Brewed Beverage of Choice: A Chalice of Blind Abbot Abbey
For your information, and perhaps you already know this if you happen to read as many beer blogs as I, but there are currently 140 beer styles according to the American Homebrewers Association and the Brewers Association. Believe it…I spent some of the day filing through ‘em all. Of course this revelation set my mind in motion. So as I was walking the White Wonder and subsequently later on as I sipped a pint watching some March Madness, I pondered the question of style.
Sometimes we in the brewing community get too caught up in style. Style serves a purpose in some respects to tell the consumer what to expect from their recently purchased pint of beer. It conveys some history behind the beer and the brewer. But in our culture here in the states we find it necessary to put things in neat little lines. The beers value is based on how close to style it is. Believe me. I am one of the many who at one time or another have stated, “Nice beer but it is not to style.”
This statement reminded me of a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago about a line up of swing bands which played here in town. Someone commented that the bands did not play traditional swing music. Nice music but it is not to style. But the important point brought up, and I cannot take credit for it, was did the musicians swing. Styles even in music can toe a thin line between decent peripheral vision and tunnel vision. Yvan de Baets says in Brew Like a Monk, “Making categories helps the human brain, but it also limits it. Descriptions don’t necessarily take into account complexity.” It is nice to have styles like Extra Strong Bitter or Swing, but there is always something underlying that a style guideline will miss.
In my opinion the underlying factor in beer styles is the brewer. One of the particular reasons I like the farmhouse styles of Northern France and Belgium, as well as Alts and Kolschs, is that while they follow a guideline to some degree they do not let that limit them. In the book Farmhouse Ales Phil Markowski says, “While style geeks insist that beers fall in line, most Belgian and French brewers prefer them to fall just outside the line, provided they taste good and are made by honest methods.” This is what I strive for when I brew up a new beer. The final product regardless of style should at least taste good and will have my own stamp on it.
It would be hypocritical of me to say I have never been one of those style geeks or the type of brewer that brewed specifically to style. Brewing to style is one of the first building blocks in brewing. It is the basics. It is that around which the beer molds itself. Ron Jeffries of Jolly Pumpkin Ales stated it best in Brew Like A Monk when he said the following:
“I brew to the taste. To the vision. Not to the guidelines. This was not always so for me. For years I followed the guidelines, trying to perfectly match any given style. Like the aspiring artist practicing year after year, painting a solitary stick of bamboo, exactingly replicating the master’s work. Only after years of painstaking perfection is the student allowed to add a leaf here, a sprig there. Such can be brewing. After years of pale ale, English versus American, porter, stout, robust, brown and the like, I began to brew differently. Asking not just how should it taste, but how I want it to taste.”
I like that quote because I have studied Chinese Brush Painting and it is just that precise. You spend days, months, years practicing the stroke to perfection. No pictures made. Just one stroke after another. I took what I learned from that experience and practiced it my brewing. Making batch after batch. Conducting one mash after another. Getting the style just right. And now I am to the point where I feel I can add my own spin on that style.
So style does serve a purpose, but too often in this culture it is blurred by competition and taken far too literal. Beers should be awarded on their own merit, a philosophy shared by my friend, Jason, co-owner of Roots Brewing who would rather have praise from customers than medals. So the next time you take a sip of a new brew, ask yourself not is this to style, but does this beer swing.
Cheers,
the confucian brewer