2018 brewers association beer styles

jmcnamara

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Sitting at my local watering hole enjoying a nice amber ale and some buffalo chicken flatbread and perusing the new style guidelines.
Whew there's a lot to go through
A lot of weird and/or older styles that I want to try out.
And theres a double hoppy red ale category?
Also have to laugh at some of these descriptions, "may be pale or dark", "this or that flavor might be subtle or intense", "may or may not be barrel aged", etc. I get it's tough to nail down some styles, but that's a wide range of possibilities there
Oh well, guess I need another beer
 
A few others:
Light American wheat beer with yeast
Light American wheat beer without yeast
Dark American wheat beer with yeast
Dark American wheat beer without yeast

Mind you, these are in the Other category, so there are plenty of other legit wheat beer styles.
What the frikkin deal?

Oh well, maybe I'll have another glass of Basil Haydens
 
Surely they mean residual yeast?
 
Sounds to me like all those high hopped iPas are messing around with beer judges taste buds, now they can't seem to judge a good old fashioned lager or ale anymore.

In my humble opinion I think ipas have gotten way too carried away. I'll stick to improving my brewing process, and enjoying my German lagers, by the time the ipa craze dies off, no-one will remember how to brew a good lager, then maybe I'll go pro, and sweep the market, lmao.
 
Sounds to me like all those high hopped iPas are messing around with beer judges taste buds, now they can't seem to judge a good old fashioned lager or ale anymore.

In my humble opinion I think ipas have gotten way too carried away. I'll stick to improving my brewing process, and enjoying my German lagers, by the time the ipa craze dies off, no-one will remember how to brew a good lager, then maybe I'll go pro, and sweep the market, lmao.
I think there's definitely room for the more traditional, "normal" styles, but I have never been to a brewery that does not have at least 2 IPAs on tap. I just don't see that happening in the American market anytime soon
 
These guidelines actually seem to limit the IPA styles a little. They did add a juicy or hazy IPA style, but there's no red, white, black, brown, purple, or striped IPA styles
 
but there's no red, white, black, brown, purple, or striped IPA styles
No Specialty IPA category? No Cascadian/Black IPA? No Belgian/White IPA?...
 
There was a hoppy dark American beer or something, and come to think of it I saw a belgo-america pale ale or something too.
There was definitely an international IPA, which basically doenst have English or American hop varieties.
Man, think of all the "research" they had to do for this....how do I get that job?
 
A few others:
Light American wheat beer with yeast
Light American wheat beer without yeast
Dark American wheat beer with yeast
Dark American wheat beer without yeast

Mind you, these are in the Other category, so there are plenty of other legit wheat beer styles.
What the frikkin deal?

Oh well, maybe I'll have another glass of Basil Haydens
Agreed. Way too many styles.
 
more than one could brew in a lifetime. in my short homebrewing stint i could count all styles ive brewed on my two hands (including thumbs):).
 
I understand why we have the style guidelines, but I should also be able to write in my own styles on brewersfriend, untappd, beersmith, etc.. because good beer doesn't always adhere to the guidelines.
 
There's an experimental category for basically anything that does not fit into the other styles
 
It does seem to get a bit complicated. It gets so that two very similar beers could be labelled different styles. But that's what you get when trying to create a system while using categories linked to specific times and places.

I think the next step could be a more abstract descriptive system based on the parameters of beer: hoppy, malty, dry, yeasty, strong, dark... rather than styles that are starting to feel a bit like "a shining artifact of the past". We'll see, I suppose.
 

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