What beer styles should be retired?

Malheur has been on tap a few times in NYC I believe. I definitely recommend bottles if you haven't tried already. They make a few. So far, other than the ones made by our local Belgian inspired brewery, those are all I have had. Sooooo good.

 

Nice. I'll have to try and track some bottles of those down. I've just had Mikkeller's Nelson Sauvignon, which I've been told isn't a true representation of the style. I'm not interested in semantics, nor do I know enough about the style to argue it. I enjoyed it, and I'd like to find more along the same lines.

Thanks for bringing those other beers in that style to my attention.

 

If that were the criteria, 90% of the people couldn't post and the site would go out of business.

 

And?

I'm honest enough to admit I don't know a great deal about most styles. That's one of the reasons I'm here - to learn. And yet still, I don't have the chops, or interest, to get into the semantics as to what separates an Unfiltered IPA vs. a NE IPA.

 

Black IPA's (never understood that style)

 

It was just humor. I spent 3 years of my life in Knob Noster Missouri so cut me some slack...

 

Damn. I'm sorry. I've spent time in Knob Noster....

It is a decent place to camp though! Spend time at Whiteman? Maybe we should move this to a PM. Haha.

 

Belgian strong pale ale. Belgian blond ales and Belgian strong golden ales are two different styles and should not be lumped into one category.

 

You're missing out if you haven't given them a chance. Some are absolutely incredible, Berliners are in my top 3-5 styles.

 

Pumpkin beers should just be fruit and vegetable beer. I also wouldn't really have a problem with combining Russian imperial and Imperial stout to just one style.

 

Anything barrel-aged to make beer taste like booze.

 

Bold proposal - scrap them all and start over with a consistent classification system. Should not need more than about 20 or so major style families, which all of the others would fit into, either directly or in a sub-style. Forget color, country of origin, ABV, etc and stick with distinctive brewing methods which produce a family which could have many sub-styles. For instance - porter would replace all porter variant styles, and would also include all stouts in a few distinctive sub-styles.

 

blonde/white stouts........

 

Imperial porters need to go. I'm so convinced brewers just want to call an imperial stout something different to stand out but no. Also, I think we need to have a solid definition between styles like stout and porter. IPA's and Double IPA's also need to be defined. A maximum IBU and ABV for IPA's. And drop session IPA's. We need a clear line between pale ales and IPA's as well.

 

Rather than define these differences, I'd argue that we're just grasping for distinctions to make more and more styles. In the instance of pale ales, IPAs, NEPAs, etc perhaps there should be a major style "pale ale" and the others fall under that directly or as sub-styles. These sub-style would need to be tightly limited as well. Case in point is all the imperial beers. Why do they need to be a style or even a sub-style?

 

Yeah, I was going to say that too. "Just because"....? ....they're lagers.

Then maybe we(the world at-large) can do away with the idea that this is "normal" beer, and all-malt lagers are somehow strange & fanciful.

 

When my daughters were young, they took dance lessons and went to dance competitions. (I promise... this is going somewhere beer related...) These dance competitions had hundreds of dance styles and categories. Some were distinctive (e.g. ballet), but others? I'm convinced they were there to increase the number of medals / trophies / ribbons that could be awarded.

Look at the GABF. What'd I post above? 150+ styles (and growing)?

OK for competitions, fine. But for consumers, who can keep up? And, they get backed into a situation where they need to keep creating styles because something new just doesn't fit their existing style description. The NE IPA is a case in point. The American IPA style was created because of the hops used made it different from English IPA, and the description of the American IPA (using this site's description just because ...) says "Hops are typically American with a big herbal and / or citric character, bitterness is high as well. Moderate to medium bodied with a balancing malt backbone." That does NOT describe a NE IPA, beyond the use of Amerian hops and citric character (on steroids).

So, what to do? It is a cinch the competition organizers are NOT going to reduce styles. The more styles, the more medals, the more entries, the more winners to advertize their skill to the consumers.

Anyone read The Ingenious Nobleman Mister Quixote of La Mancha lately?

 

I'm told there is an old Spanish saying that goes something like this, “You read Don Quixote three times in your life. The first time it makes you laugh. The second time it makes you think. And the third time it makes you cry.”

I've only read the various competition style lists twice. I think I'll take a pass on a third read with those style lists. live with the list of styles developed for this site and maybe pop open a nice IPA while re-reading Don Quixote for the second time.

 

Two glaring impostors: ESB. and Wee Heavy.
Both of these began life as names for specific beers already belonging to a style.
ESB is just a Pale Ale or Bitter and the Wee prefix of Wee Heavy simply referred to the small (wee) bottles in which it was sold.