Overused beer marketing terms

Not interested in you, move along

 

Not just details like which hops or malts.

How many pale ales are actually IPAs based on their hop content and IBU level?

How many "Cascadian Dark" aka "Black IPAs" are just overhopped porters?

For almost every style there's a brewery out there making an IPA and calling it something else.

 

Any beer/ale is whatever the brewer chooses to call it...a call which will be accepted by some and rejected by others according to their own preconceived notion and/or interpretation.
"Styles" are (and always have been) open to interpretation, and some corners of beer geekdom have simply become a bit too obsessed with the concept.
Much of the confusion surrounding "styles" seems to be encouraged by the BJCP's comically bloated (and often arbitrary) "style" definitions ...which apply only to homebrew judging anyway.

 

I'm tired of the the three-keyword descriptions on labels. The marketing technique has become ubiquitous in many different industries

 

I think you're first example is excellent as it is pretty much a given in ANY beer. The second example, however, I'd say is a stretch. Dry hopping is not universal at all, it's only recently become common for a single style. I feel it still has merit in the description.

 

I respectfully disagree completely. I have been homebrewing for just over 20 years and the technique has been common practice for as long as I can remember. I am also one of the owners of a small commercial brewery here in Mass and out of our six IPA's... not one of them isn't "double dry-hopped" and then we dry-hop all sorts of other styles when we are looking for a particular flavor or aroma to layer in (a rye saison, a large Berliner Weisse, etc).

Maybe it's not universal in other parts of the country (although that would really surprise me), but dry-hopping has been around for decades. Actually... some quick google-fu has the practice dating back to the early 1800's.

 

If that was a dismissal, I find you at least interesting, if not curious.