A good friend in the industry has suggested (tongue in cheek) all beers be classified into 2 styles…beer flavored beer and not beer flavored beer. Brilliant in it’s simplicity! What do you think?
Incredibly narrow minded and exclusive. I’ve been thinking about the beer styles for a while. The Caterina Sour style made me wonder how different it could be, and why you need that style when fruited sour is available. I’ve been helping my sister in law edit her papers, some have been about diversity and inclusion in education and how many things are approached from a white/european viewpoint. When people talk about “beer flavored beer”, they’re usually focusing on beer with a german background while ignoring and denigrating the rest. It also buys in to decades of Macro beer advertising thats still going on. It was only a few years ago when Budweiser or Miller put out that commercial calling craft beer “too fussy” while promoting “real beer”.
Then how will I know which category to enter my non fruited mango white cascadian low Ibu low alcohol IIIPA with jalapeño and pumpkin green bean m and m chocolate milk white stout?
Does anyone take beer styles seriously other than home brewers who want a ribbon? I’m pretty sure most, if not all of the most popular examples of the style arent brewed to any other standard than being a beer people want to drink.
Maybe you missed the humor? Maybe it’s not funny? Maybe I have a warped sense of humor? Maybe I don’t take beer as seriously as some people?
Commercial brewers do for GABF. I understand more styles were just added for that.
Then I’d only need to brew one style. Great!
Eventually there’ll be so many styles that anything fermented with any beer yeast will fit. Doesn’t bother me at all but seems a bit silly.
Kind of a strange attitude for somebody well known for his bourbon vanilla porter recipe.
Whenever I see jalapeno or higher Scoville pepper listed in a beer, I suggest the Spiced, Herb & Vegetable Beer category.
I have actually had a lager beer complimented by a visitor to my house as a “Real beer-flavored beer for a change”.
As to narrowmindedness, I had a good friend who had an incredible wine collection - quite highly valued, to the point that insuring it while in his wine cellar (basement) became unavailable and he had to move the collection to more secure off-premises storage. His view on wine was simply: “there are two kinds of wine - wines you like and wines you don’t”. My wife ascribes to that simplicity.
But that tastes like beer. To me there’s a difference between using ingredients to enhance beer and ingredients that define beer.
Well I found this to be brilliant, Denny.
Chalk me up as a fan of beer-flavored beer.
I knew ya would be!
I’m all for two categories:
- German lagers
- everything else.
Cheers.
I could see that…
Easy to stay in the guidelines…
Original Gravity 1.000-2.000 • Apparent Extract/Final Gravity 0.999-1.999 • Alcohol by Volume 0.0%-100% • Hop Bitterness (IBU) 0-600 • Color SRM 1-40+
I brew 5 styles:
Blonde
Pale
Amber
Brown
Black
Those are colors, not styles. 
+1
It might taste like beer to you but for plenty of people the taste of beer isn’t vanilla or bourbon. For that matter, the taste of beer doesn’t even include porters.
I don’t want to drink a beer that looks like radioactive waste or has the texture of sludge or tastes like wing sauce; however, these comments about “beer flavored beer” are just dressing up saying what you like to drink is real beer and good and everything else is not real beer and bad. For people who only drink light lagers well that’s the only meaning of “beer flavored beer” and everything else is just gimmick. There are people who only drink IPA and they think beer is supposed to taste like an aggressive serving of hops. There’s no factual description to “beer flavored beer” beyond personal opinion. Saying these things in a homebrewing forum serves no purpose and probably is going to turn people off from participating and discussing their non-beer beer.
Here’s a test: run it through a gentle centrifuge and compare it to the original product. If it’s unrecognizable, you don’t have beer, you have a milkshake!