By Kieran Haslett-Moore
Should one brew to style nailing the expected and accepted parameters of a given beer? Or should one stride off the beaten path and brew something new, startling and revolutionary? Perhaps before thinking about answers to those questions, it is worth looking at exactly what beer styles are.
Style over substance
The idea that the beer world is divided into beer styles is relatively new. Beer styles were popularised, if not invented, by the beer writer Michael Jackson in the 1970’s. Prior to then, beers were understood by where in the world they were brewed and loose descriptors that often differentiated products of a brewery from each other but didn’t necessarily mean much beyond the brewery in question. For instance, a brewery might have a bitter and a mild; the bitter was more bitter than that brewer’s mild, but on the other side of the country another brewer’s mild might be more bitter than the first brewer’s bitter. The terms meant something within the range rather than an objective truth out across the beer world. Michael took the concept of journalist style guides, where a publication sets the tone for its writing by creating a series of rules for its writers to follow, and applied it to beer, describing and grouping beers into what he called styles. So, beer styles started as a descriptive tool, a way of grouping, writing about and understanding beer. Prior to the 1970’s, no brewer was brewing ‘to style’; they brewed the beer in line with tradition and with the technology they had and what worked, or what they thought would work, in the market. However, once beer was written about and judged using beer styles, it changed how people thought about beer, how brewers marketed beer and what consumers expected from a beer. The style system was incredibly successful at becoming central to how we understand beer.
Communication
The primary purpose of beer styles is to communicate a complex array of information about a beer in a succinct form. A brewer can put the letters APA on a tap badge, bottle or can and by doing so they convey that the beer will be of an everyday drinking strength, with a bright new world hop character, pale to burnished copper colour, with a balance that emphasises hop flavour but with enough malt character to make the beer highly drinkable. The letters APA are a very successful shorthand.
Descriptive vs prescriptive
While beer styles started out as a descriptive tool, their central presence in the beer world has meant they have also become prescriptive. They are central to how beer is judged in competition, so they have become a key way in how beers are assessed to be good or bad.
But it’s homebrew, stupid
So, as a home brewer you are brewing primarily for consumption within your own household. Communicating to the market isn’t really a consideration. If you want to be a wild Jackson Pollak improvisational brewer that combines ingredients which have never before been paired together, in ways which leave the “style Nazis” frowning, go for gold!
Prog rock vs punk
The free jazz punk rock path of brewing outside of the box of existing beer styles does of course exist within the pro beer world. New Zealand beer does fairly well in this regard. Whether it is the bombastic peaty whack of Yeastie Boys Rex Attitude or the manuka spice of Mussel Inn Captain Cooker, we have plenty of examples of beers which tore up the rule book. However, there is something to be said for learning the rules before you break them. Once one has mastered the solos on Dark Side of the Moon, you will nail the three chords of I Wanna Be Your Dog.
Brewing to style
So, you have decided you want to brew to style. How to go about it? Firstly, taste the beers. If you are going to understand a particular style, you need to taste the classics. Sometimes I describe beers which miss a particular style as tasting like the brewer heard about the style on the radio. There is no substitution for experience. Secondly, read the style guides. The BA guidelines which tend to be used by professional beer competitions are different to the more education/homebrewer focussed BJCP guidelines. Both have value and it is worth reading both. Thirdly, read the masters. Read books or blogs by respected beer writers on various styles. A beer writer will often fill in the cultural spirit of a beer style that the dry specification-based style guide might lack. Fourthly, practise. Brew a style over and over till you have nailed it. Enter it in homebrew competitions and take on board the feedback. No one is perfect immediately.
And then evolution
Once you have mastered a beer style, then you can subvert it. The primary way we end up with new types of beer in the world is the development of beer styles that are breaking the rules. The NZ Pilsner style evolved when NZ brewers increasingly used our own aromatic hop varieties in ways more common in ale brewing (late in the boil and dry hopping) to create hoppy lager beers that had clearly evolved from the German or Czech traditions they were based on. American pale ale started off as English style bitter. These evolutions occur over and over with recent ones including Black, Brut and Cold IPA. Go forth and brew within the square, and then if you are feeling punk, break it.