing body dictating what a beer should or shouldn't be (even the reinheitsgebot has been pretty much declared überholt); and 5) "Styles" (long before they were ever referred to as such) were always open to the interpretation of the person brewing the product...within reason.

But hey...in the end, it's only beer.
Anyway, if we ever find ourselves in the same saloon, the first round will be on me. Maybe I'll even try that WHite Stout.

 

And again, bigger cheers to Lew Bryson... brewing "with style as opposed to to style" is his original turn of phrase.
And a very wise one it is!
It should be the most important credo of any serious brewer.

 

I have had numerous conversations with Lew Bryson over the years at beer events (most recently last spring at the Yards Real Ale festival). He is a great guy to talk to and he does have some good insights on the craft beer industry (and the whiskey industry as well).

Cheers!

 

I disagree on that point, but my perspective is colored more than a little by my being literally unable to even develop a slight appreciation for a large percentage of hop-forward beer. Bringing the hop profile too far forward actually does completely transform a beer for me. For a Scotch ale example of my own, I'm unable to drink Odell's Scotch Ale, which per the brewery themselves involved using a lighter and paler malt bill than a more traditional Scotch ale. That, along with whatever other changes they may have made to the hop bill, took that beer from a style I can almost universally enjoy to something completely alien, where I can detect almost no malt flavor at all. The chemical composition may be similar to other Scotch ales, but that is little comfort when the drinking experience was not exactly expected.

That, I completely agree with. It just seems unfortunate to me that so much emphasis is placed on the hop bill as regards flavors, and so much of the experimentation and/or attempts to stand out is in those regards.

Quite so - we just differ on the "within reason" portion, it would seem. I'm well aware that, at least around here, I'm in a distinct minority with my hop stance.

Indeed, we could probably get through quite a few rounds discussing the finer points of beer classification!

Although you're braver than me on the White Stout. Stone got me once with Master Of Disguise, and that's enough for me!

 

Love 077XX, it's a great beer, better than this one? Probably heavyweights like Abrasive And HT , but that's subjective as well, I'd love to have 077 on tap at a local place. There's quite a few beers that don't have to apologize to anyone , they are great beers, Carton hit a HR here.

 

That's our regular Pils- 100% sterling hops.

 

Don't we have this thread here every week?

 

I don't understand why some people can't comprehend the fact that not everybody likes the same thing they do.
I don't like bitter. Be it in food or drink, it just does not appeal to me. Never has and never will. Deal with it.

 

I see it like the MBA craze a few years back. Every college was offering an MBA and we're really pushing them, next thing you know the market was flooded with people who graduated with an MBA. It is not that that was a bad degree or anything but when everybody has one they kinda become nothing special. I see the same thing happening with IPA's. So to combat this the brewers are trying to one up each other on how hoppy they can make it.

Some times too much of a good thing is actually bad.

 

there doesn't need to be but there always will be some fad

 

The difference for me is that just about every style of beer is the steak to me. I like them all equally, so I don't need to drink one almost exclusively like it seems some people do.

 

You must surely have favorite cuts though? NY Strip, Filet, Porter/T-bone, Rib-eye, prime rib, london broil, etc (and of course other beef like ribs, brisket, a good burger, etc). Then what about it's preparation? Grilled, seared, slow-cooked, etc. Sauce? Butter? Just like how IPAs and Stouts are the most popular styles of beer, NY strip and Filet are the most popular cuts of beef. I tend to drink a lot of IPAs because I love hops, just like I tend to go with a NY strip because it's my favorite cut. I still like to eat Filet, etc etc

 

Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Pumpkin Peach Ale.

 

I was thinking bourbon barrel aged high gravity malt liquor honestly

 

In a swing-top 40-ounce for $2.29? I'm in.

 

Mix it with water straight from the community pool and add a shot of popov. Call it Earthquake....wait a minute...Schlitz? No....Hurri.....dammit!