A friend of mine has 22 years experience brewing, is going to be a brewmaster at a new microbrewery pub.
He critiqued a few of my beers, and it seemed he wanted to fit every one into exact style guidelines. Not enough carbonation for this style, not enough hops for that style--all I wanted him to do was tell me if they were good.
I have a rye beer I brew and I have no idea what style it might fit into. All I know is I love it, and I keep brewing it. He thought it was OK and offered up some suggestions that would have made it fit a style better, but I don't know that I want to do that.
It seems--he's not the only one I know who appears to do this--that he can't drink a beer without first plugging into a style, from which he then judges it.
I find it weird--this beer was not malty enough, that one not hoppy enough. And yet, across all the myriad styles, some beers aren't malty, some aren't hoppy. So why can't it be what it is, instead of assessing it against this or that style?
I do brew some styles--I have a cal common that I think is terrific and representative of the style (thank you catdaddy66 for the recipe), a few others...but as far as fitting a style, it doesn't interest me much.
That said, my LHB club is having a throwdown in early april and one of the brews is a German Pils. So I'm brewing one of those to see if I can at least get in the ballpark. We'll see if I can hit a style.