Beer Style: Does it Matter?

Does beer style matter? Does it mean anything? That was the essence of the British Guild of Beer Writers’ annual seminar this week. Three stood up and talked, giving their different views, then the floor added to it, and then, as we rose from the theatre-like seating, we continued our talk in small groups and one thing was clear: we all have different viewpoints.
Understanding beer style, for me, is split into two audiences: the informed few and the couldn’t-care-less many. The informed few want to understand style from a composition point of view, they have a vested interest in whether that beer is a porter or a stout, whether it’s a pale ale or a golden ale, of where it’s brewed, how and with what ingredients. These are the brewers, the marketers, the writers, the industry insiders, competition judges and those with a higher interest in beer. These are the people who want to know the ins and outs in order to dissect it and understand it. For this group it’s important to understand differences because they have a more challenging job: to explain these beers to everyone else.

To ‘everyone else’, there is little desire to pull apart a style guideline before drinking. They want to know one thing: how does it taste? It’s then a communications thing: how can the informed few tell the drinkers what it tastes like in the simplest, most effective way. It comes to presentation and included in this is a pump clip, the bottle label and the person selling it. If someone usually drinks Guinness then perhaps they’d like this porter (with a description of dark and roasty); if they usually drink Landlord then maybe they’d like this beer or that one (maybe with one described as a fruity and fragrant best bitter).

Being able to communicate style is key to being able to encourage people to drink good beer. It doesn’t matter that it’s an IPA, what matters is that it’s pale, 5% and really fruity with a dry finish. Would you like a sample before you order...? But the communicators face a different challenge.

To the people who do find beer style interesting it’s a real minefield. One thinks styles are moving targets, one says it’s evolution, one says style doesn’t matter, one says styles need to be rigid and others just don’t know. I think style is very important. Give me a beer called ‘Square’ and I have no idea what it is. Sure, I can drink it and say whether I like it or not - which is ultimately the most important decision - but something within me niggles to know, at the very least, what the brewer was aiming for (and what they want to tell others it is) as if knowing the style privileges me with extra information. It’s human nature to want to attach labels to things in order to understand them better.

Yet knowing style only helps to label something and a mild is a pallet of possibilities, likewise lager or IPA (order an IPA in a pub in England and then order one in a bar in America and you’ll probably get something very different; go back in time 50 years and it’s something else). What’s a best bitter taste like now? What does it look like? What did it look like 10 years ago and what will it be in 10 years time? It’s like trying to match a fixed point on a moving target, like pin the tail on the donkey, only harder. Maybe having 29 styles of lager is necessary to break it down further, but maybe this just makes it more confusing.

I’m interested in style because I’m interested in beer but it’s an open box of possibilities and one which is as fluid as the topic in hand. Most people don’t care about style, they just want to know what it tastes like. For those who do care then they have the challenge of trying to understand guidelines which are forever changing. But that keeps beer fresh. If guidelines were rigid and inflexible then all beer would taste the same as the others in its class and that’s not a good thing.

From Mantis Design

So how do you label style? Michael Jackson did a fine job of describing and distinguishing them. CAMRA keep it simple, only breaking things down into a number of categories, but I think it’s too reductive and needs expanding slightly. Alex at ALL Beer breaks it into the organism of fermentation – ale, lager and lambic – before breaking it down within those areas. The BJCP has 23 categories broken down into 79 different styles. Then there’s the Brewers Association style guideline which is enormous (over 130) and essentially ridiculous, exemplified by the following ‘style’: “Out of Category – Traditionally Brewed Beer... They may be light or dark, strong or weak, hoppy or not hoppy.” This document has ripped apart beer style and listed it scientifically and in doing so it has stripped an essential creativity from the process and placed restrictions on what style should be (and the worst thing? When beers are judged using this and they don’t exactly fit what the brewer has classified it as... they are removed from the judging table regardless of whether they are good or not!).

What is beer style? For me it’s a label the brewer puts on something they have made; it’s what they want the beer to be enjoyed as. If they call it an IPA but it’s closer to a golden ale then so what? It’s their beer and who are we to complain. It’s nice to have an understanding of style but if it goes too far then it can strip the soul from a good beer. And probably the stupidest thing is saying that they need to be categorised in order to be judged in competitions... Whatever. Yes, style is important, and yes it’s important to pass on information about it, but it needs to be done simply or it just confuses everyone. Leave it to the brewer to tell us what they want their beer to be seen as, then we can drink it and enjoy it (or not) for what it is and tell others how it tastes.

Style: what do you think? Does it matter? Do you care whether something is labelled as a best bitter but tastes more like a mild, is it important that your pale ale is ‘to style’? And how can we communicate what different styles are like in the easiest way?

The Many Varieties of Beer from here. Style spectrum from here. Periodic table of beer from here. 

Working Title: Pale and Hoppy

The term Mid-Atlantic Pale Ale seems to be bandying around after Gazza proposed the name for hoppy British ales. Mid-Atlantic pale ale... Seriously? It’s almost as bad as Cascadian Dark Ale.

Firstly, mid-Atlantic, unless it’s an ironic name, drops literally in the middle of the sea (and all the way to the sea bed, if you ask me), which couldn’t be further away from a pint if it were halfway to the moon. Secondly, this term seems to be a catch-all for the pale British beers made with lots of hops from America or New Zealand (which is nowhere near the Atlantic), but also including British hops too, I assume, so perhaps it lends too much credit to the US. Thirdly, styles naturally evolve and need to have a fluidity to them and it could be the case that in a few years time these pale and hoppy beers are the normal for the style in the UK. And point four is that it just doesn’t sound very cool.

The name applies to beers brewed with 100% pale malt, highly hopped, well attenuated with a yeast that doesn’t give off many esters or other flavours “to let the hops shine without competition,” coming out somewhere between 3.5% and 8% (5% is best, he says). It’s very pale in the glass and very bitter in the mouth. It’s a mix of British and American influence and it’s a style which I love – there’s something which just works so well in a simple pale ale with lots of fruity hops, especially from the cask – and it’s the style that I most want to drink right now. I also agree with what Gazza is saying and the whole point of the article (it’s firmly a British beer just with American hop influence), but mid-Atlantic? I understand the desire to classify – we all like to stick a label on something so we can understand it (or complain about it if it isn’t right) – but surely we can come up with a more compelling name than that?

Thornbridge Brewery call Kipling a South Pacific Pale Ale and Ashford a New World Brown Ale, which works well for those, but perhaps shouldn't be extended broadly to others. In 500 Beers Zak Avery uses the term International Pale Ale, which would work with this style – it’s International, brewed in one place, taking influence and ingredients from another, but it could then become a dumping ground of a term. What’s wrong with Pale and Hoppy, New World Pale Ale or just Pale Ale, after all, it’s not exactly a new style, it’s just British Pale Ale 2.0 with different hops used in it, a natural progression, the latest fashion. How about Trans-Atlantic or Cross-Atlantic or Anglo-American if there’s a desire to say that this style is somewhere between the UK and the US (which therefore rules out the rest of the world, presumably)...

Mid-Atlantic pale ales... what do you think? Do they need their own classification and if so, what can they be called?

Image from here. I did try and photoshop in a bottle of beer bobbing around in the sea but failed remarkably.

The Origins and Fashions of Style

I’ve been reading a lot about style recently, in particular in relation to Michael Jackson. I’m interested in how they developed, where they came from, who drinks them and how they evolve and change. Thinking about this I was reminded of a post written by Brian Hunt, from Moonlight Brewing Co., on Mario Rubio’s Hoppress blog. Brian wonders what things might have been like if barley was native to the US and not the Middle East. He asks what pilsners would be without Pilsen, what IPA would be without Britain, how different lambics might be now. Instead he supposes that these beers might have originated in the US in what is a wonderful the-US-is-the-centre-of-the-universe type idea, but it’s still an interesting thought:

The World Book of Beer would’ve been written about the delicate beers of Denver, the hoppy ales of Seattle, Steam beers of San Francisco, roasted beers of New York, herbed beers of Ann Arbor, wheat beers of Kansas, Spruce beers of Alaska, sour cherry beers of the Columbia River Valley, Rye beers of Fargo, and on and on.

On the back of this Jon Abernathy posted about indigenous US beer styles – California Common, Pumpkin Ale, Wild Ales, Light Lager, American-prefixed Everythings (an Americanization of established styles by adding loads of American hops) and Imperial Everythings.

Many styles are - at least in their origin - inextricably linked to place, the beers the people there wanted to drink and to the ingredients readily available where they came from: Burton ales and Pilsners are famous because of the local water, lambics get their unique flavour from the airborne yeasts in the Pajottenland region, American IPAs get their huge fruity bitterness by being stuffed with American hops. This then flicks the switch in my mind to the beers styles which are uniquely British - pale ale, mild, bitter, porter, stout and barley wine, among others. Why did these styles develop and last in Britain? What do these styles say about Brits? Every American brewery needs a great IPA to stand out as their flagship beer but what’s the British equivalent that they need in their range? Best bitter, pale ale?

The globalisation of beers and styles, plus the ready availability of different ingredients, means that any beer can now be brewed anywhere. The origin of a style is telling of the time and area it first came from, while the developments it goes through show the current drinking fashions (look at India Pale Ale 200 years ago, then look at it 100 years ago, 50 years ago, then when it was adopted by the US, when North West hops were added freely, then it went Imperial, then Belgium found them, then back in the US it went Black...). It’s easy to look around now and see that we have British lagers, Belgian IPAs, Italian wild beers and American saisons, styles which have evolved and changed to suit different tastes and influences. It’s also good to look back sometimes too, to understand where they came from as there’s often a great story at its core. The origin of a beer style, whether it’s 2,000 years old or just two, is a fascinating insight into people (brewers and drinkers) and place at different times in history. How important is place to a style, old or new? How telling is the fashion when it comes to style? What styles will be next to get the US treatment or even the British touch? London lambic? Sheffield saison? American mild?

Image from CraftBeer.com. This post asks more questions than it answers and that's the point - I think style is a really interesting subject and it's something I'm trying to understand better and wrap my brain around. This is more a train of thought post than anything else.

Style: I don’t get it

This week I had one of those ah ha moments. One of those moments when all of a sudden I got it. I've had a couple before this one: first there was Orval, then it was lambic. Now it’s tripels, a style I've previously never understood. To me they were just strong blondes; not something I'd drink to quench a thirst, not something I'd drink when I want something bigger, tasting vaguely metallic, strangely spicy and oddly hoppy. They were just not something I ever chose to drink, ever ordered or ever bought.

It was two separate revelations: Westmalle Tripel then Chimay White. Beers I've ignored until now, overlooked. I had them at an excellent Trappist evening at the White Horse. We tried a beer from each Trappist brewery then sat down to dinner paired with each of the Chimay beers. A trio of rabbit with the Red, salmon and asparagus with the White and Chimay cheese with the Blue. It was the White which stood out. What I got with the White, and with the Westmalle before it, wasn't what I expected: bold and hoppy, lively, clean, delicious. The previous conviction of it being boring and ‘just strong’ was gone. Each mouthful was different, each was interesting, each was exciting. I loved the big hops (it was the hops that did it), their aroma, their bite, the fruitiness of them, the peppery kick. I loved the fullness of body, the richness of flavour. And above all else I saw how they belong next to a plate on the dinner table. I finally got it.

There are inevitably styles which aren't quite your thing. Some don't like smoked beers, some don't enjoy gueuze and lambic, some don't like fruit, some prefer dark to light, some prefer strong to weak. Maybe they are styles which you actively dislike, maybe they are just styles which you never choose to drink. My particular 'meh' styles are Belgian blondes, strong Belgian blondes, Flemish reds, bocks and rauchbier. I just don't particularly enjoy them, in general (although a Taras Boulba is enough to turn anyone on to a feisty blonde). Until last night, tripels also fell into this category.

But the question is this: what styles do you either not like or rarely drink because they don't really do it for you? What don’t you get? What style could disappear from the beeriverse without you even noticing?

I think, and this applies to all styles, that it takes a eureka moment for everything new. The first DIPA, the first imperial stout, the time you realise sour beer is okay, the time you switch from lager to bitter, the moment you discover that Orval is meant to taste like that. This isn’t limited to esoteric styles, this works with everything, it’s just that some styles take a bit more work than others.

Black IPA, India Brown, Imperial Brown, Cascadian Dark Ale...

It feels like every time I’ve read through the American beer blogs or looked at twitter this week I’ve been faced with the term Cascadian Dark Ale. Adrian Tierney-Jones wrote about it this week, linking back to a Hop Press post by Lisa Morrison, since then it’s popped up repeatedly (including another Hop Press post from Josh Oakes) with the name slipping casually into place as if everyone accepts, knows and understands what it is already... but I don’t like it.

I’ve grown to like ‘Black IPA’ as the name for a dark beer lustily bittered and flavoured with US hops. Yes, it’s an oxymoron if you look at it as being an India Pale Ale, but I’d sit down opposite you in the pub and happily argue the point (which I’ve written about here) that ‘IPA’ and ‘India Pale Ale’ are terms which can be used separately and that ‘IPA’ has become its own noun with different meanings to ‘India Pale Ale’ to today’s drinker. I’d argue this because the evolution of an IPA, in nearly all modern examples, separates it from its historical connotations in many ways: different hop varieties used; different mentality behind the brewing; the now-redundant use of ships and barrel-aging; the necessity to drink these beers super fresh rather than brewing them to taste one way and appreciating that it will change into a more drinkable beer. New-skool IPAs are not Pale Ales brewed to be exported to the Indian market in the 19th century, they are something completely new.

IPA has become the staple of US brewing and it’s almost a benchmark of how good a brewery is – if your IPA isn’t up to it then neither is the rest of it. Black IPA is a US thing, which is now being picked up by British brewers. As it’s a US thing, you need to look at the US understanding of an IPA, which for me, when suffixed onto a beer name, tells me I’ll be getting something pale in colour (usually golden, through caramels and into an orange hue) with a lot of vibrant, fruity, citrusy, piny hops and a bold bitterness. There is no link to a beer which has made a long sea journey to be enjoyed in India. A Black IPA tells me I’m getting a dark beer with the hop quality of a ‘regular’ IPA and I think it works. Plus the oxymoronic quality of the name somehow adds something, as if this style were a little bit naughty and rule breaking, which transfers into the taste.

But some people don’t like ‘Black IPA’, hence the push for Cascadian Dark Ale to be the style name. I would guess that this push is mainly coming from the Pacific Northwest, specifically in the Cascade region... To me, CDA means nothing. Sure that’s where most of the hops grow, but that’s not enough and the area is too specific for a ‘world style’. Lisa Morrison lists four reasons why she likes the name Cascadian Dark Ale. I’d argue against all of them. One, Black IPA and Dark IPA are oxymoronic, but I’m fine with that, as I’ve said, because the style is challenging and different, so the name fits. Two, she thinks CDA is a great bar call, as in “Two CDAs please”. I think it’s a terrible bar call. It sounds like a drug or an illness. Three, the story and history behind a beer style endear people to it, which is true, but you can’t magic up history in a couple of months, slap a new name on it and expect people to be interested. That’s called marketing and I don’t think the story behind it is interesting enough (‘Oh, that’s just where a lot of hops grow, then?’ I can hear them saying, but engage them in a discussion of Black/Dark IPA, the history of IPA, the evolution of style and the use of the Black/Dark misnomer and that’s interesting). Four, it celebrates an appellation, but would this stop hops grown outside of the Cascade area from going into a CDA? Does the water and barley need to be from there too? I will also add that Cascadian Dark Ale sounds like the name of a brew, not a style.

If the term Black IPA isn’t liked, and Cascadian Dark Ale doesn’t do it for me, then what about alternatives? Dark IPA is a gentler version of Black IPA, and I like that. ‘Dark’ doesn’t crash in like ‘Black’, instead it suggests that the beer is just a little darker than usual. What about India Brown? Or is this just a strange linking of styles between an IPA and a Brown Ale? Does the addition of ‘India’ to a name immediately suggest that lots of hops have been added? If so, why? What about Imperial Brown Ale, just like red ales have been Imperialised (and they taste like Red IPAs...), why not just intensify the Brown Ale?

I do think we need to have a name for this emerging style of beer but I hope Cascadian Dark Ale doesn’t stick. It seems to me that Black IPA is working so far, so I don’t see a need to change it, but if it’s going to change then my vote goes with Dark IPA or Imperial/India Brown Ale (IBA).

What do you think works as a name? And as a side note, which dark IPAs are good? I haven’t found Thornbridge’s Raven, which sounds like a winner, but I’m not a huge fan of the style yet as for me there’s something which collides somewhere between the heavy roasted bitterness and the citrusy hop bitterness...