New Beer Styles/Changes

It looks like the admins have been busy editing the beer styles. These are the changes I noticed.

1 - Addition of IPA Hazy/New England
2 - Split of Dortmunder and Helles into two categories
3 - Addition of Urbock to Dunkler
4 - Changing of the wording of many names. For example Baltic Porter is now Porter - Baltic
5 - Adding of Abt to Abbey Quadruple
6 - Adding of Dark to Black IPA
7 - Adding of Wee Heavy to Scotch Ale

I’m probably missing some. I like most of the changes. The only one I’m not a fan of is splitting Helles and Dortmunder. I’m sure the German admins have a reason for it. Curious what it is.

I like the addition of the Hazy IPA, but fear that many beers will be wrongly categorized. I don’t envy the admin responsible for looking through all the IPAs and switching them over.

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Erm, isn’t that contrary to the folk history of the style?
Have they confused “Scottish Ale” (which is wtf?), with “Scotch Ale”?
Easy to do, because they both come from Scotchland.

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Wee Heavy isn’t another name for Scotch Ale?

Are you another one of those sarcasm users?

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Just like Bitter is another name for English Ale!

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In my younger days, I was often called the prince of sarcasm.

Actually German admins are not in favour of it as the distinction is irrelevant in Germany.
Apparently these terms are used by US breweries (there’s a whopping 30 US Dortmunder in the database) and so we decided to acknowledge them. Let’s call it industry trend.

Why?
I know you imply that Scotch ale is a term created by American homebrewers, while Wee Heavy (I guess) is more traditional, but they both describe strong malty beers. So?

Interesting. Then the split is even more baffling between Dortmunder and Helles. If there was a regional justification I was ignorant of then I’d be included to support it, but it looks like there is not.

I was sitting pretty at 24 D&H’s but now with split I’m at 14 dort’s and only 10 Helles making it my lowest rated style. I’m going to try and collect a few of each this weekend to get back to acceptable levels. Thanks for providing a theme to this weekends festivities.

Why can’t I add beers in any of these new styles? I can add a Dortmunder/Helles, but not one or the other. And I can’t add NE IPA at all. I even held my nose and drank one today, but now can’t rate it

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:sob::sob::sob::sob::sob::sob::sob:

Senior citizen problems …

Because the new Add Page layout doesn’t seem to use that same database…they like to do job twice around here.

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Surely there are higher priorities on this website!

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I do not imply any of that.

What you’ve actually admitted is that the style is actually “Strong malty ale”.

Scotch strong malty ales weren’t generally described as “Scotch Ale” in Scotland, they were described as “Strong Ale”, or sometimes had a Guinea designation (e.g. “12 Guinea” for some flagship beers). If signifying their country of origin upon export makes a style, then “Product of the EU” should be a style. And “wee”? That’s a portion size, not a style descriptor. Pattinson has all this documented, even down to the brewing records.

Call me old fashioned but I prefer to see a Baltic Porter written as ‘Baltic Porter’, not Porter - Baltic. Seems a bit formal and neat, and not entirely necessary. But that’s just my tuppence

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Seems that most styles that had / in them now have spaces surrounding the / except for Sahti and Grodziskie where the space around / is absent.

Even if you’re right, I absolutely welcome the addition of Wee Heavy to Scotch Ale in terms of clarification. I’ve often seen users adding Wee Heavys to the Scottish Ale category, and nobody seemed to care. In the end, Scottish Ale and Scotch Ale had so many overlaps that the distinction became unclear. No matter what the historical justification for such distinction is, the names and styles are nowadays recognized by brewers (even if sometimes mixed up due to a lack of knowledge) and the BJCP, for example. So hopefully, this step leads to more consistency within our database.

Still, the description of Scottish Ale leaves room for uncertainty regarding the categorization of Wee Heavys ("…but the stronger ‘wee heavies’ can range closer to 8%, with the accompanying increase in alcohol flavour and esters"), implying that Wee Heavys are to be categorized as Scottish Ales. This should be changed.

The German admins are against the Dortmunder split, FYI.

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Hard to see the relevance of the German admins - all the best examples are American, surely.

Helles/ pale/ premium/ Dortmund lager is the Duff/ Düff joke come to life, expect that you can make something a Dortmunder by printing it on the label but the word premium makes no difference. And if it’s got pre-prohibition on the label is and is from a craft brewery it might go in specialty grain if it’s go lots of rice in it.

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