Nothing New Under the Sun

Chris Hall is promoting his idea of "juicy bangers" to describe beers that, to borrow a phrase, "hit the spot". It is an interesting concept when you extend it to beer design, but otherwise its probably just a bit of fun, though with a serious point underneath.    Boak and Bailey, extending this simple idea to one a tad more complex, are asking on their blog for suggestions for further categories.  They are even getting some, though perhaps it's just me that finds people giving pet names to beer styles a bit odd. It's all a touch anal for me, though that perhaps isn't the best word, considering what I am about to say.

Back in the good old flame throwing days of Usenet, probably in the late 1990s, I am pretty sure that Chris's juicy bangers would have ended up very scorched and unpalatable indeed, such was the snappiness of those involved. Any whiff of juicy bangers would have been ruthlessly taken apart. Nonetheless we did discuss ad nauseum the difficult subject of beer styles.  Odd really when then there weren't many. Or rather there were, but either they were categorised differently, or they were obscure foreign styles which at best were lumped under "foreign", or they hadn't been like saison or Imperial IPA invented. Or re-invented, since Ron Pattinson has long since proved the title of this piece.  Back then, at worst, beers styles were scarcely understood at all by many and the subject of violent disagreement. There were those (and they still exist) that simply referred to and rigidly adhered to, American beer judging guidelines. Others, as now, were subjective more often than not and maybe the most sensible of a pretty leery bunch. Beer after all is a pretty subjective thing.

So how did we deal with this eternal conundrum? While we couldn't solve the unsolveable, or change human nature, we did come up with a solution of sorts.  It was a simple really. In the end we boiled it all down to something simple. Something easily understood and effective, though not perhaps in a particularly sophisticated way.  The question to ask about a beer was "Is it good or shite?" 

Unless you are particularly enamoured by over analysis, it works. Good old Usenet. We got to the bottom of things then.

It was suggested by Rich at BeerCast that I sometimes write tongue in cheek.  Perish the thought.