You Know What Really Grinds My Gears? [Recipe Edition]

[bobbrews]

BrewThruYou, you sound like an idiot. Because I brew extract, partial mash, and all-grain. Thank you very much. Don't get angry because your beers turn out like trash yet you come up with an arrogant handle like BrewThruYou. Are you really going to Brew Through us? Nah...

 

[BrewThruYou]

Were you judging during the NHC 2012 Final Round? Is that where you tasted my "trash" beers?

 

[bobbrews]

If you were offended by the "use your noggin" statement in the context that it was made then obviously it struck a chord with your own personal brewing experiences. Have a beer and relax buddy, before I brew through you.

 

[hamaien]

What grinds my gears? People who don't even do all-grain that proclaim themselves experts on certain styles and now start thinly veiled boasting threads about their recipe prowess and how others need to "use your noggin's".

Were you judging during the NHC 2012 Final Round? Is that where you tasted my "trash" beers?

Hahaha oh man. Watch out everyone, this internet tough guy has been in real life homebrew competitions.

 

[BrewThruYou]

I'm the internet tough guy? It's not the guy who called me an idiot, called me arrogant, said I made trash beers and threatened to "brew through" me? Okay, bro.

 

[bobbrews]

That's what happens when you get your "facts" wrong and call someone out in a hostile manner. You also have an arrogant handle. That's just stating the obvious.

 

[MisterTipsy]

"Does anyone have any good (insert beer style here) recipes" is something that grinds my gears a little. No wait, it doesn't grind my gears, it gets my undies in a bundle.

It's actually easier to type "Porter recipe" into the search box than make a thread. The results are immediate and typically better than a new thread would produce.

 

[TopherM]

Heffeweisen litearlly means wheat with yeast. That is what the brewer was proposing at the core. In fact, the ONLY thing that varied, drastically, from the guide was the choice of hop and an addition of smoked character. "It's not a noble hop, it can be a ..." Bah! Go back to your box! I say.

Am I saying you can call a Porter a American Lager? No. But don't tell me it's not a Porter anymore cause I decided to use a German hop instead of an English one. But, in the same respect don't expect to take best of show either.

Hefewiezen literally means "yeast wheat," not "yeast with wheat." That would be Hefe mit Weizen. I can do this all day long!

Still, it is STRICTLY defined in German brewing that a Hefeweizen MUST contain AT LEAST 50% wheat. Not ABOUT 50%, not AROUND 50%, not ALMOST 50%.....AT LEAST 50%. Does no one care what "AT LEAST 50%" means. If it contains LESS than 50%, it is a Weissbeir or another style. If your beer has 30% wheat, you can call it ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT, but you CAN NOT call it a Hefewiezen because it just doesn't fit the requirements.

Porters have no REQUIREMENTS of what hops to use, so there is more gray/wiggle room there, and your example is a bad example.

My only arguement here is that when the beer style has STRICT style requirements, you simply have to meet those requirements if you want to claim that style. For the countless styles that have vague parameters and no true requirements, there is certainly much more wiggle room! When all else fails, make up your own new style.

I'm not here making up the definitions, just enforcing them!

Sincerely,

TopherM - Captain of the Style Police

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

There is a thin line if you really want to get techinal.

But I would call all of these IPAs... You could even make a case that they're all American IPAs.

7.6%, 65 IBUs, WLP001, US malts, Mixed US/Brit hops, 2nd-ary addition of lightly toasted oak chips, Brit dryhop
6.6%, 75 IBUs, WLP002, Brit malts, US hops, 2nd-ary addition of frozen raspberries, no dryhop
5.6%, 55 IBUs, WLP029, German and US malts, American hops, no 2nd-ary, German and US dryhop

A LONG time ago I built a cross reference for recipe developement taht relied heavily on BJCP guidelines. Elaborately broken down to be searchable across mutiple fields for comparisons to all the non subjective points for each style.

What I found is that a large portion of all these specific styles are, on average, only distinctly different by a couple ingredients and several of those are only by regional distinctions.

 

[MisterTipsy]

I'm just calling it beer from now on.

Does anyone here have some good recipes for beer?

 

[TopherM]

And Gila, you are right on. There are plenty of styles where the guidelines overlap and the distinctions are subtle.

I had a 36 point APA from last year. A brewery up the street from me was having an IPA contest. I put about 0.4 more oz. of hops into my APA and voila, it turned into an IPA by BJCP standards. It scored a 28 in that contest by the way. The 0.4 extra ounces through the whole thing out of balance and kinda screwed it up. Only now, about 6 weeks later is the hop character mellowing out enough that it tastes more like the good, original APA recipe.

Anyway, I'm not talking about these categories where the definitions are more like a spectrum of the same ingredients. I'm talking about the monikers for styles that have strict definitions. There aren't that many of them, but you simply can't declare anything you want to be a lager, or a kolsch, or a hefeweizen, or a lambic/sour, or a fruit beer, or a smoked beer, or a mead, or a cider, or an oktoberfest. All of these styles have at least one characteristic that defines the style, and if you DON'T have that characteristic, you DON'T have that style, PERIOD. There's no shade of gray when it comes to whether you used a sour yeast in a sour beer. No sour/wild yeast, no sour beer! There's no shade of gray when it comes to whether you smoked one of your ingredients to make a smoked beer. No smoke, no smoke beer! No fruit, no fruit beer! No Kolsch yeast, no Kolsch beer! No lager yeast, no lager! No lager yeast, no Oktoberfest (this one is fun around the end of the summer, when EVERYONE's beer seems to be an Oktoberfest....with ale yeast!).

I'm done.....you can't squeeze blood out of a brick.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Hefewiezen literally means "yeast wheat," not "yeast with wheat." That would be Hefe mit Weizen. I can do this all day long!

Still, it is STRICTLY defined in German brewing that a Hefeweizen MUST contain AT LEAST 50% wheat. Not ABOUT 50%, not AROUND 50%, not ALMOST 50%.....AT LEAST 50%. Does no one care what "AT LEAST 50%" means. If it contains LESS than 50%, it is a Weissbeir or another style. If your beer has 30% wheat, you can call it ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT, but you CAN NOT call it a Hefewiezen because it just doesn't fit the requirements.

Porters have no REQUIREMENTS of what hops to use, so there is more gray/wiggle room there, and your example is a bad example.

My only arguement here is that when the beer style has STRICT style requirements, you simply have to meet those requirements if you want to claim that style. For the countless styles that have vague parameters and no true requirements, there is certainly much more wiggle room! When all else fails, make up your own new style.

I'm not here making up the definitions, just enforcing them!

Sincerely,

TopherM - Captain of the Style Police

Perhaps you should patrol the likes of Horst Dornbusch;

"Depending on the preferred color of your Weissbier, you can use a single pale malt for the barley portion of the mash or a mixture of several barley malts of different colors. Common barley malt additions for weissbier include Pils, Vienna, Carafoam®, Carahell® and Cara-munich®."

As he in his expertise spits in teh face of your guidelines that strictly require wheat and pils.

And you should patrol Schneider breweries too since;

"... but the modern Schneider Weisse Original relies on a straightforward infusion..."

as your strict "guidelines" only suggest decoction mash to get it there.



Like I said man, they are guides, not laws.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

And Gila, you are right on. There are plenty of styles where the guidelines overlap and the distinctions are subtle.

I had a 36 point APA from last year. A brewery up the street from me was having an IPA contest. I put about 0.4 more oz. of hops into my APA and voila, it turned into an IPA by BJCP standards. It scored a 28 in that contest by the way. The 0.4 extra ounces through the whole thing out of balance and kinda screwed it up. Only now, about 6 weeks later is the hop character mellowing out enough that it tastes more like the good, original APA recipe.

Anyway, I'm not talking about these categories where the definitions are more like a spectrum of the same ingredients. I'm talking about the monikers for styles that have strict definitions. There aren't that many of them, but you simply can't declare anything you want to be a lager, or a kolsch, or a hefeweizen, or a lambic/sour, or a fruit beer, or a smoked beer, or a mead, or a cider, or an oktoberfest. All of these styles have at least one characteristic that defines the style, and if you DON'T have that characteristic, you DON'T have that style, PERIOD. There's no shade of gray when it comes to whether you used a sour yeast in a sour beer. No sour/wild yeast, no sour beer! There's no shade of gray when it comes to whether you smoked one of your ingredients to make a smoked beer. No smoke, no smoke beer! No fruit, no fruit beer! No Kolsch yeast, no Kolsch beer! No lager yeast, no lager! No lager yeast, no Oktoberfest (this one is fun around the end of the summer, when EVERYONE's beer seems to be an Oktoberfest....with ale yeast!).

I'm done.....you can't squeeze blood out of a brick.

I completely agree that a beer must have at least 50% wheat to be called wheat. Never argued against that.

But I reject your reality to assume you cannot lager an ale. Go to any chain that pimps their "39* drafts" and you will quickly be shown that you can. (This should not be construed to mean you should drink it that cold, just that it was in fact lagered)

 

[MisterTipsy]

Just add the suffix -ish to any style name to loosely broaden the definition of the style. This increases the odds of being right on the internet.

Porter-ish

Golden Ale-ish

etc.

 

[stamandster]

There is a thin line if you really want to get techinal.

But I would call all of these IPAs... You could even make a case that they're all American IPAs.

7.6%, 65 IBUs, WLP001, US malts, Mixed US/Brit hops, 2nd-ary addition of lightly toasted oak chips, Brit dryhop
6.6%, 75 IBUs, WLP002, Brit malts, US hops, 2nd-ary addition of frozen raspberries, no dryhop
5.6%, 55 IBUs, WLP029, German and US malts, American hops, no 2nd-ary, German and US dryhop

I would say that they are only "strongly hopped ales" with no specific category (oak chips in an AIPA?? Mixing of hop nations??).

Are you just making recipe's up now?

 

[bobbrews]

All of those could actually work and pass as IPAs... not that I would brew 2 out of 3 of them

 

[TopherM]

Just add the suffix -ish to any style name to loosely broaden the definition of the style. This increases the odds of being right on the internet.

Porter-ish

Golden Ale-ish

I like it! Case closed. PROST!

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Just add the suffix -ish to any style name to loosely broaden the definition of the style. This increases the odds of being right on the internet.

Porter-ish

Golden Ale-ish

etc.

Even the likes of Ray Daniels has proven that you do not have to brew within the STRICT lines of the guides to win competitions for category.

 

[bobbrews]

I think the best is yet to come. Brewers who push the boundaries to create something amazing via a new brewing process or new ingredients versus doing the same old routine as everyone else. Edit: And no, I'm not talking about Dogfish Head

The world can benefit from thinking outside the box a bit.

 

[stamandster]

All of those could actually work and pass as IPAs... not that I would brew 2 out of 3 of them

You also said you would make the case that they were AIPA's. They aren't traditional IPA's though to "BJCP style guidelines". Especially with the mixing of grain/hop nations. I think that's one of the reason's that BJCP doesn't require a recipe when you submit.

Not that I really care, I brew what I like to drink no matter the "style". I try to fit some but sometimes I just don't care

Also, Sam's Latitude 48 isn't exactly to style but has hops from the "hop latitude" across the world.

 

[MisterTipsy]

What style is this beer? "Imperial Red Flanders Ale" isn't a style according to beer judges. It might not fare well in a competition, but they manage to get people to pay $18 a bottle for the stuff.

It's interesting to try. It's a blend of Flanders red ale and American IPA.

 

[bobbrews]

You also said you would make the case that they were AIPA's. They aren't traditional IPA's though to "BJCP style guidelines". Especially with the mixing of grain/hop nations.

I said that "you" (meaning some people) could even make the case that they were even American IPAs.

My feeling however is that if they all taste and smell closer to the typical American IPA (vs. European) then that's what you should call them.

 

[MisterTipsy]

I like it! Case closed. PROST!

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

I think the best is yet to come. Brewers who push the boundaries to create something amazing (or perhaps utilize a new process) versus doing the same old routine as everyone else.

The world can benefit from thinking outside the box a bit.

I think many are just stymied by it all because most all of it has already been done.

 

[bobbrews]

Yeah, well most people just like to structure things up in a tight little box and put a stamp on it. It makes them feel like they have more control I guess. I believe in organization to some extent. But I don't always think we should all get hung up on every little detail because that can breed closed-mindedness and an inability to move forward. Categorizing a beer by it's style isn't as simple as classifying a grown person as a man or a woman. An experienced brewer could probably fool a BJCP judge by writing American IPA with all the appropriate specs on paper, but serving him or her something that's just outside 4 out of 7 of the written guidelines. I wouldn't lose sleep over it either way.

 

[cdeme123]

You're so right. Makes you wonder how the judges can make distinctions across some odd the styles.

 

[MisterTipsy]

You're so right. Makes you wonder how the judges can make distinctions across some odd the styles.

I have no idea how anyone can accurately judge a beer when they are sampling many beers and trying to judge them all.

I need to drink at least 12oz of the same beer before I can pass judgement. If the next beer is a different style, the first beer is altering my perception of the second beer. Sometimes for better. Sometimes for worse.

How do they do it in competitions? Does one judge sample only one style or do they take a swig of an IPA and then try to judge a sour?

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

I have no idea how anyone can accurately judge a beer when they are sampling many beers and trying to judge them all.

I need to drink at least 12oz of the same beer before I can pass judgement. If the next beer is a different style, the first beer is altering my perception of the second beer. Sometimes for better. Sometimes for worse.

How do they do it in competitions? Does one judge sample only one style or do they take a swig of an IPA and then try to judge a sour?

This has always been my bane toward competition. Judges comment on color, yet use no accurate method of comparison at teh judging table. They comment on bitterness yet have no absolute way to determine actual IBU, or water composition. It's all subjective.

 

[MisterTipsy]

This has always been my bane toward competition. Judges comment on color, yet use no accurate method of comparison at teh judging table. They comment on bitterness yet have no absolute way to determine actual IBU, or water composition. It's all subjective.

I imagined it was like that. I don't see myself ever entering a competition anyway.

 

[Proboscidea]

Just add the suffix -ish to any style name to loosely broaden the definition of the style.

I love it! Flows much more smoothly than my usual description "Relatively decent-tasting but poorly executed and definitely nothing like a 'real' whateverstylebeer"


Mmmmm. "Benedictish" frankwiches.