TopherM
Well-Known Member
And Gila, you are right on. There are plenty of styles where the guidelines overlap and the distinctions are subtle.
I had a 36 point APA from last year. A brewery up the street from me was having an IPA contest. I put about 0.4 more oz. of hops into my APA and voila, it turned into an IPA by BJCP standards. It scored a 28 in that contest by the way. The 0.4 extra ounces through the whole thing out of balance and kinda screwed it up. Only now, about 6 weeks later is the hop character mellowing out enough that it tastes more like the good, original APA recipe.
Anyway, I'm not talking about these categories where the definitions are more like a spectrum of the same ingredients. I'm talking about the monikers for styles that have strict definitions. There aren't that many of them, but you simply can't declare anything you want to be a lager, or a kolsch, or a hefeweizen, or a lambic/sour, or a fruit beer, or a smoked beer, or a mead, or a cider, or an oktoberfest. All of these styles have at least one characteristic that defines the style, and if you DON'T have that characteristic, you DON'T have that style, PERIOD. There's no shade of gray when it comes to whether you used a sour yeast in a sour beer. No sour/wild yeast, no sour beer! There's no shade of gray when it comes to whether you smoked one of your ingredients to make a smoked beer. No smoke, no smoke beer! No fruit, no fruit beer! No Kolsch yeast, no Kolsch beer! No lager yeast, no lager! No lager yeast, no Oktoberfest (this one is fun around the end of the summer, when EVERYONE's beer seems to be an Oktoberfest....with ale yeast!).
I'm done.....you can't squeeze blood out of a brick.
I had a 36 point APA from last year. A brewery up the street from me was having an IPA contest. I put about 0.4 more oz. of hops into my APA and voila, it turned into an IPA by BJCP standards. It scored a 28 in that contest by the way. The 0.4 extra ounces through the whole thing out of balance and kinda screwed it up. Only now, about 6 weeks later is the hop character mellowing out enough that it tastes more like the good, original APA recipe.
Anyway, I'm not talking about these categories where the definitions are more like a spectrum of the same ingredients. I'm talking about the monikers for styles that have strict definitions. There aren't that many of them, but you simply can't declare anything you want to be a lager, or a kolsch, or a hefeweizen, or a lambic/sour, or a fruit beer, or a smoked beer, or a mead, or a cider, or an oktoberfest. All of these styles have at least one characteristic that defines the style, and if you DON'T have that characteristic, you DON'T have that style, PERIOD. There's no shade of gray when it comes to whether you used a sour yeast in a sour beer. No sour/wild yeast, no sour beer! There's no shade of gray when it comes to whether you smoked one of your ingredients to make a smoked beer. No smoke, no smoke beer! No fruit, no fruit beer! No Kolsch yeast, no Kolsch beer! No lager yeast, no lager! No lager yeast, no Oktoberfest (this one is fun around the end of the summer, when EVERYONE's beer seems to be an Oktoberfest....with ale yeast!).
I'm done.....you can't squeeze blood out of a brick.
