This is just plain stupid. Taste the damn beer
Let me start by making it very clear that this post isn’t me having a pop at Jim Dykstra. At least I’m pretty sure that it isn’t, since I don’t think that his article (read on) is defending the decision of the World Beer Cup, rather I think that he’s trying to explain it. There’s a BIG difference between those two things. The next time I speak to Jim I’ll ask him if my interpretation of his words is correct or not; I guess we’ll see!
So, what am I talking about? Well in September Jim wrote a piece for Beer Connoisseur magazine where he reported on the fact that the World Beer Cup had just awarded a Gold Medal to Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale. OK, sounds reasonable, right? It’s a fine beer, so what’s the big deal? Are you sitting down? SNPA was awarded a Gold Medal in the ESB category. Don’t be stupid.
Read the headline here – you won’t believe it. Yes, you read it correctly, that’s not a typo. In the article Jim gives a historical perspective about relationship between pale ales and bitters, focusses on ‘balance’ of SNPA, and in the process attempts to explain (again I am assuming Jim is not trying to justify this) why this award might make some sense.
What I’m not going to do (at least for now) is to question Jim’s interpretation of the evolution of styles, rather I’m going to take his word for it, and then perhaps check in with Ron Pattinson at a later date. I’m also not going to make a lot of comment about Jim’s assertion that we should not be, “dogmatic about style” (even though that’s something that I mostly disagree with him on). Nor am I going to quarrel with his opinion that SNPA is balanced – because it is. But where all of the contortions of trying to fit SNPA into an ESB category become utterly asinine to me, is at the pub, in the glass. What do I mean? Put simply there is absolutely no way on Earth, that anyone who knows anything about beer, is EVER going to walk into a pub, ask for an ESB from ANY brewer, and then expect to be served something that tastes like (or even looks like) SNPA. EVER. To suggest that it could pass as such is simply unbelievable to me. You see, this isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) about some kind of technicality, where a bunch of statistics or malt bills, or hop varieties, and/or interpretations of historic style shifts determine how a beer should be categorized, no, it’s about what’s in the bloody glass, and if you’re presenting SNPA to me as an ESB I’m pouring it down the drain.
SNPA is a fine beer*. I agree with Jim that it is balanced, and I agree that it is somewhat “timeless” (even given the relatively tiny amount of time it’s been around). I also think that it has some English characteristics in terms of malt and hop character, AND I agree that pale ales (at least English ones that SNPA isn’t) and bitters exists on a spectrum, even if IMO ESBs sit alone at the far reaches of such a scale. But again, when it comes down to actually drinking and tasting (and even looking at) the beer itself, there is absolutely no connection between a pint of mildly hoppy, clearly American SNPA, and a pint of any, reputably brewed malty, English ESB. I just don’t see (or taste) it.
*There is an incredibly weird thing here which very few people will remember, but in back in 2008 SN released a beer that they called an ESB, BUT where ESB stood for “Early Spring Beer”, i.e., the beer was what we might recognize these days as one of those Fresh/Green hop pale ales.
Where I vehemently disagree with Jim is in his contention that because of the shifting sands underneath (the undoubtedly consistent) SNPA, that somehow that can mean that SNPA can suddenly legitimately be interpreted as an ESB in modern times. I think that Jim’s “reasoning” is that now that SNPA doesn’t seem quite so radical as it once did – mainly because its one-time largish hop profile has been superseded a million times over by double, triple, and God knows what other impossible IBU IPA nonsense beers in America – that it now qualifies as some kind of de-facto, malt-based beer. To suggest so is ridiculous IMO, and that’s what makes the folk at the World Beer Cup look like asshats.
Ironically, contrary to many American’s ideas this illustrates exactly why we need to adhere to styles much more closely, because if SNPA is an ESB, then ALL style guidelines mean absolutely nothing. I’m waiting for Bell’s Two Hearted to be declared the greatest Stout in the Midwest. That, like this, is just plain stupid.
