Styles - The chains that bind?

[Greig McGill]

A few things have come together recently, and provoked some thoughts on beer styles.

I was listening to a podcast rant from Peter Bouckert (brewer at New Belgium in the US) on how he finds styles constricting, and an impediment to his art. Luke also posted that he couldn't enter Epic in many competitions because of style constraints, and now the thread here on defining the NZ Strong Pilsener or whatever it might become. It made me wonder if the tail is starting to wag the dog...

Styles were/are a great way to get people into beer. They show people that beer is far more than the narrow definition they may have had, and open people up to a new world of exploration. For beer nerds like me, they give something to tick off in our quest to taste every style available, and contrast examples of styles from different breweries. They provide a great way of simplifying competitions by providing an objective set of parameters to judge a given beer against. It's this last that is probably the most useful in the world of beer competitions, and competitions drive creativity and innovation in beer.

However, I wonder if styles have now served their purpose as a focussing/educational tool and are beginning to constrict the creativity of the brewer? An award from a recognised competition is a great way to promote your beer, so many brewers will try to brew beers to a style so they can enter, in the process, perhaps not brewing their "dream beer" which we as consumers then miss out on. There will always be brewers who, through creativity and passion (or sometimes just style ignorance/apathy) will brew great unique beers which fall outside the accepted styles, but I do wonder how much more creativity we would see if brewers weren't so constrained.

What does everyone here think? I'm particularly interested in the opinions of commercial brewers, but homebrewers also, as we have to enter competitions in style categories too! Are there any alternatives, especially to facilitate fair objective judging, without having to constrain brewers to specific styles?

[Edward Siddle]

fair point.

[Brendon]

No, there is no obligation to award a medal.
No medal in a category occured at the recent NHC even though there was entries. Can't remember the category though.
Additionally you don't have to award a Gold medal and can award silver and bronze instead.
B

[Stu McKinlay]

Yep, in regards to SOBA's NHC, there were no medals were awarded for "Scottish and Irish Ales" and "Hybrid Beers".

We used the "give every beer its due" method. I don't think there were ever two golds in a category but there were numerous instances of two or more silvers (many times these were also "best in class", as there were no golds).

I noticed that there were no gold medals for a category or two at the recent World Beer Cup - even though they seem to place them as 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

I guess it can work for either method. I certainly prefer the "give every beer its due" method used by BrewNZ, NZIBA, AIBA and SOBA's NHC. It is more informative and give consumers a better indication on the qaulity of the craft beer market overall (i.e. a better ratio of medals:entries, probably means more good beer is being made). Only seems to be the Americans that use the "Olympics" medal style.

[Edward Siddle]

All that is true and I don't have any particular axe to grind for either system. But my point, and I'm curious if anyone agrees, is that if you are going to 'give every beer its due' (ie. judge it against a standard rather than rank it against other beers in that class) then the style guidelines for a particular class suddenly become the standard description of that particular style. and that's when you run into trouble when you clearly have a good beer, but it sits at the margins and doesn't match what's on the little bit of paper that says a beer in this category needs to exhibit characteristics x, y and z.

[Stu McKinlay]

That's why there are styles for experimental beers - e.g. historical IPA or Porter, would be entered as a specialty beer with references to the modern style and how the differ. In these cases, the better the brewer's notes, the better the chance of it being pulled off. The same might occur for a "Double/Imperial Pilsner", a "Midstrength mini-bock", or a "Wiess" (cloudy, young Kolsch).

I tell you, I've got an argument for everything ;-)

[Edward Siddle]

Wiess: speaking of which, my unfiltered, bottle conditioned 'koelsch'-style beers would change categories, from experimental Wiess beers into something i could (under the guidelines if not the charter of the Koeln brewers who makes Koelsch) call Koelsch. they certainly start young (of course) and cloudy, but then they clear up.....

a shame i never got round to hunting down a Wiess when i was there recently. so many beers, so little time.

[Brendon]

http://www.bjcp.org/bjcpfaq.html#stylefaq

It's just a lot easier to come to a decision as a judge when you agree the ground rules of what the beer should taste like. It's not to say that there aren't good beers out there that aren't to style. And it's also not to say that styles are static.
It's sad but true that good beers miss out on medals due to being out of style e.g. Epic, Emerson's Pilsner, etc.
My own personal beef with *some* of the style guides is the narrowness of them (I think Luke has mentioned this). The one that grates me the most is California Common Beer (BJCP 7b) which is really typified by one beer - Anchor Steam Beer! I am sure there are Cali Commons out there but I wonder how many judges think "It's good but not quite like Anchor Steam".
Hopefully it widens in the future

[Edward Siddle]

ESB seems to be the one that gets many of the British homebrewers going. Or the porters and stouts.