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?