I HAVE A MINOR COMPLAINT: Too Many Styles!

I HAVE A MINOR COMPLAINT is an irregular feature of this site and is intended for entertainment purposes only. Do not take seriously! In its dyspeptic tone you may hear the growl of an old man as he hollers impotently at passing clouds. I am that old man.

Item:

The Brewers Association has added seven new beer styles to the Beer Style Guidelines in advance of registration for the 2025 Great American Beer Festival® (GABF®) competition.

Leaving aside the irritating ® symbols unnecessarily festooning this announcement, how is it possible that in my long-running series of rants over minor complaints none have been devoted to the seven thousand beer “styles” currently documented by the Brewers Association? (“Seven thousand” functions here as hyperbole®).

What are these new styles? I am quoting directly from the Brewers Association’s press release here:

Four styles—Light, Pale, Amber, and Dark—that represent the range of Mexican-Style Lager.
Czech-Style Amber Lager and Czech-Style Dark Lager. The distinctive side-pour faucet used to dispense Czech-style beers has created renewed brewer and consumer interest in these traditional beers.
Representing the constant innovation that is a hallmark of independent brewers, West Coast-Style Pilsener is a new style that balances the fresh, assertive expression of Pacific Northwest and Southern Hemisphere hops with the character and drinkability of a pilsner.

Okay, before the real rant begins, we must indulge in a small rant regarding these specific styles: 1) I love Mexico’s tradition of brewing and the classic brands it has produced, but in a blind tasting of similar mass market lagers ain’t no one gonna be able to reliably separate the Mexican lagers from the American or Canadian (or Dutch or Polish) ones. One way to expose this fact is for everyone to enter their standard light lagers in this category and their “Mexican” lagers in the light lager category and see what happens. (Never mind, they’re all substyles of the same category.)

2) West Coast pilsner is a fun little beer, but there’s no agreement on what they are or even whether they’re distinct from American pale ales.

3) That Americans are finally aware of Czech styles beyond pale lagers is a good thing, but that description is a bit cringe. I know that this is an American competition and the guidelines reflect the American market, but still.

The larger rant is that the styles are too damn high! No one needs 108 categories! No one needs 108 categories that balloons to around 200 styles with sub categories! The ever-finer slicing and dicing does not result in clarity, it results in six (!) types of smoked beers. With all suitable apologies to John Holl, only twelve smoked beers of any style were brewed in the U.S. last year. (More hyperbole®!)

Style fragmentation also leads to an inevitable auroboros exemplified by a category like “international amber lagers” in which Mexican amber lagers will be judged with polotmavý and Franconian rotbier*. What? I am personally very comfortable with collapsed categories, wherein, say, all hoppy American ales are judged en masse. But the GABF is clearly not. Yet they’re soliciting beers that may be thick as porridge and full of diacetyl to be judged alongside pale lagers stained with caramel coloring? What are we even doing here?

Finally, the GABF isn’t just adding seven styles. They’re actually adding eight:

“In recognition of the latest hop developed at the United States Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Service (USDA/ARS) public hop breeding program in Prosser, Wash., a special category featuring beers brewed with “Vera” (formerly known as W1108-333 or HRC-003) will be judged in the 2025 competition.”

This is … super awesome. I love it. Temporary categories that encourage experimental brewing is fantastic. Trying to get brewers to use new hops is a major hurdle in their adoption; this one-time category could really give Vera a boost. It’s also going to make the competition a bit more entertaining in a way tucking Mexican amber lagers in with the Czech and German styles will not. Kudos on this one!

In conclusion, according to the offices of MINOR COMPLAINT®, there are only nineteen legitimate styles of beer, and all others are extraneous affectations. Please make a note of it.

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* Rotbier may or may not even exist, depending on whom you consult, but that is a rant for another day.