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Essential Beer Styles

I have been thumbing though a favorite old recipe book of mine recently looking for inspiration.  Temptation lurks on every page under the headings of Alt, Porter and Bock.  I try to see these beers in my minds eye, and sometimes I imagine what they must taste like, or what the perfect example you taste like on my palate.

Then I think about the techniques and skills required to not just brew a beer willy nilly, but to brew it well.  I am always preaching about being dedicated to brewing a couple recipes and brewing them well.  The temptation to brew a new style every time we brew is very great as homebrewers.  I think many brewers to jump all over style to style.

So I began to wonder, if I wanted to have one recipe that I brewed really well which would it be.  Well simply picking one beer/recipe/style to brew over and over gets boring. (I have tried it!)  So then I thought about maybe narrowing the field to fewer beers.  But how many to include…. Well the new kegerator I am building will have 4 taps to start with.  And, the more I hashed it over, 4 sounded like a decent compromise between variety and commitment to better brewing.

So I pose this question to myself: “Which four styles would you brew if you were limited to only 4 styles?”

Here’s my top four.  I chose these because I find myself gravitating towards these recipes all the time.  But I don’t dedicate myself solely to these styles because I occasionally toss in some other new style.

American Cream Ale
English Ordinary Bitter
English Northern Brown Ale
Oatmeal Stout

Interestingly, with these four I could save money to develop the perfect recipes, because three of them are English in nature.  So that means buying English base malt in bulk and perhaps buying EKG hops in bulk as well.  Lastly, if I plan my brewing sessions appropriately I could always pitch with yeast cake, or at the very least save English ale yeast for batch to batch…again significantly reducing the cost.

(Of course how does this fit into my new love of sour beers that I will obviously need to start brewing myself as commercial examples are far and few between???)

So what’s your top four???

BREW ON!

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6 Comments

  1. My top four:

    American IPA
    Bohemian Pilsener
    American Stout
    Extra Special Bitter

    I thought about putting Belgian Tripel in there, but if I brewed/drank that all the time, I’d have a hard time getting much else accomplished 🙂

  2. Only 4. OK:

    American Pale Ale
    American Cream Ale
    Oatmeal stout
    ESB

    Wow, that was tough.

  3. CanadaBrew

    Top 4:

    IPA
    Chocolate Porter
    Fruit flavoured wheat ale (depends what fruit is in season, is that cheating?)
    American Pale Ale

    Another “theme” could be to have 3 standard beers, and then rotate the fourth throughout the year (christmas ale, pumpkin ale etc.)

  4. CanadaBrew:
    I had considered the rotating 4th brew as a seasonal brew. However, for me I have a Holiday beer that I make already and the recipe is perfect. Because I don’t need to change it I didn’t feel that it was something I would need to put in the rotating 4 for perfecting.
    Of course, if after brewing say American Cream ale three times I felt like the recipe was finally the way I liked it, maybe I’d change out the Cream ale in the 4 for something new…like sour beers!

  5. I think my four would be:

    IPA (something nice and hoppy for the hoppy moods)
    American Brown Ale (A perfect session beer)
    Hefeweizen (A beer I could have anytime, on any occasion)
    Munich Dunkle (Because the malty goodness of this beer is just out of this world)

    That was tough….I need a beer now!

    Cheers,
    Jason

  6. My four would be:

    Porter
    American Amber
    American Pale Ale
    Sour Beers

    Just thought I would support your sour beer fixation. I think my fourth would be Barley Wine. Not sure, but I would like to include a style I could brew and age.

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