Why do some beer styles seem redundant?

Man, hit the nail on the head there. Couldn't agree more.

 

It's a lot more impressive to be able to say that you have consumed a representative from all 100+ BA style categories than if there were only like 20 categories. Frankly, I've never had a problem with excessive categorization though. I think it suits my personality.

 

Try Duvel and Tripel Karmeliet and tell me Tripels and BSPAs taste the same.....

Try Chimay Red next to Chimay Blue and tell me they taste the same.....

 

Also, why I never wanted to work in a record store. "Wait, are you looking for their drone stuff or their postrock stuff? You might want to check under alternative...or ambient...or experimental."

 

There's a lot to this. One of the ways brewers market their beers is classifying it to conform [or not conform] with trends in the market. For example plethora of IPA sub-categories lately (e.g. white, red, black, session, rye, belgian, etc.) could have been included within existing styles, but brewers are trying to link their hop-forward beers to the larger IPA popularity trend in the market. I'm not complaining... brewers can name the beers however they see fit and in many cases it does give the consumer a better idea of what to expect, but we run into problems when try to over-classify beers with create strict rules and expectations. Personally, I view many of the "new" styles more like descriptive adjectives for the beer and avoid worrying about them being separate and distinct classifications. Beer exists on a continuum, much like a rainbow.

 

A lot of it comes from the need to have more rigidly defined guidelines for competitions, but other than that you can look at things however you like.

 

Actually, I wish there were more style classifications. There's too few, IMO.

 

Belgian style classifications are often labels put on them by non-Belgians, or so I've read. They don't really sweat categories in Belgium. But dubbels will tend to be lighter in alcohol and body than quads.

I'm pretty sure American strong ales are a catch all category created for beer judging in competitions. There's not a lot of restrictions to it other than "lots of alcohol". Barleywines have a typical range of ABV, color, and bitterness that define them.

I get your point OP, but the answer is that there are different qualities (even if they are sometimes very small) that differentiate beer styles besides how they taste. The difference might even be as slight as where the beer is made.