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By Root 1083 0

no doubt would prefer to enjoy or make “just beer,” and to hell with stylistic endeavors. After all “its the beer, stupid.” And then there are the royal guardians of beer styles and notaries of authenticity upholding the grand traditions of beer. I can appreciate both sides of the issue, having developed the beer style guidelines for the Association of Brewers and various competition guidelines since 1979. What strikes me as most important is that beer styles evolve. New ones arrive; old ones fall by the wayside. Old ones help steer a course and uphold the pride and tradition of brewing. New ones give current generations of brewers the opportunity to develop their creative skills and perhaps one day “invent” a beer that 200 hundred years from now will be upheld as a classic.

I AM RELAXING and having a homebrew, taking note of my thoughts and considering that the essence of style has a basis that is other than simply circumstantial. I consider styles based on one of eight principal characters:

Malt

Hops

Yeast

Water

Alcohol

Process

Packaging

Special ingredients

One may ask, where do color, head retention and mouthfeel fit in? They are considered, to be sure, but in my opinion are not the basis of style. They may help define styles and the variation within a tradition, but if there is an overriding basis, I’ll stick to these essential eight.

Let’s consider some examples of classic styles that might fit into these eight “boxes.”

Malt. The predominant character of a bock beer, such as Heller bock, dark bock, Maibock, Doppelbock and Eisbock, is its maltiness. Malt more than any other character defines this style. The same might be true for English-style brown ale. Yes, hops, yeast, water, alcohol, processing and packaging all have a role in creating this style, but if you don’t have a strong malt character you’ll never have a bock or brown ale, whereas the other seven characters can vary while still achieving a variation of the true style of these two beers.

Hops. The India pale ale style of beer is based on hops. The style is virtually defined by the audacious employment of this ingredient.

Yeast. Bavarian-style wheat (Weiss or Weizen) beer is singularly defined by the special strains of yeast used in fermentation. No, I am not saying it is the wheat or the lack of hops—these components can be varied. But without the special yeast you cannot authentically achieve this style of beer.

Water. This is a tricky one. I hesitated to include it, but for the sake of discussion I beg the question: Does the peculiarly hard quality of water define the basis of classic Burton-type pale ales? I think it does, more than any other ingredient. The quality of the water affects the final perception of hops and malt, so important in British pale ales. There are dozens of malts, hops, yeasts and processes that can be integrated into the making of pale ale, but perhaps without the uniqueness of the water one cannot brew to tradition. I also contemplated pilseners on this basis. Soft water is essential for pilseners, but is it as essential as the process of lagering to evolve the smoothness of classic pilseners? Then there is the yeast, but with the proper processing ale yeast can achieve closeness to this style. Hops? Yes, the type does help define the classic pilsener. I haven’t decided on this one yet. I need another homebrew.

Alcohol. Barley wine and Belgian-style Tripels, for example, have got to have alcohol. Without it these styles do not exist in mind or matter. Hard water, soft water, noble hops, ale hops, American hops, cold or warm fermented, dark or lighter—the essence of this style is alcohol and all the resulting qualities that naturally occur.

Process. German-style Altbiers come immediately to mind. Warm fermentation and cold lagering are the conditions that precede all Altbiers. Without employing this process, which imparts some unique attributes to their overall quality, Altbiers could just as well be another bitter or sweet brown ale or a dark lager. Warm ferment–cold lager is the most important defining basis