That’s the logical conclusion to your train of reasoning: if you want to claim authenticity for a beer, it must be made exactly the same way as the original—same ingredients, same process, same location.
Thank you for the logical conclusion. I too have a master's degreee in
reductio ad absurdum argument. I have even used it already, in the Rauchbier part. Really, why not just splash some Liquid Smoke to it? Why not colour you "Oktober" with caramel? Why not to fortify your "Bock" with grain spirit? Why, finally, not to up the oomph in those AmIPAs with "nature-identical" synthesized aromatic compounds instead of those unpredictable hops? It's exactly what follows from your reasoning, when reduced to absurdity. Doesn't look more convincing than your "logical conclusion" from my words.
You cannot claim with credibility that one of those three is inviolable while the other two are negotiable.
You can. You can freely ditch the location. It's perfectly possible to repeatably produce aqueous solutions of verifyably identical chemical, physical, gustatory, olfactory etc. properties in two or infinitely more locations.
I brew most of my beers in a schitthole (funny: the forum automatically replaces the correct spelling with the word "lilacflowers" lol), to which the notion of "traditional local beers" is nonapplicable whatsoever; there's just no "traditional local beers" here and never have been. So I brew various beer styles from the better parts of the world, and I brew them with authentic ingredients. I try to build the original water and try to follow the original techniques as far as it's possible at the homebrewing level. And wondrously, my Oktoberfests definitely taste closer to commercial German Oktoberfests than to American Ambers or Best Bitters. And I know why.
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You see, faking foods in traditional Chinese cuisine isn't just what it may seem to us. Since the ancient times it's been regarded as the epytome of culinary art. To be able to create dishes that look and taste like completely different dishes (e. g. a chunk of meat that contains zero animal-derived products or, conversely, a chunk of animal meat that looks and tastes like transparent jelly etc. etc.) was the sign of the highest skill of the cook. They didn't give their culinary curiosities exotic foreign names however. They invented their own.
That's why i put the word STYLE after the name,
^ That's the way to go when brewing historical styles, I believe.
The "
-Style" disclaimer eliminates any possible discussions on authenticity.
But hell no: some people claim to brew (or, worse, teach to brew, or - still worse - brew and sell) centuries-old styles with twelve malts, catty hops, norwegian yeasts and other cute features of the postmodern approach to tradition and heritage - and with no disclaimers. Which I think is wrong.
At least, for the longtime SUABP subscribers.
