It’s a matter of style
It’s seemingly one of the most obvious questions; “What am I drinking?” However, many times the answer isn’t so simple. There have been immeasurable numbers of words spilled on the topic and to that panoply I’m going to add a few more. It is a general desire of people to categorize things. Whether talking about animals, plants, fruits, diseases, or whatever, we always seem to want to be able to group things together into groupings of like and unlike. Beer is no different and over the years there have been a number of different schemes proposed for categorizing beer. Many of them have similarities to one another, but where they differ is generally in deciding whether a given type of beer merits its own style description/guideline.
Most of the guidelines begin at one of two points, either looking to group based on the historical understanding of beer styles in a particular region or grouping beers based on similarities in the actual product. Examples of the former include “Prost: the story of German beer“, a wonderful treatise by Horst Dornbusch on the origin of beer styles in Germany, particular lagers that were developed in that region. Similarly, Martyn Cornell has an excellent publication, “Amber, Gold & Black“, describing the origin and history of British Beer Styles (although I recognize the controversial nature of British brewing history). Conversely, the defining style guide for homebrewers is the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP). This organization groups beer in styles that are generally similar in appearance, aroma and flavour profiles. Although they do take geography into consideration the guide is generally descriptive, providing information on how a beer that calls itself “porter”, “IPA”, or “German hefeweizen” should look, smell, and taste like. It is principally used by professional beer judges as a means of judging the quality of beers in homebrew competitions. The BJCP guidelines are arguably the most influential guidelines in the craft beer world.
In general the historical approach is useful for describing beers that hew closely to the historical styles. It is a relatively straightforward approach to identify and categorize a German hefeweizen, Vienna lager, or rauchbier. It is substantially more difficult to categorize a highly hopped, 8% ABV pale weizenbock that is completely unlike anything that has been seen before. Even in the BJCP style guide there is a category known as “specialty beer” that is nothing more than a landing pad for all the beer that doesn’t fit into any other category. The BJCP website lists more than a dozen “minor styles” that represent either styles that are too new or too ill-defined to warrant a separate style of their own.
In addition to these sources, we have websites for providing beer guidelines. The big players in this scene are Ratebeer.com and Beeradvocate.com. Both websites have a great deal of overlap in terms of styles they cover, although there is a distinct difference in philosophy. Taxonomists (people who study the evolutionary relationships among animals often describe themselves as “lumpers” or “splitters”. The meaning of these words is implied in their names, but briefly “lumpers” tend to be more likely to group similar things together, overlooking minor deviations in the history of a given species. Conversely, “splitters” tend to see new species everywhere they look. Even small changes in the evolutionary history will be seen as a reason to describe a new species.
This same approach can be seen in beer style descriptions between Ratebeer.com and Beeradvocate.com. Whereas Ratebeer tends to group all variations of a style under a single style (barleywine, India pale ale or brown ale), Beeradvocate tends to prefer splitting beers into both New World and Old World variations (English and American barleywine, Belgian, English and American IPA or English and American Brown Ale). In addition, whereas Ratebeer makes extensive use of catchall categories like “Specialty Grain” or “Spice/Herb/Vegetable” the folks over at Beeradvocate have Roggenbier, Rye beer, wheatwine, hopposhu (a fairly recent Japanese category in which a large percentage of fermentables are not grain), or kvass that could all comfortably be lumped into the specialty grain category (or others) and specific divisions created for chile beer, pumpkin beer, gose, and even Scottish gruit ale that Ratebeer would normally split into different categories.
So which is better? I think that the answer really depends on who you are and what type of information you are looking for from a style description. The historical divisions make sense in the context that they developed, but in many ways they are rendered almost useless by current trends in brewing. Whereas it used to be that the only place you could get an authentic koelsch or Dortmunder was in their city of origin, that is certainly no longer the case (EU origin labels ignored for the moment). Furthermore due to style drift, many of these pale lager styles overlap markedly with one another. So if I present you with a beer I’ve brewed and call it an American pale lager but you think it tastes exactly like a helles, what does that beer become? Is the intention of the brewer the only thing that we should take into account when deciding what something is? Ditto a hoppy porter that I’ve brewed that rings in at 8.5% ABV. Is that an Imperial Porter, a black IPA, or a strong brown porter? What if I said it was supposed to be an Imperial stout, but I missed my target gravity?
It should be noted that the BJCP is designed specifically to answer questions like this. Every style they present is clearly defined by colour, strength, types of malt used and even the presence/absence of certain esters from the fermentation. They are exquisitely sensitive to matters of process and any brewing faults/flaws will be noted and heavily penalized in a competition. They are the ultimate arbiters of what a style is and these guidelines are constantly tweaked in order to reflect current trends in the brewing world as well as the historical realities of a particular style’s provenance.
At Beeradvocate.com, the website encourages people to rate to style. That means that a reviewer should have some sense in mind of what the beer in their glass should taste like and then compare the beer in the glass to that hypothetical beer. I think that this awareness of style is what leads to the greater number of styles at their site than we have at Ratebeer.com. The site tends to follow trends quite closely and it reflects recent developments in the craft beer world. Belgian IPA, Imperial Pilsner, and wheatwine are just a few categories that barely existed ten years ago yet all have their own category over at Beeradvocate.com.
At Ratebeer.com we generally have a different goal in mind. As with both the BJCP and Beeradvocate.com, we want people to understand what is in their glass and to have some awareness of style, but ultimately we want people to have a good time, to enjoy the beer and to offer a simple assessment… “Do I like this or not”? This hedonistic scale certainly tends to introduce a big beer bias into our Top 50 lists (a controversy that I do not want to wade into at this time) but it also attempts (sometimes unsuccessfully) to have people simply rate a beer as they see fit. What do they like about it and what do they not like about it? Thus, the site tends to be lumpers with several distinct types of beer listed in a single style category. It isn’t necessary to know beforehand whether a beer used an English, American or Belgian yeast strain to ferment it nor to know the relative concentrations of wheat to barley used in the mash tun during the brewing process. The site tends to follow brewing trends with a suspicious eye and usually waits until a style is both well-established and has considerable longevity before calling it a style.
Regardless of which group you place yourself in: lumper, splitter or somewhere in between, an understanding of beer styles will always improve your understanding of what is in your glass and the process that went into it. It isn’t necessary to have the BJCP categories memorized in order to decide whether or not something is worth drinking, but those categories might be useful to you if you’re trying to figure out why you like it. There is plenty of room in the craft beer pool for all of these philosophies and none of them are mutually exclusive anyway. Although discussions of style can often lead to many fun and impassioned arguments, the one thing I think we can agree on is that brewing styles will continue to evolve as they have for the last 500 years and that as craft beer fans, we are still in for some exciting times ahead.
6 Comments to “It’s a matter of style”
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“The BJCP guidelines are arguably the most influential guidelines in the craft beer world.”
In the AMERICAN craft beer world, surely?
And “Prost: the story of German beer“ does a terrible job of explaining the history of German beer styles. Yet another beer book written without any proper research. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
@rpattinson – that’s why I said “arguably”. The UK has a long brewing culture that doesn’t try to be all things to all people. Brits know how to brew milds, bitters and stouts… they don’t need a guide on how to do so. So yes, the BJCP is definitely more of an American-oriented phenomonon.
I would add one thing to your non-exlusive point, I think that as you begin your journey of rating beers it is best to go with the “Ratebeer” style and as you try more and more you can rate more in comparison to others of that style.
I reckon I’m a lumper.
One question for you about the BJCP style guidelines. You mention that they are designed for homebrew competitions, and I reckon this is useful as it sets some boundaries against which a beer can be judged and such. But is it appropriate to try and apply those same judging criteria and myriad of stypes to commercial beers? Would somebody rate a beer as bad if it is “not to style”?
I don’t know if it’s valid, but it’s useful. I can think of a few examples where the brewer calls a beer something that it definitely isn’t… in those cases I think you have to rate something to style (well, you don’t have to rate, but if you do…) Think of Alexander Keith’s IPA, Deuchar’s IPA, or almost any American saison – they simply aren’t what they say they are.
Great article, Joe. Definitely an issue we often consider as beer enthusiasts, yet find ourselves not discussing often enough. I liked your analogy of the Taxonomists with species to beer styles- clever.