What's In a Style?

By Lisa Alger 

Have you ever ordered a beer and then wondered whether the waitress brought you the correct one?  Have you ever wondered why a brewer called a beer one thing when you figure it would work much better as something else?

 I am not really sure what got me thinking about beer styles, but I think it was the time that I ordered a Pale Ale and got an ale that was pale. I was annoyed that the beer I thought I was going to get, a beer that is golden to amber in color, medium bodied, hoppy, turned out to be not much better than a lawnmower beer. And while I am not an expert on beer styles by no means, my exposure to the club has educated me enough to come to expect certain things in a style, i.e. a stout be a dark ale not a golden 
one.  Now when I go into a pub and order a beer that is advertised as a certain style, I have come to expect that it contain the characteristics of that style, what little of them I know.

 Part of the problem, I guess, is that many of the styles, like Pale Ale, have names which on the surface can be used to describe any beer that fits into a color class. The issue arises that these names often signify more than just color, and so there is a difference between Pale Ales and ales that are pale.

Certainly a case can be made, as those who enter competitions know, that styles often constrict the brewer, and since judging is very subjective, it doesn’t matter anyway. I think that as a homebrewer, this opinion is often true. Many of us would rather brew the beer that we like rather than be confined to any particular style. However, when I go into a brew pub, I often order based on the style and therefore, style becomes much more important. Beers that do not belong to any particular category should be named other than the common styles. For instance, Brian Hunt at Moonlight Brewing generally gives his beers specific names. He called one of his beer’s Old Combine (which is to say that it contained 4 different grains). 

 What is in a style. Expectations, I guess, in much the same way that Bob Jones gets pissed off when  he gets served a pint that is less than a pint.