It's high time that we update Beer Styles!

Yes, Americans (and American breweries) have been using the term "Bohemian" for well over a hundred years. Perhaps there is the same duration of history in using this term in other countries as well.

I am pretty confident that you have purchased Pilsner Urquell in the past. That beer is not labeled a "pale lager":


It is true that the citizens of the Czech Republic view the term of "Pilsner" as being a sort of appellation and they reserve it for the brand of Pilsner Urquell. A Bohemian Pilsner brewed elsewhere will be referred to as a Světlý Ležák (Pale Lager in English). The reality is that Pale Lagers akin to Pilsner Urquell have been brewed in many places over the past 100+ years and those beers have been labeled via "Bohemian". Just like we Americans are not obligated to follow EU rules regarding labeling beers as Kolsch we have no obligation to follow Czech customs. We (and other countries?) have been calling beers as Bohemian Pilsners for a very, very long time. Lots of history and momentum here.

Cheers!

 

English Golden Ale - yep, I've requested this one before. It's a quite recent style and pretty popular. 'Asian Lager' - lol, yep I totally get that, esp having lived in Asia for years. Perhaps 'Lager, just with lot's of hoppy bitterness neutered out, huuuge carbonation, and perhaps rice used i/o barley'.

Another question is how to handle the 4 countries that make up the United Kingdom. Many applicable styles are 'English [xyx style]', how do I add a listing for a Welsh or Scottish Porter beer, under 'English Porter'? No, that really feels wrong. Does having separate English, Welsh, Scots Porter styles add anything to BA - no, unlikely. Maybe 'English' styles could be amended to the 'British' style namesake instead, that puts England, Scotland + Wales under one style type each.

Lastly, how do and should we handle non-Belgian Trappist beers? Tripels, Quads etc, from the likes of Spencer (US) and Tynt Meadow (UK) etc etc. I'm not sure 'forcing' these to list under a Belgian style handle is at all historically authentic. This might merit input from one of your monastic beer gurus.

Good luck, and thanks so much chaps, this is a wonderful fascinating and endlessly informative site. Cheers, Jonno.

 

Love the effort to both "lump" categories and to discern between types.
IPL long past due
but I do sympathize with BA bosses, hosts, and reviewers about how fine to split the "national" labels for some of these.
A Grisette is fine, not sure I'd need to know it's French, or Belgian (and I'm French! So I would care).
I'll toss out that the "Asian Lager" category seems a little awkward, and should just be under lager. Separating it out might make sense in terms of the quality of types, I get that, but eesh...
Otherwise, I like the trend of the thread and a lot of the logic that others have used.

My head starts to spin a bit when I think of Imperial Stouts, vs Russian Imperial, vs "Pastry" (blech) Stouts, vs. BA Imperial Stouts, but there's probably a need to discern those from regular Adjunct Imperial Stouts for those playing with other things (cinnamon, coconut, coffee, whatever)

 

"Rice Hulls" ? Milled rice (grits or flakes) is the most commonly used rice adjunct in the US - although, by now, it's pretty much exclusive to AB's Budweiser and some other of their beers, since most of the other rice-adjunct US beers and/or their breweries are long gone or, in other cases, no longer use rice (Coors Banquet).

Milling rice removes the husk (hull) and the bran.

As for the question of whether US Light Beers and US Adjunct Lagers are the same "style" - I'd ask, how many AAL's routinely use amyloglucosidase or other enzymes or brewing processes to convert some of the unfermentable sugars or starches to create a beer with fewer calories per ounce (usually accompanied by a lower abv)?

 

Are those beers notably different from the Porters brewed in England (i.e., English Porter)? Are they genuinely a different beer style?

Cheers!

 

If ever there was a non style it is Golden Ale.
Pale Ale or Bitter (which is nothing other than Pale Ale when sold on draught) have always ranged from very pale to copper red according to tiny recipe differences. Irish Red and Golden Ales are simply different Pale Ales, not separate styles.

 

Great minds think alike (see my post above - #186).

Cheers!

 

Consider this another enthusiastic vote for Czech Dark Lager, or some version thereof (depending on how in the weeds on Czech styles you want to get).

 

I'm thrilled for the Kettle Sour category. Everything else is just butter. Cheers guys!

 

There's no Golden/Blonde/White stout. Just a Golden Ale with coffee and/or cacao nibs added. The most gimmicky shit ever. It makes me cringe!

 

If BA’s want sub styles for flavored Stouts fine. Standard Imperial Stout should be a style unto themselves.

 

Any thoughts of moving Berlinner Weisse out of the Wheat Beer group and into the Sour/Wild Ale group? I personnally think the beer style is more relatable to sour ales like Gose and wild ales (and the potential American Kettle sours style) as opposed to wheat beers like Hefes and American Wheat ales. Just IMO.

Also does Rye beer need to be its own category? Probably 75% are really just rye based pale ales and IPAs, some are even NEIPAs with rye (Aslin Neutrio comes to mind). The high ABV ones like Boulevards Rye on Rye series as an example...those could easily move over into one of the appropriate "big beer" categories I would think as they are not in the same species of beer like say IPA like Hop Rod Rye. Just an idea for downsizing some styles if we are adding some others in to keep things managable. (and why isn't Roggenbier classified under rye beer then?)

 

Yes!!! Duh on my part! The DiveBar NYC, one of my regular hang outs has this on tap all the time. Can’t believe I forgot this one.

 

Is maibock interchangeable? Perhaps it falls under the title of doppelbock?
I mean if kotbüsser garners it's own category hellesbock should have plenty of representation.

 

I wouldn’t want to open up another can of worms and make the list even more overwhelmingly long, but I recently added a beer to the BA database and it got me thinking about this. To put it in context, I recently enjoyed a beer from a local microbrewery that was described by them as a Rye Beer, but listed as an Amber Ale on Untappd. To my palate, this beer had a nice amount of rye while at the same time having typical Amber Ale qualities. By default I added it here as a Rye Beer since that's what the brewery called it. However, this opens up an issue that for me becomes especially problematic with the so called Specialty Beers. For example, I would have a difficult time rating, comparing and lumping into the same category this Amber Rye Ale I just described with say a Rye IPA. A similar difficulty might arise for the category of Pumpkin Beer. For example, again I would have a difficult time considering a Pumpkin Beer that uses Stout or Porter as the base style as the same category as a Pumpkin Beer that uses Pale or Amber Ale in the base style. Should we also be expanding these specialty styles?

 

You are thinking about things harder than it needs to be. If a beer is marketed as a pumpkin beer, you put it in the pumpkin beer box regardless of the overlap that exists if it was "also" a porter. That's why the category exists. Ditto for rye. Saying you can't rate it as easily is like saying you can't successfully rate a Framboise or Kriek because they are being lumped together in a "fruit lambic" category. This shouldn't actually make a difference. (I am not necessarily advocating for those categories. I'm just saying how I believe they should be approached.)

 

What, no one likes my "Nouveau" Pils idea?

 

Well, Cornell recognises that pale 'n' hoppy exists, though he calls it Hoppy Light Ale in this blog post from six years after Amber, Gold and Black came out: http://zythophile.co.uk/2016/02/10/shall-we-call-this-new-british-beer-style-hoppy-light-ale/. I am not really convinced by the argument in the four pages he devotes to “Golden Ale” in the book.

Nobody goes into a pub and asks for a Golden Ale in England.

 

I have looked into this before and I have not found any evidence of this, other than modern German craft brewers, but not "as long as they've been brewed," unless I have just completely missed something. I would love to know what German breweries have been dry-hopping their pilsners. It was my understanding that this was frowned upon if not forbidden under Reinheitsgebot. See for example:
https://punchdrink.com/articles/your-move-german-pilsner-beer-tipopils/

https://kcbier.com/2016/04/21/brewed-according-reinheitsgebot/

https://www.beeradvocate.com/articl...riment-inside-the-reinheitsgebots-boundaries/

The last article makes it seem like Gänstaller’s whirlpool hopping in the coolship is groundbreaking (and I can attest that it is delicious).