{"id":321918,"date":"2025-11-27T18:03:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T18:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/uncategorized\/this-is-just-plain-stupid-taste-the-damn-beer\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T18:03:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T18:03:31","slug":"this-is-just-plain-stupid-taste-the-damn-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=321918","title":{"rendered":"This is just plain stupid. Taste the damn beer"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Let me start by making it very clear that this post isn\u2019t me having a pop at Jim Dykstra<\/a>. At least I\u2019m pretty sure that it isn\u2019t, since I don\u2019t think that his article (read on) is defending<\/em> the decision of the World Beer Cup, rather I think that he\u2019s trying to explain<\/em> it. There\u2019s a BIG difference between those two things. The next time I speak to Jim I\u2019ll ask him if my interpretation of his words is correct or not; I guess we\u2019ll see!<\/p>\n

So, what am I talking about? Well in September Jim wrote a piece for Beer Connoisseur magazine<\/a> where he reported on the fact that the World Beer Cup had just awarded a Gold Medal<\/a> to Sierra Nevada\u2019s Pale Ale. OK, sounds reasonable, right? It\u2019s a fine beer, so what\u2019s the big deal? Are you sitting down? SNPA was awarded a Gold Medal in the ESB category.<\/strong> Don\u2019t be stupid.<\/p>\n

Read the headline here<\/a> \u2013 you won\u2019t believe it. Yes, you read it correctly, that\u2019s not a typo. In the article Jim gives a historical perspective about relationship between pale ales and bitters, focusses on \u2018balance\u2019 of SNPA, and in the process attempts to explain (again I am assuming Jim is not trying to justify<\/em> this) why this award might make some sense.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019m not<\/em> going to do (at least for now) is to question Jim\u2019s interpretation of the evolution of styles, rather I\u2019m going to take his word for it, and then perhaps check in with Ron Pattinson<\/a> at a later date. I\u2019m also not going to make a lot of comment about Jim\u2019s assertion that we should not be, \u201cdogmatic about style\u201d (even though that\u2019s something that I mostly disagree with him on). Nor am I going to quarrel with his opinion that SNPA is balanced \u2013 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<\/strong><\/em>. EVER<\/strong>. To suggest that it could pass as such is simply unbelievable to me. You see, this isn\u2019t (or at least shouldn\u2019t be<\/em>) 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\u2019s about what\u2019s in the bloody glass, and if you\u2019re presenting SNPA to me as an ESB I\u2019m pouring it down the drain.<\/p>\n

SNPA is a fine beer*. I agree with Jim that it is balanced, and I agree that it is somewhat \u201ctimeless\u201d (even given the relatively tiny amount of time it\u2019s 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\u2019t) 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<\/em> and tasting<\/em> (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\u2019t see (or taste) it.<\/p>\n

*There is an incredibly weird thing here which very few people will remember, but in back in 2008 SN released a beer<\/a> that they called an ESB, BUT where ESB stood for \u201cEarly Spring Beer\u201d, i.e., the beer was what we might recognize these days as one of those Fresh\/Green hop pale ales.<\/em><\/p>\n

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<\/em> that Jim\u2019s \u201creasoning\u201d is that now that SNPA doesn\u2019t seem quite so radical as it once did \u2013 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 \u2013\u00a0 that it now qualifies as some kind of de-facto, malt-based beer. To suggest so is ridiculous IMO, and that\u2019s what makes the folk at the World Beer Cup look like asshats.<\/p>\n

Ironically, contrary to many American\u2019s ideas this illustrates exactly why we need<\/em> to adhere to styles much more closely, because if SNPA is an ESB, then ALL style guidelines mean absolutely nothing. I\u2019m waiting for Bell\u2019s Two Hearted to be declared the greatest Stout in the Midwest. That, like this, is just plain stupid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let me start by making it very clear that this post isn\u2019t me having a pop at Jim Dykstra. At least I\u2019m pretty sure that it isn\u2019t, since I don\u2019t think that his article (read on) is defending the decision of the World Beer Cup, rather I think that he\u2019s trying to explain it. There\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":321919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[149319,149320,149321,149322,149323,149324,149325],"tags":[3171,18779,53524,202,149326,13351,6925,8232,117257],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-321918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-pale-ale","category-beer-styles","category-beer-thoughts","category-esb","category-sierra-nevada","category-styles","category-world-beer-cup","tag-beer","tag-damn","tag-esb","tag-plain","tag-sierra-nevada","tag-stupid","tag-styles","tag-taste","tag-world-beer-cup"],"yoast_head":"\nThis is just plain stupid. Taste the damn beer - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=321918\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This is just plain stupid. Taste the damn beer - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Let me start by making it very clear that this post isn\u2019t me having a pop at Jim Dykstra. At least I\u2019m pretty sure that it isn\u2019t, since I don\u2019t think that his article (read on) is defending the decision of the World Beer Cup, rather I think that he\u2019s trying to explain it. 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