Brewers Association Announces New Beer Styles for 2018
When evaluating a beer, there’s more to consider than just
the flavor. Obviously, the beer should taste good — but that’s a purely
subjective qualification. The beer’s flavor, whether an individual preference
would deem it tasty or trashy, should follow certain rules applied to its
particular classification. That’s where style guides come into play, as
reference points for evaluating beer in a non-partisan manner.
The Brewers Association is a non-profit organization
promoting independent craft brewers. They maintain the official beer style
guidelines used by beer judges in competitions. These guidelines are also used
by professional and amateur brewers to influence recipe creation. As the landscape
of brewing changes and evolves, the style guides must evolve too. Sometimes
beer descriptions are modified to reflect current trends, and the guides can
also bring brand new styles into the pantheon.
For 2018, the Brewers Association has added several new
categories to the official beer style guidelines. All of these are directly
influenced by the creativity and diversity in the current craft beer market.
The first is the Juicy or Hazy Ales category,
which is then subdivided into Pale Ale, IPA, and Double IPA styles. Sometimes
dubbed New
England IPAs or West
Coast Hazy IPAs, these new definitions make room for this booming style
with official classifications.
Contemporary American-Style Pilsner is also on the
docket. With this addition, craft brewers are free from the alcohol by volume
and hop aroma regulations in the previous, broader specification checklist.
Pale Ales from Down Under have been separated from one to
two categories: Classic Australian-Style Pale Ale and Australian-Style
Pale Ale. Due to the increased diversity in the Australian beer scene, having
two styles keeps the darker, less aromatic traditional recipes intact with
Classic and allows brewers the creativity to continue evolving the genre with
paler, hoppier and more flavorful variations in the base style.
Finally, Gose and Contemporary Gose were
given some technical adjustments to better separate the historic base beer from
the diversity created by modern brewing techniques.
Of all of these changes, the Juicy or Hazy Ales trio of
additions stand to have the biggest impact on the marketplace, as well as related
controversies. To define why they received three separate specs, Charlie
Papazian, chief of the Brewers Association Beer Style Guidelines, said, “What
we discovered and verified was that there was a wide range of alcohol content
for what was being perceived in the public as just one style.” He went on to
say that the other judging components of appearance, aroma, bitterness, hop
character, mouthfeel, and overall balance also backed up the decision.
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