"The BJCP Provisional Beer Styles and BeerSmith"

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Yes I agree Agent so a American IPA is 6-7% so how can they call it a session American IPA when it does not meet the criteria and is only 4%, maybe I am tying myself in knots with it?
 
Unfortunately, you're probably very correct with that comment. :(

It happened eons ago to the likes of "Ale". I'm not a historian, I used to hate "history" at school, but was forced (by me!) to try and be one to brew anything like a 17/18th C. "Ale". Just going by gathered hints, that "Ale" I have ready for Xmas is based on "Stitch" as mentioned in "London & Country" 1736 publication. There's a rather badly translated recipe in CAMRA's "Homebrew Classics Stout and Porter" (some elements incorrectly ordered; bad proof reading!).

But "Colonial Williamsburg" (Alewerks?) have a "recreation" ("Old Stitch") based on the sort of garbage BJCP puts out. Something fizzy and in a bottle not even remotely like what the real thing could have been. A comment (anonymous, 2016) about it goes:

Geesh!

In a few years' time, will everyone have to go to the (ongoing) effort I'm going through with "Ale" to get an estimation of what "British 20th C. Bitter" (for example) was like?
Yeah, that’s just lazy. Even a cursory review of English brewing history would have told them they’re on the wrong track. I imagine they’d come up with some form of root beer as an example of gruit 😂
 
Yes I agree Agent so a American IPA is 6-7% so how can they call it a session American IPA when it does not meet the criteria and is only 4%, maybe I am tying myself in knots with it?
Because a "session" beer is a low alcohol one that you can have lots of during a "drinking session" (at least that's where I assume the name comes from).

So a Session IPA is a low alcohol version of an IPA. Why it needs it's own category I don't know.

(I'm no more of an expert than the BJCP, but all of the above is what I've understood from going to pubs for decades)
 

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