BJCP guidelines

Your beer does not have to fit into the guidelines. The guidelines are a framework for a brewing competition, if your beer could fit into one of the guidelines descriptions, then enter it and see what happens.

I have some beers I make that don't fit anything, so those do not get entered. For some categories you just need to brew to style.

New style guidelines will be rolled out in June. There may be a few more sub categories, but I don't know for sure.

Edit, there are also the Belgian specialty and Specialty (23), that are pretty open catch all categories.

 

They are just a way for us to divide the beers up and rate them against a "standard" - otherwise it's like a free for all; everyone pick their "favorite"

I think everyone should brew for their own enjoyment. Except for NHC where I plan way ahead that's certainly what I do. how about some examples of beers you enjoy that don't fit existing style?

*edit* - dozens of times I've found myself saying or writing "this is my favorite beer of the weekend, but it doesn't fit this style" - people are too quick to think that their lack of ribbons/medals means their beer isn't great. It doesn't have to mean that at all.

 

But who decides what fits the style? Beer simply doesn't have a governing body and there just isn't an authoritative set of definitions as to what defines a style.In any case they change ; the beers my father and grandfather drank have the same names as what I enjoy but the beers are distinctly different.

 

Like any competition, you're striving to meet some standard. The Guidelines are the standard that is used to judge a BJCP sanctioned competition.

Consider a foot race, for example. In a 5K race, competitors are ranked according to how fast they can run 5K. Some might think that a race is a race and that 5K is arbitrary and somehow artificial, but that's simply the standard by which a 5K race is judged. You may be able to run a 3 minute mile, but that's irrelevant in a 5K race.

I brew beer for me. Thus, I don't enter too many competitions. If a beer fits a style nicely, I might enter it just for bragging rights, but, with rare exceptions, that's usually not what I'm thinking when I brew it.

 

For Homebrew competition purposes in the USA, beer simply does have a governing body and there just is an authoritative set of definitions as to what defines the stye. You don't have to agree with the definitions, and if you ever take up homebrewing again, you certainly don't have to follow them yourself, unless you enter and expect to win AHA/BJCP type competitions.

 

Fine, a body sets the criteria for the category entries in homebrew competitions and judges accordingly. That's OK and nobody can object however contrived and fictional they may be but then these guidelines become accepted as benchmarks in the wider world.And many are so far wide of the mark that I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

 

uh, I thought it was pretty clear that in this case *I* was deciding...

if you want to make this a debate about the style guidelines themselves, it's going to be one-sided. I have studied the existing guidelines and believe I'm qualified to make the decision on what fits and what doesn't. It's not really all that hard; I think of it as "I'm judging chocolate chip cookies and someone has entered the best oatmeal raisin cookie I've ever had"

cheers--
--Michael

 

You think the average craft beer consumer's idea of a Scottish Ale was caused by the BJCP guidelines?

 

That's not the fault of the guidelines. That's the fault of those who choose to narrowly apply them as benchmarks in the wider world.

That said, it's hard to argue that an IPA, as 'defined' by the guidelines doesn't sound eerily close to we all call an IPA. I think the guidelines are an excellent reference to the unique characteristics of the major styles of beer - what makes an IPA IPA-ish, or a Saison Saison-ey, for an example. There's lots of overlap and tons of room for interpretation. But they're not an industry 'standard'. They're not intended to be. They're not perfect - there's no such thing as perfection with something as subjective as beer. But I find them very useful and refer to them frequently (most of it's in my head now ). And they're indispensable when judging beers according to how close they are to a target, as fuzzy and arbitrary that target may seem.

 

There never was a style of beer called Scottish Ale (which simply meant beer brewed in Scotland and just the same as what comes from the rest of the UK) until the beer writers made it up.

IPA and Saison are interesting examples.We all know a version of the history of IPA but no brewer I know of brews a beer which is remotely like the stuff that went to India.What's a "true to style" IPA I don't know , in its time it's been in so many forms. And the history of Saisons has been ignored, it never was a style in the first place but simply the name given to individual local low gravity beers brewed in the winter for large scale consumption in hot weather.Like farmhouse cheese , it could have been pretty well anything.So what in essence is "saisoney" beer?

 

You think the average craft beer consumer's idea of a beer brewed in Scotland was caused by the BJCP guidelines?

 

You're referring to the origins of IPA and Saison. Nothing wrong with that, but, just like the thing that we all refer to as a 'car' today bears little resemblance to the original besides its base purpose, an IPA is not necessarily, indeed, not likely to taste like the 'original' - at least not to our taste buds (not many of us today would even taste the hops in what was once considered a heavily-hopped beer, due simply to an acquired desensitization to hops - but that's another topic).

When I refer to IPA or Saison, or [...], I'm referring to the contemporary 'definition' (a strong word, in this context). When I go into a bar and see a smattering of beers from breweries I've never heard of, I can get a broad idea of what I want by the style that the brewer assigned to the beer. If I'm in the mood for over-the-top hoppy, malty, with lots of body and a good kick, I'm not likely to ask for the beer called a Hefeweizen. I'd be more inclined to order the one called 'DIPA'. Granted, I may be disappointed, but I think you get the point. I think the guidelines take a pretty good swing at documenting the characteristics commonly found in today's IPA.

The Guidelines are not the Bible. It seems the people who claim that they are are those who are most vocal in their criticism. It technically only has meaning within the constraints of a BJCP competition. To assign greater significance than that, and then complain that people assign greater significance than that is just silly, IMO.

 

No, they didn't originate them but they have perpetuated the myths and unfortunately many craft beer consumers look to the BJCP guidelines as definitive.You've only to look at some threads where styles get discussed , before long somebody will quote the BJCP's version.

 

Maybe. But, I have some homebrewing friends and a lot more non-homebrewing craft brew drinking friends. I don't think I've ever heard BJCP uttered by any of the non-homebrewers.

 

Never really thought about that, but you're right. And when I hear homebrewing friends cite the guidelines, more often than not, it's in the context of competition ('this beer would score well as a [...] because [...]', rather than 'This is an excellent beer because the IBUs are between 20-25 as defined in the guidelines')

 

These are from my posts from another thread. This comes up quite a bit.
http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/bjcp-style-guidelines.168253/

"For me, I only enter beers that clearly fit into categories. Pretty simple. I also enjoy making beers to style. If I have a beer that doesn't clearly fit a category, I dont enter it. In my opinion, if you have to try somewhat hard to figure out what category to put it in, you probably shouldn't enter it, or put it in category 23. The exception would be it fits well in multiple categories."

"There are reasons for how the judging process is done. One of the major issues people have is the inconsistencies in beer judging. These types of processes help to standardize judging, make it more objective, and consistent. I can see it being silly, but as someone who has entered and judged, it would probably be a lot less inconsistent, and more frustrating without these types of controls. Competitions arent for everyone."

 

Back on track though, I have entered beers that have been out of style in my eyes only to have the judges tell me it would have fit in style, whichever that style may be. Also, some of my highest scored beers were extreme, to the point of being out of style. Apa hitting 1.065? Hopped like an american ipa? Yeah, won my class. The trick with the specialty category is they have you pick the base style, and if it doesn't fit that style you still get dinged. So if I'm entering a comp, I will either enter something stylisticly on point, or something really good that pushes the guidelines a bit, but I will never enter specialty ale again. That fast and loose crap is not for me.

 

I can't brew to guideline to save my life, but specialty catagories are a different story. Knowing which catagory/subcatagory to enter is half the battle. Cheers.

 

There are plenty of styles I love when going through the filter of the BJCP style guidelines. I enjoy both the challenge of brewing those styles to BJCP standards and consuming them when brewed to BJCP standards. I can't say that for all BJCP defined styles though. For example, the IPA BJCP style guideline is particularly old and outdated vs. the modern American interpretation for sure. That's why I don't enter my IPA's in BJCP competitions. They wouldn't score well and I don't like the type of IPA's that would score well in those competitions. These two guys in my brew club make a fantastic IPA (by modern standards) that just received a score of 20 today in a BJCP competition.....

Most modern commercial IPA's that are popular amongst American craft beer drinkers wouldn't score well in a BJCP competition. It would be comical to see how low the BJCP would score an amazing beer like Russian River Blind Pig for example! "Amazing hop aroma but just not malty enough.....24 points" LOL