I hope people get involved in commenting on the sticky spreadsheet. There are some which would really effect UK beers. Such as a suggestion to combine Cream Ale with Gold or to combine APA with EPA for a single style of Pale Ale. I think the latter could cause chaos. At the moment there seems to be solely a US perspective, other than where Germans have criticised style changes which would effect them. I think we need more UK input.
I’ve played Devil’s advocate and put in various comments which I don’t necessarily support but I think could be discussed. I haven’t signed them so no-one’ll know it was me. Mwahaha.
I’ve only been looking at the first sheet though (Proposed 3) and
English Pale Ale is still on there as a separate style, there is no proposal to merge it with APA, and that would never happen anyway since the entire UK userbase will comment against that.
Same with Cream Ale and Golden, they’re both on there as separate styles.
I got the impression that Proposed 1 and Proposed 2 were initial ideas presumably by admins in the past month or so, and now this Proposed 3 sheet is the “final” one that everyone is commenting on. Just a guess though, because as usual this hasn’t been communicated to us well.
Don’t forget that EPA in RateBeer terms is essentially a US style and, arguably, is (or was) the same as Bitter. At least, bottled Bitters, labelled as Pale Ale (Bass principally) at the time is where its inspiration came from. Sure, plenty of English/British brewers are calling their beers English Pale Ale these days but I have no inkling what that denotes style-wise, nor have I found any consistency about what they’re tyring to denote with the moniker. I suspect in many instances they just don’t want to use “American”. They’re certainly, in the main, not much like american EPAs.
You’re right, I was actually confusing myself with something else there. The couple of EPA’s I’ve had have tasted like goldens or bitters to me and so I assumed the use of English malts and hops was the distinction they were going for, but yeah, who knows, it’s a weird category but I doubt any of the beers in it would fit under American Pale Ale as it stands.
So what’s everyone’s general feeling around the proposed styles overall? I’ve always been for adding a lot more styles so I’m pretty happy with most of them.
I’ve added a few condensed comments on the spreadsheet but just felt like posting some of my thinking out loud… wondering if any others had anything to say about them?
I’m not familiar enough with all those German/traditional ones that the German contingent are debating over so I’ve no input on those.
Very much for the split of IPAs and Stouts into various subcategories as these are currently absolutely huge catch-all categories with so much variation, and there are certain substyles that have become so common (NEIPA being an obvious one) they deserve a separate style listing.
Not convinced by a couple of the proposed style splits, though am not against them either. Brown Ale and Saison caught my eye here.
Brown Ales I think could be boiled down to Traditional (English?) and American (India hopped?), but I’m not sure we need imperial and session of each of those too. In the former I think most examples are session strength anyway aren’t they? I’ve definitely had a few imperial strength of the latter though. Doesn’t seem like a big enough style that needs breaking down this much though does it?
Saison is proposed to split by colour, but I do wonder if dark saisons are commonplace enough to warrant a split? I’m aware of them but still yet to come across one.
very much for splitting cider styles up, especially removing the fruited ones from the main cider style. Though I am curious why it’s been proposed by strength and not for example by dry - medium - sweet - fruited - spiced/hopped, as at least from a UK perspective this is how we typically see them marketed.
Don’t see why fruit wines have been proposed. And with kombucha I get the fermentation aspect but this is a beverage that is considered a tea, not a beer, and I thought most examples aren’t even alcoholic (or very minimal). I know we already have Sakes and meads but are we not going too far here? At some point RateBeer isn’t going to be a suitable name for this website.
As far as the UK goes, the whole area is very congested, with no clear dividing lines, and what they get entered as on RB seems to be determined as much by what the brewer chooses to put on the label/pump clip as by any distinguishing characteristics/ingredients.
Does an EPA have to be pale in appearance? Because they certainly weren’t originally pale in present day terms. And I don’t recall the few US specimens I’ve had being particularly pale. The British beers that inspired the EPA “style” in the US certainly weren’t generally very pale. One has to assume that, in the US, an EPA does have specific characteristics - maybe the use of English malts and trad English hops is the key, as you speculate. But then we’re back to the question of .what distinguishes them from trad bitters? And whether they have much in common with modern UK beers badged as English Pale Ale. As far as I can see, all you can deduce from the term in the UK right now is that it’s English, it’s pale(ish) and it’s an ale.
It makes no sense to me to lump beers that are dissimilar stylistically in different countries into the same category simply because of what’s on the label. Back to the old Scottish Ale chestnut again. Or 3.5% UK “IPA” that’s barely distinguishable from a trad session bitter.
I’d taken a brief look at Proposal 3 but that tab gave me a headache!
Still feel sorry for Porter - 3 versions compared to 7 for Stout. What about Coffee Porters, India Porters, etc? Could easily take it too far but if your going to start to be able to rate three types of NEIPA or a new style like Brut IPA then do we need consitancy across all styles.
We can add it to the proposed model if there’s enough examples
Yes It is now
The idea of some splitting style as Joet mentioned is for a user to be able to enter the beer without having the trouble to find it. If a beer is labeled as Farmhouse, a user might search in F for Farmhouse, don’t find it and enter something else wrong. Some of those styles will later be combined without separate stats.
Why? Why not have separate stats at the high “combined” level and at the lower level split up styles? This feels like more stuff being taken away from us. If we have counts for less “combined” styles than we have for the current styles I won’t be happy.
Combined styles that are basically the same style under different names depending on the country. The styles combined those wouldn’t have separate stats after being entered (kinda like all beer styles with “/” that we currently have)
Combined styles that are a beer style fractured in many variations. Those should have separate stats as well as stats for the global style (for example, IPA)
It is in Quebec, Canada too… but that sweet to dry classification would be too difficult to handle anyway because it’s not always labeled… On the other hand, the abv differentiation seems more important (for example a 2% sparkling canned cider VS a 10% Still Strong Cider are quite different)
It is? I had no idea to be honest as I’m not much of a cider drinker. Having said that, the one non-UK cider I have rated was labelled as dry (from Spain) https://www.ratebeer.com/beer/maeloc-sidra-seca/227548/ seca means dry in Spanish apparently. I always assumed it was a worldwide thing. Similar to wine.
This is NOT the case. These are three separate proposals by three different people. I have no idea which is the one that will actually be adapted to be used. The reason none of this was communicated to you was that it was not (as far as I’m aware) supposed to be shown to non-admins but someone either messed up or made an executive decision when they pinned it for everyone.
Please look at all three proposed pages as at no stage has Joe or anyone else with the power to actually change the styles indicated which one they intend to go ahead with.
Wow ok. Thank you for explaining that, I have no idea why joet did not mention this in the pinned message because that seems quite important information.
I’ll take a proper look at the other two sheets tomorrow. The extra detail in Proposal 3 made me think it had been a natural progression from the previous two. I doubt I was the only one to think this.
I see… Anyway cheers for explaining that since it wasn’t clear from joe’s post, will definitely take a look at the others and add any comments I feel relevant.
