A-Z Of Beer Styles

If you go into a Chinese restaurant and end up being served a curry then you’ll be a bit disappointed, even if you like curry. The same goes for getting served a cup of tea if you are expecting coffee. Our expectations for food and drink usually define our initial reaction. Most beers will tell you what style they are somewhere on the label to avoid any unfortunate surprises. Therefore to understand beer you need to understand what these styles mean.

Trying to categorize beer by type is a thankless task, though. Distinguishing the grey areas between porter and stout or mild and bitter is a fool’s errand. A similar task on wines would use the type of grape whilst Scotch whisky is also classed by the geographical location of the distillery. Beers with similar ingredients from the same brewery can be widely different. This is why the world of beer usual refers to names and styles that have evolved out of historical precedent rather than any cold considered notions. So a beer that describes itself as an abbey dubbel is notionally something in the traditional of a beer brewed by the Westmalle Trappist abbey. However it could easily be any strong brown ale that a commercial brewery has paid to have their beer associated with an abbey.

More than anything else the style of beer should be taken as part of the brewer’s intentions. These may be to brew a classic pilsner in the style of Czech beers of old or to come up with an IPA unlike any you’ve tasted before. Over time beers styles have splintered into subcategories like sects of particularly troubled religions. To these ends you could list hundreds of styles of beer. This series lists 26 of the main styles