Style of the Month

So I thought I'd start a new tradition with the style of the month being handed over to me by our President and give a little history of the style, as well as outlining what differentiates this style from other styles. I'd also like to send an invitation to all brewers to let me know if you have a beer that you feel fits this style that you've brewed that you'd like included in the horizontal tasting.

To start things off, I thought we'd start this with BJCP Category 13E. - American Stout.

Per the BJCP Guidelines, which can be found at http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/catdex.php, this style falls into a bit of a nowhere land between Foreign Extra Stout (which is an odd ball category all its own, but I'll save that for another time) and Russian Imperial Stout. It will have a moderate to strong roasted aroma, leaning towards coffee and cocoa and away from ashy. The hop character runs the gamut from medium to very low and tends toward American hops. There are a lot of optionals in this category, from ester and alcohol derived aromatics to the variances in hop flavor. Suffice it to say, this is a very flavorful beer with a wide berth of interpretation.

The primary defining character in these beers tends to be a moderately to moderately high OG and a distinctly American character. Commonly American hops and malts are used, as well as clean American yeast. I like to think of these beers as being the bigger brothers of Dry, Sweet and Oatmeal stouts, but not as big and burly as the Russian Imperial Stouts.

This is a style that has no real historical provenance and seems to have been the result of these types of beers showing up in the other stout categories but not really fitting into the historical guidelines of world classics such as Sam Smith's Oatmeal Stout or Guinness. As such, as with many other styles that are now considered classically American, a variation was born. The BJCP guide lists beers from most of the forerunners of American craft beer as brewing classic versions, namely Rogue Shakespeare Stout, Sierra Nevada Stout & North Coast Old No. 38.

Regarding next week's, and future, meeting(s), I intend to showcase the style and the variation within and hopefull will help to demonstrate how, even though there are definitions to each style, each brewer has a lot of options in terms of how (s)he can produce a beer "to style."

Cheers,

Brian