Style Drift - World Beer Cup

[Pehlman17]

Curious if anyone else noticed this.
Firestone Union Jack and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale both took gold medals in the latest World Beer Cup… in English ale categories. Union Jack by name alone sort of makes sense, but it’s crazy that the other beer, that essentially defined the American Pale Ale style, is now probably considered stylistically out of bounds.

Not to start another generational debate about beer styles, but here we go… Is malt that bad? Are hops just hindered by the slightest touch of maltiness these days? They’re so precious that they feel overshadowed by anything darker than Pilsner? The slightest hint of crystal malt and we immediately call the oxidation police?

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Beer styles seem to go through a cycle. What I like is different than what you like so the judging of beers is going to change. It also changes with the drinking preferences of the day. It's all very interesting if you want to follow trends but I just follow my own and not get caught up with awards. Make mine malty!

 

[worlddivides]

In that sense, it's interesting because Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was considered an IPA at the time it came out, but then it kind of became a beer that essentially defined the new "American Pale Ale" style, but the APA style ended up being more aggressive and assertive. I guess that's just a good example of how styles shift and change. Kind of similar to the conversations in other threads about how... for example... Fullers London Pride is an English pale ale... which was historically called a "pale ale" by the brewers but a "bitter" by the drinkers, but nowadays few drinkers call it a "bitter" and it's now marketed as an "amber ale." It also reminds me of a few beer style names that have changed multiple times over the years.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale web page from Internet Archives (Sept 13, 2005, link)

Note the gold medal wins from the late 1980s.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

but it’s crazy that the other beer [Sierra Nevada Pale Ale], that essentially defined the American Pale Ale style, is now probably considered stylistically out of bounds.

I experienced this back in around 2018 in a regional (~ 400 bottle) home brewing competition. There were enough entries for a mini-BOS table. A well brewed (and well packaged) SNPA-like pale ale would have scored well, may have advanced to mini-BOS, but probably would have not have moved on to the final table.

 

[hottpeper13]

When I design a pale ale or IPA the first part of the recipe(after yeast choice) is the malt BACKBONE you hear mentioned. Once I get there, then I exbeeriment with different hops. I find the high dry malts way less intrusive then the typical C-60.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

When I design a pale ale or IPA the first part of the recipe(after yeast choice) is the malt BACKBONE you hear mentioned. Once I get there, then I exbeeriment with different hops. I find the high dry malts way less intrusive then the typical C-60.

Same way I craft recipes except I usually know which hops to use.

 

[kevin58]

Style drift? Where have you been? Styles have been evolving for well over 200 years.

Try this on for size:
The year is 1832. The brewery is Truman in East London. The beer is a mild ale. OG=1.115. IBU=84. Color=9.2 SRM.
Source: The Homebrewers Guide to Vintage Beer (pg. 105) by Ron Pattinson. As brewed by Pretty Things Beer 2011-2013.

Fast forward to 1958. The brewery is Lee's in Manchester. The beer is another mild ale. OG=1.042. IBU=27. Color= 14.
Source: https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2010/08/lets-brew-wednesday-1958-lees-best-mild.html

By the 1970's the gravity of mild would drop another 10 points to 1.030 to 1.032 while the color become even darker.


Then there is IPA which is ubiquitous today:
IPA had nearly died out in both England and the U.S. by the mid 20th century. Many beer historians consider Ballentine Brewery in New Jersey as crucial to keeping the style alive. When prohibition was finally repealed in 1933 the tastes of the American beer drinker had shifted to lighter bodied, lower alcohol lagers. Ballentine bucked the trend however brewing an IPA with a gravity of 1.070, was fairly bitter for the time at 60 IBUs and was dry hopped (something they weren't even doing in England any longer). From 1933 to 1979 it could be argued that this was the only example of IPA being brewed anywhere in America.

Then came the early craft brewers like Fritz Maytag at Anchor Brewing in San Francisco and Burt Grant at Yakima Brewing Co. in Chico, California. Both were looking to brew something that nobody else was making and both, independently of each other, traveled to the UK to research what was going on in their beer culture. Maytag in particular was astonished how little IPA was being brewed and how inconsistent the definition of that style had become saying; "There was very little hopping going on, and they weren't dry-hopping". The results were Anchor's Liberty Ale, Grant's IPA, and Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale. And while Liberty Ale and Celebration Ale were not marketed as an IPA all three of these are considered examples of beers that jump-started the style.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Styles need to drift or else we wouldn't have any new beer choices. It's everyone putting their creative spin on a recipe.

 

[Pehlman17]

I was being a bit facetious on purpose of course. I’m all for new and creative things. It’s one of the things that got me into craft beer. The variety. But semantics matter.

We see it with IPA now. You can’t (or at least shouldn’t) just put “IPA” on a menu anymore. You have to specify at least if it’s hazy or not, because they are fundamentally different things at this point. Just like you wouldn’t call a black IPA just IPA. Or similarly, if a restaurant has a burger on their menu, but the patty is made of turkey or some sort of meat-substitute, calling it a “hamburger” would be doing yourself and your customers a disservice. But that doesn't mean I’m saying turkey burgers and veggie burgers shouldn’t exists. They’re just different things.

I ordered a Kolsch the other day, and realized after smelling it and tasting it that the bartender gave me the wrong beer. It was the Pale Ale he brought over. I let him know, and he brought me a pint of the Kolsch but let me keep the pale ale too since he already poured it and I’d already tasted it. Visually I immediately understood how he brought me the wrong one. These two beers looked identical in the glass. And this is I guess the more subjective part of my argument here. I don’t think that Kolsch and Pale Ale should look the same.

We seem to have this weird amount of flexibility around American beer styles that we lack for traditional European styles. Because if the inverse were true and I was mistakenly brought a Kolsch because it was bordering on amber in color, nobody would bat an eye at me saying “that’s not a Kolsch”. But when I complain about American pale ales and IPAs becoming increasingly insipid in the malt department, I’m out of touch.

Edit: Just to clarify, I’m not one of those style nazis either who would insist one be sent to the electric chair for the crime of using Mt. Hood hops in a Czech Pale Lager.

 

[bike2brew]

This topic is being well discussed by my club. Our resident Anglophile treated us to an unrestrained rant regarding the intrusion of the APA/IPA into the English bitters.

 

[Broken Crow]

Some of my favourite coffee comes from a local coffee roaster that started business in the 50's under the name "Colonial Coffee"....not a popular word these days. In the mid to late 70's I remember adults being perplexed by the way kids used the word "Bad". I used to use the word "Sick" to describe pedophiles, but it seems it means something quite contrary these days.
As far as beer goes, we're only on about 200 years of it not tasting of the smoke from malting before heat-exchangers became understood. I loved a few of the crystal clear hoppy-just-above-malt IPA's in the 80's but as this thread began; yeah: these days it seems the clarity and malt parts hold no meaning for the majority.
I'm getting older and it's just not my world anymore and I'm fine with that because I can brew my own till I die and drink it while listening to my old digitized records.

 

[Pehlman17]

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

I was being a bit facetious on purpose of course. I’m all for new and creative things. It’s one of the things that got me into craft beer. The variety. But semantics matter.

We see it with IPA now. You can’t (or at least shouldn’t) just put “IPA” on a menu anymore. You have to specify at least if it’s hazy or not, because they are fundamentally different things at this point. Just like you wouldn’t call a black IPA just IPA. Or similarly, if a restaurant has a burger on their menu, but the patty is made of turkey or some sort of meat-substitute, calling it a “hamburger” would be doing yourself and your customers a disservice. But that doesn't mean I’m saying turkey burgers and veggie burgers shouldn’t exists. They’re just different things.

I ordered a Kolsch the other day, and realized after smelling it and tasting it that the bartender gave me the wrong beer. It was the Pale Ale he brought over. I let him know, and he brought me a pint of the Kolsch but let me keep the pale ale too since he already poured it and I’d already tasted it. Visually I immediately understood how he brought me the wrong one. These two beers looked identical in the glass. And this is I guess the more subjective part of my argument here. I don’t think that Kolsch and Pale Ale should look the same.

We seem to have this weird amount of flexibility around American beer styles that we lack for traditional European styles. Because if the inverse were true and I was mistakenly brought a Kolsch because it was bordering on amber in color, nobody would bat an eye at me saying “that’s not a Kolsch”. But when I complain about American pale ales and IPAs becoming increasingly insipid in the malt department, I’m out of touch.

Edit: Just to clarify, I’m not one of those style nazis either who would insist one be sent to the electric chair for the crime of using Mt. Hood hops in a Czech Pale Lager.

Many beer styles look the same, even though they could be completely opposite of each other. In reality that's one reason to give them specific names.

Your serve at the restaurant made a mistake and poured the wrong one. The taps should be labeled to what us served from them.

This brings up a point I have run across, many people serve beers but have no idea what it is. Every establishment should give their staff a short education in the beer they are serving. They shouldn't know all the style details but a little knowledge about them .

 

[Pehlman17]

Many beer styles look the same, even though they could be completely opposite of each other. In reality that's one reason to give them specific names.

Your serve at the restaurant made a mistake and poured the wrong one. The taps should be labeled to what us served from them.

This brings up a point I have run across, many people serve beers but have no idea what it is. Every establishment should give their staff a short education in the beer they are serving. They shouldn't know all the style details but a little knowledge about them .

It was one of those situations where the server had a tray of drinks going to multiple tables. I’m sure somebody else got my Kolsch and I got their pale ale. Not that I mind, totally honest mistake. But I just used it to point out that I believe Kolsch and American pale ale should be visually disparate. I think malt is a very important element of the pale ale style, and that stripping it down to “let the hops shine” makes it something different. If you take a Vienna lager for example, and brew it with only Pilsner malt and double the hop load, is it still a “Vienna lager”? Technically if it was brewed in Vienna, I guess, but otherwise I’d argue, not anymore.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

It was one of those situations where the server had a tray of drinks going to multiple tables. I’m sure somebody else got my Kolsch and I got their pale ale. Not that I mind, totally honest mistake. But I just used it to point out that I believe Kolsch and American pale ale should be visually disparate. I think malt is a very important element of the pale ale style, and that stripping it down to “let the hops shine” makes it something different. If you take a Vienna lager for example, and brew it with only Pilsner malt and double the hop load, is it still a “Vienna lager”? Technically if it was brewed in Vienna, I guess, but otherwise I’d argue, not anymore.

I can relate, I brew a Doppelbock and also a lighter colored version, a Blonde Doppelbock. Both very malty and delicious but side by side they look like two different styles.

 

[Pehlman17]

I can relate, I brew a Doppelbock and also a lighter colored version, a Blonde Doppelbock. Both very malty and delicious but side by side they look like two different styles.

Now imagine if every new Doppelbock being brewed was blonde, and classic beers like Celebrator had to be entered as a Belgian Dubbel to compete.

It’s like the classic line from Office Space:
“Why don’t you just go by Mike instead of Michael?”
“Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks!”

 

[Pehlman17]

Even though it’s gotten better I think I still have some pent up frustrations from some of the more ridiculous stuff that breweries were pushing, seemingly successfully, to a crowd that clearly wanted beer that tasted like anything but beer. Seeing posts from some local shops that used to be such craft beer havens, of this never-ending barrage of cartoony cans of candy beers with names like “Unicorn Tits” or “Muffin Stuffin”. I’ve said it a million times that I think the old IBU Wars were stupid too. And I’m sure that prevented just as many people from getting into beer as it brought in. But I feel like the reaction was a hard swing in the other direction. Everything suddenly had to be soft, fruity, or sweet. A lot of what was being offered felt condescending in a way. Not too mention one style was suddenly dominating everything in the market, and still does to some extent. Which I thought was kind of the reason craft beer was a thing. To offer variety in a world where “beer” was synonymous with fizzy pale yellow stuff. To teach people about different styles from different countries. To be innovative while also still keeping some homage to tradition and lineage. I know it’s cyclical and things evolve. And right now it feels like the customers are in the drivers seat and breweries are reacting to what they think they want. Whereas it previously felt like the brewers were the ones showing their customers how much more was out there.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Breweries have to show a profit so they are going to brew what people want. Some people blindly follow trends and it keeps the ball rolling along till the next trend.

We as home brewers have the option to brew what we want but it's the big breweries that have paved the way for us to do so.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

SNPA being classed as an English ale is not style evolution, it's just wrong! Do the English get a say?

 

[Pehlman17]

I get the sense the word beer cup is about as “worldly” as the World Series.

 

[Halfakneecap]

I think beer styles from a home brewing perspective are only there so that there can be beer comps. No other reason. Its not a bad thing.

Now im off to brew my lasagne banana licorice oyster white cascadian belgian stout for the upcoming pale ale comp.

Feels good to yell at the clouds now and then, but it doesn't achieve much

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

I think malt is a very important element of the pale ale style,

Agreed.

and that stripping it down to “let the hops shine” makes it something different

Perhaps Session IPA.

---

Here are the pale ale medalists for 2025

For one of the winners, here's the description (emphasis added)

---

Competition Guidelines:

• BJCP 2021 (link)
• 2025 World Beer Cup (link)

---

"About Us" (World Beer Competition 2025 (link))

Not to be confused with North American Brewers Association (link) which has been around since 1996 and also has competition guidelines (link).

 

[Pehlman17]

MadeWest is a great example (and a great beer) and you’re right, it’s basically what used to be called Session IPA. Which was great, because that’s essentially what is it.

Biscuity malt character, medium-full body, 5-ish% ABV, medium bitterness, little to no dry hop character: Pale Ale

Light malt character, dry, light-medium body. 5-ish% ABV, medium bitterness, with large aromatic dry-hop component: Session IPA.

 

[marc1]

SNPA being classed as an English ale is not style evolution, it's just wrong! Do the English get a say?

If you look at post #4, it won a classic English pale ale in 1992. A blast from the past!

 

[Pehlman17]

I think Italian Pilsner is a great example of how I’d like to see most of the modern “pale ales” classified. A separate category for examples where the hops are the star. German Pilsner has its own space, and then there’s a different category for the dry hopped ones using newer hop varietals. SNPA should get to live in the house it built. The new kids are more than welcome in the neighborhood but they should build their own house, not kick the old guy out and move in.

 

[neale]

I think part of the problem is when stringent guidlines are put in place by organisations like the BJCP. People get het up about a certain beer not conforming to those guidelines. Then each of these styles get chopped up further with additional subcategories. Sometimes a beer cant fall naturally into one of these categories.

There is then the problem of 'interpetation'. Its usually the BJCP's interpretation that gets used but their interpretation of certain english styles for example is just wrong. Its as if they have taken a specific beer and used that as the basis for their guidlines. I come from the North of England and I can tell you that a Northern bitter is very different to a Southern bitter, Northern bitters often fall under the BJCP's minimum ABV, Southern bitters are often a bit stronger. Its just how the styles where brewed historically due to local water profiles, availablity of malts etc.

As others have said, unless your entering a BJCP run competition and have to play by their rules, who cares what category a beer falls into as long as it tastes good. It wasnt that long ago that categories like this didnt exist, if the abv was bit low the beer didnt have to be called a Session 'ENTER BEER STYLE HERE' , it was the same style with slighty less alchohol.

SNPA is probably not a million miles away from a traditional english pale to be honest, change them cascade hops to goldings or fuggles and thats pretty much what youve got. Hence back in the day before all these different categories existed it won gold. If that same competition had happened in the UK instead of america I suspect it probably wouldnt have won, Taylors Landlord would have won, it always does....

And for the record.....

if a restaurant has a burger on their menu, but the patty is made of turkey or some sort of meat-substitute, calling it a “hamburger” would be doing yourself and your customers a disservice

.....how much ham is there in that hamburger? I'm pretty sure that lovely beef patty has exactly 0% ham. Its fair to say that its not only world of beer that may have naming problems.

 

[worlddivides]

.....how much ham is there in that hamburger? I'm pretty sure that lovely beef patty has exactly 0% ham. Its fair to say that its not only world of beer that may have naming problems.

0% ham, but 100% Hamburg.

I jest, and I imagine you know that the name "hamburger" has nothing to do with ham and everything to do with the city of Hamburg in Germany (which means "bending fortress" in the original German, if I remember correctly).

EDIT And if you're interested, this is the precursor to the hamburger:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_steak

 

[Cheshire Cat]

SNPA being classed as an English ale is not style evolution, it's just wrong! Do the English get a say?

If it was served as cask beer it could be called a bitter. It is very much like Roosters Yankee Bitter which uses Cascade hops but SN is stronger.

 

[Bobby_M]

We see it with IPA now. You can’t (or at least shouldn’t) just put “IPA” on a menu anymore.

The main issue is that homebrewers that often play with BJCP competitions are more conscious and perhaps bound to rigid styles while commercial brewers just do what sells or whatever they feel like doing. If a place makes a sweet stout but they noticed that it sells twice as much if they call it Chocolate Fudge Brownie beer, that's what it's going to be called. I know it's frustrating, but you have to ask questions about the beer now and if there was any reason to actually visit local breweries is to have that chat, ask for the 1oz taster pour before buying an $8 pint. Whenever I see West Coast IPA or Pale Ale, I'm like are they clear or hazy?