Beer Styles Have Finally Been Updated!

There are a lot of arguments about if Kvass belongs, but I'd like to bring up and discuss the Japanese Happoshu. I can't find much information the style, but apparently it has to do with alcohol taxation laws in Japan. As such, it's not really a true 'style' of beer, meaning an IPA or pilsner or pale could fall into this taxation bracket. In fact, technically speaking, Kvass would be taxed as a Japanese Happoshu if sold in Japan due to its ingredient list.

Further more, Happoshu is referred to as "the non beer beer" in Japanese slang.

Personally, I don't mind keeping Japanese Happoshu as apart of the categories (or any of the recently mentioned categories), as it doesn't hurt anything to have an additional style listing aside from perhaps some having a difficult time earning a 'tick' in the style. It also gives a little notoriety to international beer culture.

 

Not to mention Britain is an island, not a country.

 

Agree.

That said, it does feel like there's a case for fiddling with the definitions here - it seems like a bit unhelpful to put clean-ish beers like Saison Dupont, which are essentially cheap, fresh, everyday beers together with things that have been aged for 18 months on a mixed brett culture in Chateau Margaux casks - it doesn't really feel like there's a fair comparison to be made. Not sure it needs a whole new category, though - maybe just a bit of re-balancing of the existing Belgian Saison, American Brett and American Wild categories.

 

By the way, do the "English" styles - English Bitter, English ESB, English Pale Ale, English IPA, English Strong Ale, English Old Ale, English Pale Mild, English Dark Mild etc - make sense in terms of English-style stuff brewed in the US? Because it seems like a slightly odd way of slicing up what people actually brew and drink over here.

For instance, English Bitter, IPA and Pale Ale, as described, are essentially the same thing, but there's no category for Golden Ales - which are a fairly massive thing. Pale Mild is rarer than hen's teeth - the only one on here with a triple-figure number of ticks is described as a Golden Ale by the brewery - and could rolled up into a general "Mild" category without losing much value.

Meanwhile things like English IPA, Extra Special Bitter, English Old Ale and English Strong Ale basically exist over here as a small number of surviving examples, oddities, recreations and reimaginings and it feels like the styles are largely based on American brewers' ideas of what they ought to be like. Which is fine, but makes the actual English examples (Old Peculiar at 5.6% as an Old Ale, for instance) sit a bit oddly in the lists...

 

I have a quick question about one of the new styles added, smoke beer..
This, to me, is like a “one-fits-all” type of category, with smoky beers.. Or is it just me?
I have a grodzidski that needs to be added, would this be the category of choice?

 

Good question.
I had the same problem when I added a Grisette. I categorised it under Saison...

 

There are too many vague catch-all styles which gives secondary (and in some cases tertiary or more) styles that could apply to a beer. Some examples are Fruit & Field, Pumpkin, Chile beer, etc. All beers falling into those styles are based on another style, for instance a Pumpkin Stout. Could have been a Fruit & Field, but why isn't it a Stout or Imperial Stout? In a lot of cases the distinctions between the many styles of Stouts and IPAs are overkill, and it could just be left to the brewer to describe it on their label without having so many styles to handle them.

 

Agreed I will never understand why there is a Listing for American Imperial Stouts and Russian Imperial Stouts. It would be more useful to have Imperial Stouts and Flavored Imperial Stouts.

 

I'm not convinced we even need the imperial vs non-imperial designation as it risks nearly doubling the number of styles. The ABV ranges overlap, and in the end why can't it just be left to the brewer to state "imperial" or "high-test" or "premium" on their label, along with ABV? We don't need a new style to account for every tweak a brewer comes up with.

 

"Let's put half as much water in" isn't the most creative bit of thinking a brewer ever does, but I think the imperial-as-a-new-style thing makes sense if you want styles to enable you to compare like-with-like or to give sensible recommendations, which to me is a lot of the point of talking about them. Imperial versions and bretted / barrel aged versions tend to be big, complex, expensive special-occasion beers, and it doesn't really make sense to judge them on the same terms as the regular, everyday-drinking versions of the same basic style.

On the other hand where fruited / smoked / dessert-flavoured versions of things are doing pretty much the same thing at pretty much the same price-point, they can reasonably be put on the same shelf.

 

Why keep bringing this up? The entire process is completely different making an imperial vs a lower ABV beer. It's like classifying a wedding cake the same as a muffin just because it might be the same color and have a similar flavor profile.

 

Imperial Stouts are not a new style like DIPAs. They have been brewed for a long time.

 

one of the newest “styles” i struggle with is ‘Imperial Milk Stout’ - Imperial Stout or English Sweet / Milk Stout? i almost always throw them in the English Sweet / Milk Stout style if they contain lactose. furthermore, imperial is open to interpretation. Perennial or 3 Floyds’ imperial stouts are 13-15% while a Tree House “imperial” stout might be 7-9%...