Do we really need the term Triple IPA???

Nope. There's nothing wrong with simply having a large ABV range for DIPA. If you're going to try and claim anything is a triple, then someone else is going to claim theirs is a quarduple or a quintuple (for no good reason) and then things just get stupid.

 

Well, they are two different BJCP categories.

17A British Strong Ale
17C British Barleywine

22B American Strong Ale
22C American Barleywine

To summarize the difference, mainly, the American strong ale is a bit lower gravity/ lower ABV and the Barleywine is a bit more tilted toward malt in the malt/hops balance. Certainly there are beers that would exist in the overlapping area of the Venn Diagram.

 

That Venn Diagram would have very little area that wasn't overlapping.

 

Do we really need the term double IPA?

 

Ya, bro, why don't we just call them all Pale Ales?

 

But what do I call thin batches of Hop Craic, labeled XXXXIPA, if there's no TIPA?

 

A pale ale, just varies in alcohol content. I got ya. When NEIPA became an official style i just gave up. It’s just Beer.

 

I really don't care what they call it, if I like it I'll drink it and if I don't I won't.

 

BJCP has Australian Sparkling Ale as a style. Probably not what you were looking for.

 

I’ve had this quadruple IPA.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/287/190386/

 

If that’s a quad IPA then what’s 120 minute classified?

 

If you look at the BJCP description of British strong ale, they actually say that it's "an entry category more than a style" possessing "a significant range in character, as long as the beer is within the alcohol strength range and has an interesting ‘British’ character, it likely fits the style," "can include pale malty hoppy beers, English winter warmers, strong dark milds, smaller Burton ales, and other unique beers in the general gravity range that don’t fit other categories." Then they go on to include a barley wine as one of their 5 examples for the category. Then, in the barley wine listing, they claim "Strong ales of various formulations have long been brewed in England, and were known by several names." I'll make a dumb and gross generalization here, but for the sake of simplicity in this discussion, American categories aren't really much more than C hop mirror images of English categories. To think that there's a "strong ale" style that's clearly different from the "barley wine" style is a reach. I'm not knocking the BJCP, but I understand its purpose and how creating divisions works for it.

 

Sound, common sense advice that would be well considered by much of our U.S. craft beer scene today .

 

Lol, Coopers Sparkling Ale (red label) is the only Sparkling Ale I've come across, there's definitely more than one Aussie Pale Ale out there though... oh well, at least we've got something.

 

Hey I'm not disagreeing with the names, I just find it entertaining is all, and I can understand why newbies to the craft world scratch their heads when it comes to what it all means - I know I did when I first got into this, now I'm like "pass me that Imperial India Pale bro!".