Beer styles more breweries should consider making

WCIPA (fight me)

 

I understand why you don't agree with it. The entire culture around US craft beer has been built on the opposite foundation - so most people here would agree with you. In my case, I found that it's rewarding to try to step outside of that POV to gain a different perspective. I think we've exhausted the subject for this thread, but since you mentioned England (and I like to complicate things) I will add that the English do this with cheese and other foods, and the producers of Newcastle Brown Ale even managed to get protected status by the EU... only for that to turn into their own problem when they wanted to brew the beer on the other side of the Tyne river.

 

More dark lagers please. Particularly Schwarzbiers.

 

I agree with you to some extent, but probably less vehemently. However I think it's an argument that misses the mark of what @zid thinks is important. What I think he's saying is it's really honoring the brewers/families who kept the traditional beer alive, and that they happen to all be in Belgium is more coincidence of history. (@zid I know you are perfectly able to speak for yourself, and I welcome any correction/clarification.)

 

That's sort of a nobility principle, an inherited claim to social deference. "I have more rights and authority than you solely because of the status of my ancestors." Appropriately for this debate, it's very old-fashioned European and very un-American in attitude. I personally don't think because some guy in Belgium hundreds of years ago made lambic that some other guy in Belgium today who may or may not be descended from him and may or may not work at the same brewery has any special say on what some guy in the United States calls a beer made the same way.

 

I can't help but respond again to this in the spirit of fun. It reminded me a little of the origins of milk stout. I'm not claiming that the below is analogous to the lambic situation, and I don't want to extent the lambic conversation in comparison to this, but there's a little overlap and it's a fun bit of trivia about how milk stout was a concept with a patent held by Mackeson that they'd license out to other brewers. Here are links to @patto1ro 's blog on the subject and some lawsuits regarding "false trade description." It's good stuff.

https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2017/05/legally-defining-milk-stout.html
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2017/06/milk-stout-legeally-defined.html

 

I'll just say this and then I'd like to bow out. Any sympathies that I have to the argument of the Belgian producers are not about environmental terrior or a brewer's descendants. They've dedicated their lives to keeping an endangered tradition alive that comes from their part of the world. They ask that others do not appropriate their culture and sell this thing under the same name. Is this really asking too much?

 

Exactly.

 

Someone with more knowledge of this than me can chime in, but didn’t Cantillon basically keep Lambic alive? So it’s less about the ancestors and more about Jean Van Roy? The same guy who’s asking them not to use the name in the US?

 

Baltic Porters with heavy molasses or treacle undercurrents
Grodziskie
Black IPA's
English Pale and Dark Milds
Eisbocks
Doppelbocks
Bocks and Maibocks that are either traditional (but well done) or pushing some limits (adding smoke?, fruitier without fruit actually added?)
Munich Dunkel Lager (seeing some activity here)
Rauchbiers
Rye Beers (there were a couple good local options that have disappeared)
Tripels