i dont brew to style

[Drewch]

I find that the styles are the most useful when sharing my beer with others. You'll always get the "what kind is it?" question.

Styles are useful descriptive points of reference. Like the jargon developed by any community of interest, brewers need a shorthand to communicate.

But no one should feel wrong for brewing something that doesn't fit a particular style.

A lot of my recipes start with an idea or concept .... and then I pick a style label to describe them after the fact.

 

[HM-2]

I treat styles as "suggestions" more than anything. I mostly use the BJCP guidelines for comic effect- especially for things like the Hazy IPA which if treated strictly would completely exclude many of the best examples of the style

 

[beersk]

I think "styles" give a good foundation on which to be creative. I liken it to knifework in cooking, or maybe better, understanding the broad flavors and techniques of a national cuisine. "Fusion" is cool, but without a foundation, it's garbage. Peanut butter tomato fritters with watermelon and onion foam.

I was going to mention fusion cuisine, like mixing Korean with Mexican food for Korean bbq tacos and food like that.
Personally, I don't like fusion cuisines much. I much prefer the more traditional cuisines. (I think the word authentic is used incorrectly, when most people mean to say "traditional". They are not the same thing).
And beer for me is the same. I brew beers to style. And I want to drink beers to style. When I order a pilsner in a brewery or restaurant, I do not want some lager-like thing with 50 IBUs of citra hops. Ick. That is fusion brewing and most all of American craft beer is fusion. Give me the traditional styles anyday.

 

[tracer bullet]

I brew to style, mostly, but not rigidly. I find it a good "jumping off" point. Find some recipe that won awards, brew it, then tweak it afterwards to my liking. It'd be out of style by the time I'm done, but for me it would be better. And I can still easily describe it if I'm going to give someone a glass of it.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

The thing that gets me is the BJCP guidelines on British Bitter. Ordinary, Best , Strong, Golden Ale. Complete rubbish Bitter is Bitter what ever you classify it. Calling a bitter @ 4.9% ABV strong bitter is so far out it’s comical. I use Brewfather software and have created a style called British Bitter that covers the lot.
I’ve also created a Strong Wheatbeer category for my Niagara wheatbeer which is 6.7%.
Rant over.

 

[grampamark]

Apparently, it’s OK not to brew to style. A lot of homebrewers, and far too many brewpubs, who think they do-don’t.

 

[Drewch]

Personally, I don't like fusion cuisines much. I much prefer the more traditional cuisines.

But every cuisine is a fusion cuisine. Even the quintessentially boring English cooking is a mix of Angle, Saxon, Celtic, Norse, and Norman French traditions.

 

[Gadjobrinus]

There's fusion cuisine, as whrn Catherine de Medici brought courtly, refined cooking to the cretinous French, creating what everyone thinks of as French haute cuisine ever since, and there's the fusion cuisine that everyone and their cousin thinks of when they think of fusion cuisine. Foie gras ice cream with ras-al-hanout caramel sauce and sea urchin lingonberry tuiles.

 

[bwible]

I think another reason we have “styles” is that people in different areas of the world work with whats available to them and try to play to their strengths. The soft water in Pilsen, the (lack of) availability of hops and malts in Scotland, the mineralized water in Burton, etc.

Then styles develop due to changing times, regulations, and/or tastes. For example all beers were brown at some point before malt could be dried cleaner, leading to pale beers and a fascination with clear glassware.

British beers became lower in gravity due to taxation. Brewers in the UK did not intentionally set out and plan to brew 3.5% and 4% highly hopped beers. In fact UK brewers brewed many strong beers, how many follow Ron Pattinson?

American beers got lighter during WW II when more men were at war and breweries were catering to the tastes of women.

Nobody was brewing milkshake IPAs 50 years ago. Thats a sign of the times - people have abundant time on their hands and alot of resources including newly developed hops to try something new.

I don’t think these things were planned. They are adaptations. I don’t see styles as set in stone, harshly defined things. Styles evolve over time to be a combination of what brewers can produce and what people at any time want to drink. Breweries wouldn’t make NEIPA if nobody was buying it. British breweries would brew more Mild if more people were buying it.

Style is just an attempt to describe what somebody is or was making somewhere in the world at some point in time.

 

[Bobby_M]

I think another reason we have “styles” is that people in different areas of the world work with whats available to them and try to play to their strengths. The soft water in Pilsen, the (lack of) availability of hops and malts in Scotland, the mineralized water in Burton, etc.

Then styles develop due to changing times, regulations, and/or tastes. For example all beers were brown at some point before malt could be dried cleaner, leading to pale beers and a fascination with clear glassware.

British beers became lower in gravity due to taxation. Brewers in the UK did not intentionally set out and plan to brew 3.5% and 4% highly hopped beers. In fact UK brewers brewed many strong beers, how many follow Ron Pattinson?

American beers got lighter during WW II when more men were at war and breweries were catering to the tastes of women.

Nobody was brewing milkshake IPAs 50 years ago. Thats a sign of the times - people have abundant time on their hands and alot of resources including newly developed hops to try something new.

I don’t think these things were planned. They are adaptations. I don’t see styles as set in stone, harshly defined things. Styles evolve over time to be a combination of what brewers can produce and what people at any time want to drink. Breweries wouldn’t make NEIPA if nobody was buying it. British breweries would brew more Mild if more people were buying it.

Style is just an attempt to describe what somebody is or was making somewhere in the world at some point in time.

I grant all of that. Styles just exist because they are regional or cultural and evolve like any other part of culture. Some styles are ancient and they are held in high regard due to their long history. The BJCP's intent has always been to document what is, i.e. descriptive. These are the styles and here's how they compare and contrast to other styles. The guidelines are also pretty transparent about how fleeting things can be and that they don't rush to create new categories just because two breweries started making a thing that doesn't fit into current styles (other than mixed or experimental).

 

[beersk]

But every cuisine is a fusion cuisine. Even the quintessentially boring English cooking is a mix of Angle, Saxon, Celtic, Norse, and Norman French traditions.

You're right. I guess what I mean by the use of the word fusion is more modern fusion cuisines rather than any sort of traditional cuisines. Of course, a good example of a more modern fusion cuisine would be Americanized Chinese or Tex-Mex. But I think I was meaning even more recent than those two. Americanized Chinese and Tex-Mex have been around for at least half a century or more? That's just a guess, I don't know when either were introduced.

 

[Gadjobrinus]

We re torturing the term fusion cuisine into the meaningless. "Fusion cuisine" is a specific term and has its roots in the 1970's nouvelle cuisine "revolution" in French cooking, when chefs like Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Michel Guérard, the Troisgros brothers and others jettisoned the emphasis on heavy sauces and plating that had been in place since at least Escoffier (himself a "nouvelle" response to the truly classical cuisine of Marie-Antoine Carême). These chefs drew from Asian techniques and flavors (in particular, Japanese) and combined them with their battery of French techniques to make a lighter, more spontaneous, more nuanced cuisine.

As with all things, what started authentically turned ridiculous as lesser chefs aped the fathers of nouvelle cuisine by ending up with a pea on a plate and calling it art.

To say "all food is fusion" while technically true, doesn't get us very far in truly dealing with the concept of style.

 

[Danny Wallace]

I use ale yeast for almost everything, including Oktoberfest and Bock (nobody complains). I don't want to lager or ferment at low temps.

I'll share that secret here, but don't tell anybody else.

I do this too!!! No one notices and I don't have to change my setup.