American Breweries and Traditional Styles

“We begin by brewing a straightforward Kolsch with lots of wheat and Munich Malt,...”

I also would be interested in trying this beer but I would not have expectations that it would taste like any of the Kolsch beers that are brewed in Cologne (Koln).

Cheers!

 

This is one thing about this site that grinds my gears. More often than not, the original style creators and traditional versions get pushed out by too hoppy, adjuct filled versions. Many American breweries create to-style beers I'm sure, but then others are doing there own take. That's fine, but kind of disingenuous to say they are the same thing as the traditional ones. A perfect example is Dortmunders. DAB, the style creator is only in the top 30, while most of the top 10 appear to be American versions, including an "imperial" version!

 

So DAB is still brewing it as well as they did when the Dortmund breweries created the style? I'd have thought their corporate woes some years back when they began imploding could have made a difference. So how do we know they've brought the quality of their Dortmunder beer back up to the level of quality it once had?

 

Ah ok, didn't realize that. Thanks for the clarification

 

Nice write up, thanks for the read.

And this is why I don't understand why so many people push back against the moniker "New England IPA." It is a very clear style of brewing and anytime anyone new or outside of the region brews one, they even admit to it as a brewer or brewery.

When nearly identical, indistinguishable styles like a Porter and Stout coexist separately, why in the hell can't we push Julius and Congress St and Heady and Sip and Edward and so on and so forth into a style all their own? Even within some of them they become more nuanced, but having these really juicy hazy beers in the same category as extremely piney bitter beers just doesn't wash with me. If there is a difference between English and American IPA, there is a difference between West and East coast styles.

 

Isn't that an oxymoron!?!

Cheers!

 

I see what you did there

 

Bringing Indian Brown Ale into this is pretty poignant of an example. Didn't the term India Brown Ale or American Brown Ale originate because people didn't know how to classify this specific beer by Dogfish Head?

We have the same dilemma now with a number of other beers as mentioned throughout this thread, most of which could easily be lumped into all encompassing new categories, but for some reason people are averse to recognizing and/or actually taking the next step of classifying the drastic departure from existing styles.

 

Rogue brews a beer with honey called honey kolsch and the way the beer drinks mimics the kolsch. That beer is a good reason to admire innovation as it had a healthy respect for the style . Munich malt is so dark. Wheat in the kolsch is like vienna in the pilsner . . . maybe, it's a place where you can see that the style is to be admired. =) My original bjcp guidelines say up to 20% wheat malt can be used.

 

Some of the German breweries use wheat malt in making their Kolsch beers. Ron Pattinson has posted about this:

“I've seen wheat malt listed on Kölsch labels.”

https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...-a-kolsch-a-kolsch.418759/page-2#post-4788640

Cheers!

 

A comparison to music was my first thought after reading the OP.
So often a contemporary artist will cover a more "classic" song and the fans of this artist may never know that there was an original song being remade to fit a more current style.

Should the fans have to listen to the original song to understand where this cover originated? Not necessarily. But knowing both the roots and the modern interpretation definitely creates more understanding, which can lead to enjoying one or both even more.

 

Exactly. I am not a fan of artificial boundaries, and categorizations for convenience in general - I believe that boundaries are made to be broken and envelopes to be pushed. But this circumstance here, to me, is where this does matter. Pretend that you area new BA trying to understand the basic style characteristics by sampling different ones. Then it does make a difference and the lists are potentially misleading. Not everybody is going to read up on the style characteristics from the source and "know" what to expect and where a particular beer may not be true to style.

The lists, eventually even the beers of fame, are going to get you to what is popular which is far from the same as "best of style". But for a person new to the sport (as we all were at one time) trying to learn the distinctions that even loosely define styles, I think it is important to know what the "more true" examples are rather than what might be more popular variants, if that makes any sense.

Admittedly, I'm a little bipolar in my thinking about this. If you ar egoing to insist oin a style label, I'd like to have an idea that the beer will have those characteristics somewhere in the taste profile. But I can also go the style anarchy route and mentally conclude if it tastes good, I couldn't care less. It's become less important to me as I have learned about beer universe. What's become important to me is how much I like it and would I fork over my cash for it again. But part of me still insists - if you are going to call a beer "X"-style, then it damn well better have those characteristics. Freedom to experiment - absolutely - but respect should be given to the "roots", such as they are.

I agree about Big Sprang as an example. It was tasty and I enjoyed drinking it but can't for the life of me find where it is in any way Kolsch-inspired, so I did knock the score down for misrepresentation. Here's why... If I had never had (or researched) any other example of a Kolsch-inspired beer, Big Sprang would set the expectation. Just on the taste and enjoyability alone, I'd score it pretty high in the low-mid 4 range. Then if I had an example more true to the style, I'd possibly conclude that since it is nothing like Big Sprang it can't be a good Kolsch. The other reason - Kolsch is such a restrictive definition to begin with, why would you call a beer so clearly outside those boundaries as that particular style? Choose a more open category or just don't classify it - why bother label it if it doesn't really fit anywhere? Just call it beer. Been reading up on "foraged beer" which probably resembles what our ancestors really did - throw stuff together and see what happens - what are we going to call those?

I do believe that experimentation, in some form, has always taken place in brewing. As I read and re-read Brew Like a Monk, it sure seems the case that things were not so "static" as I thought. I pictured these top secret recipes that were lovingly handed down from an elder to his successor never to be tampered with or you'l burn in hell and apparently that is just not true. Some experiments were born out of necessity, but some were for the "what if". I don't think that can be escaped as long as humans enjoy alcohol - if you think about it, it was/is pretty much ferment something and we'll try drinking it, hooray we didn't poison ourselves to death. Refinement seems to me to follow later and you only refine by...more experiments. Why would brewers in any age want to make beers that nobody likes? Experimentation produces variants, the consumers decide which variants survive in a riff on Darwinism.

If no one was pushing boundaries and trying new things, with those new things succeeding or failing on the merit of taste, there wouldn't be the abundance of styles we have. We'd only have one thing - beer. The classifications and what not are for our convenience as humans who want things to fit in neat packages, and oh by the way we can score them, have a "best", and pretend to do it all objectively. Won't that just be fun! They've done the same thing with bottled water, for crying out loud. And yes - this is my bipolar moment where I flip between style anarchy and adhering to styles at the same time - I realize that. Useful guidelines is how I've come to view them, but not absolute truths never to be violated.

 

This is likely to turn into a rant, so attempting to keep myself in check....

Let me throw out three disclaimers. 1) I'm a long time homebrewer, so I view a lot of brews through that lense. 2) I particularly have a love of beers that I call "balanced", but in general have a moderate alcohol content and are often in traditional style categories. 3) I realize what I prefer is BS since what ultimately matters is what the consumer will buy.

That being said, I have two points to make.

The first is that brewing a great beer in a traditional style is HARD! I realize most BAs think that brewing with only 4 ingredients is easy, but it's the hardest thing a brewer can do well. I cannot emphasize this enough. It's easy to read style guidelines, award winning recipes, recipes from the know-it-all homebrew gurus, etc. but at the end of the day creating a good recipe is EASY, and creating a great balanced, traditional recipe is HARD. It takes serious time, dedication, patience, and trial and error to dial in a great traditional recipe. It is VASTLY EASIER, and maybe more commercially lucrative, to take a good recipe, throw a twist into it with a non-traditional ingredient, increased ABV, increased hops, etc., and sit back and watch the accolades come in about how great and creative your beer is. Imagine being an upstart brewer. You just produced a good but not great Kolsch recipe. Are you going to sell more by dialing in the malt bill, hop bill, fermentation regime, over several succeeding batches until it is great? Or are you going to sell more by taking your ok base Kolsch recipe and throwing a different fruit into it with each succeeding batch?

The second point is that I think we as consumers need to be demanding about how beers are marketed to us. Using certain words, like Kolsch, ESB, Schwarzbier, etc. creates certain expectations in the mind of knowledgable consumers. If you are going to deviate from those expectations, please use different terminology all together or be as obvious as heck in your marketing. You might have just created the greatest ale with a pilsner malt base and infused with coffee. I might love it as well. But please call it a coffee ale, or something similar, and not a coffee kolsch, since the expected style expectations are ingrained with certain terms.

 

Great post! As a fledgling home brewer but 35 year veteran of the fruit products industry, you are absolutely correct. I run our research plant and product developers use our facility to perfect their beaker scale recipes. Then when we scale up to full production, they have to dial in all over again. It would be far easier for them the play the cover up game than get it right by making the adjustments needed. It does make me wonder, on some of these highly flavored beers, what lurks beneath.

Maybe my bipolar thoughts on styles can be summed up as give us a clue, but dont blow smoke up our butts either. Essentially I agree with what you stated...the expectation is set by the words on the label for someone who has at least the basic understanding of the styles, and it is misleading to those who don't or are just learning the differences.

 

It really comes down to who your customer base is. I suspect that in most regions the craft beer consumers would prefer to drink 'innovative' beers. I have a local brewery that produces an excellent Munich Helles in my area (when very fresh). I frequent the brewpub and if I had a dollar every time I have overheard a beer geek use the description of "boring" to describe this beer... Thank goodness that this brewery has consistently (20ish years) produced this beer and even packages it. I have zero idea how well this beer sells vs. the APAs and IPAs that this brewery produces but they have made a decision to 'stay true' to their Munich Helles and I personally appreciate that fact.

Cheers!

 

I think your take on the music comparison is a good one. but if Ithink about it further, every once in a while someone comes along and something new and exciting results. A Stravinsky, Coltrane, Davis or Hendrix pops up and a paradigm shift occurs. Maybe we are in an era of exploration/discovery that will give rise to some new standards.

 

Am I 'speaking' to innovative Larry here!?!

If so, then I agree 100% with you right here.

Who really knows what new beer will 'work'? Maybe an Oktoberfest aged in oak will be a tasty beer? I have not tried one yet so I personally do not know. Even if I tried one and didn't like it does not mean that I won't like the second brewery's version.

Cheers!