When he saw a number of similar russet-colored sour beers in West Flanders, Belgium, sharing a common set of flavors, aromas, brewing techniques, and yeast strains, he grouped them together into a style he called вЂњFlemish RedвЂќ-something the Flemish themselves had never heard of. Whereas some beer styles, such as pilsner, porter, tripel, dubbel, and Weissbier clearly already existed and were well understood when Jackson arrived on the scene, others were disparate threads of a cloth that Jackson wove together. Although Jackson mined the work of earlier writers such as Jean De Clerck to form his concepts, the term вЂњbeer styleвЂќ appears to be solely his invention, and other beer writers have searched in vain for earlier uses of it. In fact, it is not even old, having been essentially invented out of whole cloth by the late beer writer Michael Jackson in his seminal 1977 book The World Guide to Beer. Sauternes are even more so, because it is grown in one place, is always sweet, is always golden, can be made from three grape varieties, is affected by botrytis, etc.ДЄlthough we tend to imagine that the modern concept of beer style is itself ancient, it is not.

вЂњChampagneвЂќ is a place and a technique of wine-making all Champagnes have some things in common, and this approaches the idea of style. When the label says вЂњBarbera,вЂќ on the other hand, we need to know that barbera is a grape, not a place, and Barbera can be grown anywhere. When a wine label says вЂњBarolo,вЂќ what does this mean? Barolo is a type of wine, but to understand it, you need to know that it is named after the town of Barolo and that it is grown in five towns in Piemonte, Italy, from the nebbiolo grape there is no Barolo grape. The world of wine, variously broken as it is into classifications, regions, grapes, wine types, etc, remains a mystery to many people. We also know that it was essentially invented in the city of Pilsen in Czech Bohemia by a Bavarian brewmaster in 1842 and has formed the foundation for most of the beer consumed in the world today.ДЇrom one word, then-pilsner-the brewer and consumer can derive a huge amount of information. When someone mentions вЂњGerman pilsner,вЂќ then, we know that the color is clear and golden, the carbonation is moderately high, the aroma is fresh and floral with bready notes of malt and perhaps a whiff of sulfur, the bitterness is snappy, the palate is dry, and the beer had a cold fermentation by a lager yeast strain and emerged at about 5% alcohol by volume. A beerвЂ™s style will encompass its color, its level of carbonation, aroma, aspects of its flavor, the brewing technique used to make it, and the often-rich history from which it derives. This, then, is the true basis of beer style. One can argue, successfully, that hollandaise sauce was not always what it is today, but as a result of this вЂњfood taxonomy,вЂќ chefs, cooks, and consumers are able to use a common language to describe food. If one adds tarragon, or curry powder, or mint, or orange zest, or tomato puree to hollandaise sauce, it may be transformed into sauce bГ©arnaise, sauce cafГ© de Paris, sauce Paloise, sauce Choron, or sauce Maltaise. It is mildly tangy, has a pale yellow color, and is completely opaque, with no lumps or traces of oil. As any chef or culinary student knows, hollandaise sauce is an emulsion of egg yolks and butter, usually flavored with lemon juice and some type of pepper. To speak of beer style, then, is more akin to speaking of a type of food-such as hollandaise sauce. This describes the natural world, and the things that it describes can be considered objectively true, even if one disagrees with the groupings.Д«eer, of course, is man-made and therefore subjective. The modern concept of beer style is sometimes compared with taxonomy, where all the worldвЂ™s living things are grouped by kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and, finally, species.

We want to know whether a particular animal is a deer or an antelope, whether Pluto is a planet or just a big rock, whether Japanese sake is to be called a вЂњbeerвЂќ or a вЂњwineвЂќ or perhaps sits apart from each of these.ДЇor thousands of years, cultures all over the world have always differentiated types of beer, just as they have differentiated other types of food. Humans instinctively crave patterns and differentiations. Beer style is, at its base, the codification of all parameters that group particular beers together, such that they can be recognized, replicated, discussed, and understood. Beer Style, a much-debated concept of critical importance to both the brewer and the consumer, but often misunderstood by those who have benefited most from its influence.

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