I understand what you're both getting at, trust me, I really do. I've been studying for my BJCP tasting exam for 8 months and have become really familiar with style guide lines, I've entered countless competitions and even judged at my first recently. I think the style guidelines are really important especially for situations like this where people get the idea that "Belgian Ales," as I perhaps mistakenly referred to them as, are all the same. They're obviously not. Qualitatively, a Gueuze is wildly (pardon the pun,) different than a Tripel, as you pointed out. It's likely quite frustrating for you to try to explain this, so I'm sorry for the contention and all I can say is, i know exactly what you mean. I've just lately felt like taking a step back and not thinking quite so hard about styles and what differentiates them and "does this Festbier have slightly too much hop flavor for style?" I suppose it's a bit discouraging for me to see beers I and others have worked so hard to create reduced to numerical score relevant to how well it matches a paragraph description about a beer style which has been around for hundreds of years. This is me just putting the romance back into beer like I had when I first started drinking beer and trying "Belgian Ales" and thinking, "Whoa, that tastes f***ing weird and great!" I think for me the term Belgian Ale is really evocative and romantic. Also, all Belgian ales in the style guidelines are lumped into 4 categories, (23 Euro Sour Beers, 24 Belgian Ales, 25 Strong Belgian Ales and 26 Trappist Ales,) so I don't think it's that far fetched to, for funsies only, lump them into one category. I understand though if you don't feel comfortable lumping vastly different style into such a broad category. Thanks for the input, Cheers!
