Beer Styles Have Finally Been Updated!

There are basically two kinds of kvass available:
1. Those produced by soft drink type manufacturers which are more of a fermented malt soda from extract
2. Those that are produced by breweries that are made by fermenting cereal grains (or bread) with baker's yeast and sugars.

 

Meanwhile, both wikipedia and russiapedia are classifying it as a "non-alcoholic beverage":

Kvass is classified as a non-alcoholic drink by Russian and Polish standards, as the alcohol content from fermentation is typically low (0.5–1.0%).

While the production process is similar to beer making, kvas has very low alcohol content (0.05 - 1.44%) and it is considered a non-alcoholic drink.

I'm not sure if there really is such a clean-cut distinction here. I stood in front of shelf with at least 10 different Kvass from various breweries and soft drink manufacturers today and they all contained sugar, yeast and lactic acid, the only difference being if malt extract or rye malt/flour was used.

The one I'm drinking right now is by a brewery, brewed with rye malt and flour and still has no alcohol content listed and tastes like a cross between a German Malzbier and Coca Cola.

 

Well if wikipedia says its so ...

 

And Ratebeer is the all-knowing oracle of the internet? Honestly, I'm more inclined to go with a more neutral source concerning this, but the truth is that if you do some online research you will come up with just as many sources that claim it's beer as those that claim it's not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

From my personal exposure to the drink, and talking to actual Russians, I'm definitely sceptical that this beverage is a beer.

 

I actually agree with you that I don't understand why kvass is listed as a beer style here ... when I was ticking all the styles I went to a Polish grocer and bought a few of their kvasses - needless to say they thought I was 1) nuts for buying 4 kinds of kvass and 2) really nuts for saying that it was a beer. That being said, citing wikipedia as a source for anything makes me laugh.

 

Yup, that definitely lines up with my experience at the Russian/Polish grocer, even though I only bought three kinds.

 

They just don't fit nicely, hence my much earlier suggestion that Fruited Sour and/or Kettle Sour beg to be their own styles. I would probably stick with the base beer style rather than the fruit beer style (like I would for a Chocolate Raspberry stout).

 

Yet Belgian Fruit Lambic is a distinct style and I think of these fruited sours in the same vein as there is generally a fair amount of sourness present as well (not advocating that they should be classified as Belgian Fruit Lambic but rather that American Fruited Sour deserves it's own style).

 

Wait, was Radler never a style on here or did that get removed recently? Just trying to figure out if I'm going crazy...

 

Never a style on here.

 

Crazy it is then, I could have sworn I saw that in the list . This is also something that's a little difficult to handle though. While I agree that Radler shouldn't be a style on here, it's also very weird, to say the least, to have Radlers in the database as "Fruit And Field Beers". Honestly, they probably shouldn't be in the database at all, as they are not technically a beer, but a beer-mixer.

Another thing which I only noticed very recently is that "Kristalweizen" should be changed to "Kristallweizen", as that is the correct spelling of "Kristall" in German.

 

Good catch - hope they tweak that.

I know it been mentioned several times here, but please change British barleywine back to English barleywine. I don't know of anyone else who calls the style British as opposed to English.