Those are historical styles. They didn't make up a BJCP style for themselves.
Unfortunately, as global and connected as the world is today, its going to be really hard to name regional beers anymore. As soon as someone in California brews a beer, someone in NY can brew the exact same thing a week later.
That's semantics... They are historical due to region specificity and distinction. As to beers not being geographically contained, that isn't the arguement, the stance is that these beers ORIGINATED here, and the name is an expression of that fact.
My recollection, having lived in Portland until about 2.5 years ago, is that they were called black IPAs in the PNW until very recently.
True, maybe as recently as say someone suggested a distinction be made in say the BJCP guidelines that recognizes a regional trend and offered up a name to catagorize said distinction.
I have a great idea. Let's all brew a dark colored APA. It will have 120+ IBUs and a SRM minimum of 80. We'll require that it only use hydroponically grown hops, NW hop varieties will be an automatic disqualifier from this category. You have to blend in some genuine moonshine, and home made barbecue sauce. it should be fermented at 95 degrees and 100% humidity. We'll call it "appalachian ale"
Go for it, as well as the guy who proposed doing some other absurdity a few pages back. If it catches on, and, as the write up stated with regard to CDA, people are brewing it all over the place after a decade, then maybe we can consider you proposal.
I like the idea of a "Black IPA" making into the guidelines but not limiting its hop choice to PNW varieties. I bet you could make a hellulatasty dark, highly-hopped beer using classic English hop varities. A wee bit of roastiness alongside some nice Fuggles and EKG...
Fair enough, but the suggestion wasn't for a broad range black IPA. It specified a regional ingredient and its use by those in, perhaps, this catagory. Using EKG could certainly be used in a black IPA, but it wouldn't be used in a CDA.
"Cascadian Dark Ale" is needlessly limiting, when the key focus (IMHO) is on the pairing of a dark, subtly-roasty beer with a lot of hops. No need to limit the hop choices.
Why not, plenty of other styles limit hop or grain choices. A true wiezen isn't going to be made with chinook, although I suppose you could, but it wouldn't be brewed to style. I suppose you could use US 2 row in an English brown, but again the style calls for Pale English. Even yeast is limited in style sheets. If you don't want to brew to style, fine, but if style is an important consideration then a guide for a regional beer that calls for a regional ingredient is more than valid.