Examples were made in the hoppy beer thread about extremely hoppy beer being compared to overblown Aussie Shiraz.
Thought the discussion could use a unique thread. I personally have a hard time comparing beer styles to specific regions/styles of wine. Wine grapes are for me, fairly distinctive when made well and the tragedy of Parkerization, no matter the region is watching Cabernet become indistinguishable from Syrah, Sangiovese etc.
I don’t believe this to be the case with craft beer. An aggressively hopped DIPA may not be everyone’s bag, but it is a very small section of the craft beer world and will likely never become so homogenized with say, Stout that beer lovers in general only prescribe to “bigger is better”.
I know people look at BA & other beer sites and point out how high the ABV is on highly rated beer. Many breweries are making smaller batches of “special” beers with high ABV, but I would also direct people to breweries like Crooked Stave which is a hype machine pushing out beers in the 4-6% range regularly.
Most of the people who post in the beer & spirits forum have footing as a beer and wine lover. This one really has a hard time thinking the single hop Fremont Summer Ale I’m about to crack into has any noticeable stylistic similarity to any wine grape.
I tackled exactly this in a newsletter a decade or so ago:
Classic Beer Styles for Wine Lovers
To help the maltose impaired amongst you take that first baby step into fine beers (the preferred drink of winemakers everywhere!), we present to you six beers with direct flavor / texture corollaries to classic wines:
The real Champagne of Bottled Beer is Boon Geuze, an austerely dry and yeasty beer aged five years on the lees Methode Champenoise. The Guide Michelin has even compared this amazing potation to Bollinger R.D.!!!
Lovers of aromatic wines made from Riesling, Gewurz and especially Muscat will flip over Blanche de Bruges and Blanche de Chamblay. These are the most winelike brews made, bursting with spiced citrus and floral flavors that lead to a crisp dry finish that will leave you wanting more.
Chardoholics will find comfort in the immense body and toasty, rounded flavors of Bokrijks Kruikenbier, the richest blonde ale we have ever tasted, with a creamy texture that perfectly balances the intensely aromatic bouquet. Warning: this is strong stuff duuuuuude!
Fans of the lighter end of the red wine spectrum will have to agree with the slogan (banned in the U.S. by the BATF) of Rodenbach Red Ale: “It’s wine!” Aged in large oak barrels for roundness but still exploding with deep cranberry and cherry flavors, this has been dubbed “the world’s most refreshing beer!” by top critics. Another delicious (and budget conscious) example of the style is Ichtegems, but take three as they’re habit forming…
Rhone-a-philes will appreciate the full, meaty, earthy flavors and mouthfeel of Chimay Grande Resérve. This truly World Classic ale has strong spice and pepper notes on the nose and a bigger body than any wimpy Bordeaux or Burgundy, great with either roast game or the big game and even comes in Magnums should you need them.
We’ve watched alcohols climb on the highest rated wines and now beers. There’s that correlation. Unfortunately.
With “parkerizaton” or whatever it was wines got softer (lower acid), sweeter tasting (high alc), and somewhat generic. On the beer side you don’t hear (at least I don’t) about 100 point Blonde Ales or Pilsners. It’s all about doubles and triples.
It seems like the brewers are seeing how far they can push just as wine makers seem to. Not trying to diss experimentation. It just that more isn’t always better. I like balance, too.
You see the pull-back on CA Chardonnay now. At one time more oakiness and butteriness was better.
Ratings & scores are market movers for beer, but nowhere near on the scale for wine. There is nobody nearly as powerful as Parker that can throw 95 points at a random bottle of Spanish red and get the entire country clamoring for it in their grocery stores.
The comparison with stylized wine is a bit slippery for me. Parkerized wines (and there are lots of them here in Washington) seem to follow a singular path to high scores no matter what the grape variety is.
Using IPA as an example- one of my very favorites is Fremont Interurban IPA. 6.8 Abv, 55 IBU. It is created in relatively small batches with pronounced hops & lighter malts. The beer smells & tastes hoppy ( I like that), but put it next to Great Lakes Alchemy Hour Double IPA- 9.4 Abv, 80 IBU. This is loaded with darker, caramelly malts to “balance” the hops.
This is why I don’t see a direct line to Aussie Wine= Craft IPA in 2013. For people who are averse to hop forward seemingly bigger or unbalanced beers, I can almost guarantee that if they weren’t looking at the technical data, they would think the Alchemy Hour is the more balanced or approachable beer.
As one that used the Aussification term before in one of the threads, I do want to clarify my stance a bit. It was meant not to compare wine styles to beer styles but that hype and ‘scores’ are driving more consumers, and the bigger ‘scores’ are being given to the more over-the-top bottlings. There are just as many customers coming in to the store these days with printouts of so-and-so’s Top 50 or Top 100 rated beers as there were with Wine Advocates or Wine Spectators in their heyday, searching for the top scores only and not reading the notes to know what they are even getting (looking for 120 Minute and not liking IPAs, looking for Westvleteren and not liking Belgians). Most of them don’t even understand the concept of seasonal beers or one-offs either, and since the vast majority of those top scorers fall into that category they get frustrated very quickly when they can’t find KBS or Hopslam in June.
The most influential ratings are from Ratebeer and BeerAdvocate, and I think they are by and large more worthless than any wine reviewer’s score. Too easy to get a bunch of fanboys to bump your score up. I’ve seen so many beers with a high 90s rating of some sort, and when I took the time to read the reviews most of the notes are very meh and the bulk of the strong positive notes are from reviewers in the same town as the brewery. At least when a wine reviewer gives a score it’s one voice, and you can calibrate your opinion to theirs. A dozen 4s and 5s with Twitter length notes have no value, yet they elevate a beer’s ‘score’. I don’t mean to dis those sites too much because they have done a lot to promote craft beers over the years and can make for a nice community, but they make it way too easy for any beer to appear way above-average.
I’ve noticed the same phenomenon. I recently bought a few bombers of Galactic Double Daisy Cutter from Chicago brewery, Half Acre. The enthusiasm for this beer seems, to me, out of proportion to the quality. It sold out in an afternoon, and early reviews on untappd were rhapsodic. Maybe they’re right and I’m wrong, and it really is an exceptional beer. But it does seem like there’s a fanboy element at play. It’s a successful local business that markets itself well, and people want to be a part of that. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s another reason I ignore crowd-sourced ratings.
Matthew- Definitely see your point there. I do love the idea of someone getting home & cracking their 120 wondering WTF.
To Ryan’s point as well, I actually feel lucky to have a very limited amount of whales, rares et al coming out of the PNW. As a result, ( a good one too) I don’t have to buy tickets, wait in lines etc. to get new or limited releases. Ironically enough, I’ve caught plenty of crap in Wine Talk for being underwhelmed by my state’s two “wine whales” Quilceda Creek & Cayuse which will always feel like little more than hype to me.
I’m on the other end of this argument - and don’t agree at all -
a single varietal wine is supposed to show it’s character and sense of place - whether it sees oak or not - You know you are going to look for flint & wet stone in a Loire Sauvignon Blanc, and you are going to look for an unctuousness in a Napa Cabernet - sleekness & elegance in a Right Bank Bordeaux - that freshness of apple in a young Macon - a hardness of structure in a Tannat etc -
A Sangiovese from Tuscany is going to have a hell of a lot in common from property to property much more than an IPA from one brewery to the next - and the subtle styles of the Brits have nothing to do with the over the top styles out of the West Coast -
Maybe that’s why we don’t have ONE beer critic in the world that we can follow? How the hell would someone be able to put all those pieces together?
I love a big Imperial IPA ever bit as much as a lighter British IPA - but they are worlds apart -
Ditto with American Lagers compared to Bavarian, Czech and Polish lagers - I get a sense of place when I drink a fresh Bavarian Helles or Pilsener - I don’t when I drink American Pilseners -
I don’t know how anyone could be a true beer critic - Michael Jackson was the only one who seemed to understand all -
I think there are many parallels between wine and beer particularly when looking at the tasters - point chasers, always having the trendy beers, following critics instead of palates. I’m not sure though that you can link lovers of one style of wine with a style of beer. I love big hoppy beers but don’t like Aussie cabs for instance. I would imagine old world palates and lower alcohol mor extradition all beer styles would be accurate though or similar broad trends.
I would respectfully disagree. I find Garrett Oliver to be more of a self promoter than a successor to Michael Jackson. I don’t know if anyone who sells beer for a living can do what a true critic can do. I do agree though it is hard to think of anyone who did what the bard of beer did, but not even sure if he could do it now - way too many different beers being brewed as compared to even 10 years ago.
Agreed - I can’t think of anyone living that did what Michael Jackson did - I was lucky enough to spend some time with him in the early 90s as a good friend of his owned a Scottish styled brew-pub in Minnesota that made some wonderful beers - Jackson was one of the first European beer writers that acknowledged how great the new beers coming out of the United States were - and had an uncanny palate for literally “anything” made well -
AN OLD STORY: I was a judge at a home brew festival at this particular Minnesota brewpub back in the early 90s, and sat next to Jackson the entire day, tasting beer after beer after beer - I was totally hammered trying to keep up with him - and I knew he was just as hammered at the time - when it was time for him to get up and do his “speech” - he was so clear and elegant in his speaking that I was just blown away - we then sat down and he was still just as hammered as I was and we proceeded to get to the stouts - homebrewed at ungodly alcohol levels - all of them - after another couple of hours - he had to take off to do a late dinner and talk at another place - and I am sure as hell that he was just as elegant and precise at that next talk as he was at this homebrew festival… a truly amazing man…
I feel like its a bit of a different comparison though, at least price-wise. The high scores will see a wine price multiply quite a bit, like the $20something Carlisle syrah that got a huge rating and all of a sudden couldn’t be found for less than $75 if you could find it at all… granted beers in general are sold at a much lower price point, but you don’t see the big jump in price when a particular craft beer gets scored or rated well.
Did you notice the Westy Brick that some guy wanted $300 for in CC that sold in a day? That was $85 retail, and would be a fraction of that at the brewery in Belgium.
Bottleworks in Seattle has bottles of Russian River Deviation going for $85 from their cellar list.
There is a secondary market for beer- the difference is, in my opinion that the community sets that secondary market generally in trade value first, rather than a specific critic like Parker with wine moving prices on a whim.
It shows sold- he did delete the original post, so he may have taken less. Thinking more about secondary market, one of the advantages of wine is that the secondary market is well established. If someone prices something absurdly high compared to auction sites, they’ll be ignored. With beer, people could put whatever value they want on something & there really isn’t much out there to use as a reference. Especially since Vinnie C & Shaun Hill put the kibosh on the EBay stuff.
![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
And, I agree with you whole heartedly.![[swoon.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/f425e8dac3e7344bee264da02e55428971be23a9.gif "swoon"){kind=small}
There’s a sucker born …