New BJCP Style Guideline Coming Out

[Barley Water]

I just saw an e-mail indicating that the BJCP style guidelines are being updated and according to what I saw they are supposed to be implemented at the end of the year. I know many of you guys/gals could care less and hate those things but you must admit they do greatly influence the hobby (rightly or wrongly). Since I generally brew to style and compete I am very interested in all that stuff. From what I saw there will be some new styles which sound like fun. Typically, if there is a listed style then you will start to see many more recipes floating around to make it. For instance, right now it's pretty hard to find much about Abby Singles but since that is one of the new categories I'm betting that will change (and it's a fun beer to make and not as numbing as some of the other Belgian ale styles). Oh and according to what I saw, they did some playing around with the English styles as well; I look forward to the comments from those of you who really know those particular beers.

[boingy]

Link that Ali posted a few days ago:

http://www.bjcp.org/docs/NHC2014-styles.pdf

Personally I like the styles. I don't usually brew to them but it's by far the best attempt at defining beer styles.

[DeGarre]

I like styles too but with a broad brush.

[YeastWhisperer]

I attended the National Homebrew Convention last week. I judged the final round of the National Homebrew Contest.

The new guidelines are going to change how certain beers are judged, but that's a good thing. The Specialty IPA category needed to be created because specialty IPAs were drowning out other category 23 beer styles. I am glad that category 16E (Belgian Specialty) was deleted. I reached a point were I refused to judge to 16E. Without any real guidelines, many brewers felt free to enter science experiments gone wrong.

[Hanglow]

I saw English Golden Ales is to be added, I wonder how many will be now brewed in the US. I guess they are our equivalent of the american IPA, they are the most common style found in pubs here. I didn't see a single one last time I was in the US last year. They benefit greatly from cask and handpull dispense imo so I suppose they will only be a niche beer in the US. Although the current trend for US breweries to release "session" IPAs might help, as the golden ale is the better vehicle for a low abv hop hit imo


here's the talk on the guidline changes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQgPmW1LboU

[DeGarre]

Ha ha! The colonial chaps come up with these new beer styles every few years and we have to adjust our thinking accordingly. Hard cheese!

[Aleman]

While I do curse the fact that, until recently, the styles were heavily influenced by what beers were available in the US, or a US interpretation of a British Style, this update has gone some way to change that. Ali is on the Board for the BJCP, and as such has had some input into the British categories (like golden ale).

The important thing is that these are not a definition of a historical British/Czech/German/Belgian beer, they are categories to judge beers in a competition . . . and even more important to realise that they are only guidelines.

Fortunately (Or should that be Un?) they are a pretty comprehensive coverage of beer styles worldwide