Hybrid Beer Styles
If you frequently enter your beer in homebrew competitions, you are probably well aware of what’s known as “brewing to style.” That is, you try to brew your beer so that it falls within the parameters of some style from the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) Style Guidelines. A beer that is a good match for the style guidelines tends to do better in competitions than one that isn’t, even if they are both well brewed. However, brewing to style only gets you so far. What do you do for the Specialty Beer category, where the only limitation is your creativity?
Some beers that fall into the Specialty Beer category, are fairly straightforward. Some are historical, traditional or minor styles that don’t yet have a style description. Some are variations of existing styles, such as creating higher-gravity or “imperial” versions. Others involve unusual techniques, such as steinbier or eisbier, or unusual ingredients (non-barley or wheat fermentables, or adjuncts). Still others are clones of specific commercial beers that aren’t examples of any style. Finally, there are the truly oddball beers that might include virtually any ingredient. We aren’t going to discuss these cases. We’re going to focus on combinations of existing styles, or what I call fusion beers. (“Hybrid beers” would be another good designation for these brews, but the BJCP guidelines already uses that term to refer to something else.)
For purposes of this article, let’s define a fusion beer as a beer that is a combination of two or more existing BJCP style categories, or a variation of a single BJCP style category by using ingredients, processes or techniques from other styles. The resulting beer is something that could likely be entered in a homebrew competition as a Category 23 Specialty Beer, or perhaps a Category 16E Belgian Specialty Ale or a Category 21B Christmas Ale (depending on some of the ingredients). We’re going to focus more on concept rather than execution, as we discuss how to come up with interesting ideas and how to formulate recipes more than how to actually brew them.
Existentialism
Now would be a good time to ask yourself, “why am I doing this?” Are you coming up with a recipe to brew for yourself or do you intend to enter the beer in a competition? If it’s just for yourself and your friends, then you just need to worry about making something drinkable that you will enjoy. However, if it’s for a competition, then you also have to worry about pleasing the judges. That can be quite a bit harder. If you’re just brewing for yourself, you can skip ahead to the next section.
The first hurdle to overcome for judges is accurately describing your beer. You really need to be able to describe it in a single line, and it needs to be a meaningful concept. For example, “brown IPA” or “cross between brown ale and IPA” would be understood by judges to be an IPA with a darker color and some chocolate and caramel flavor. The judges would quickly grasp your intent, and then be able to judge the beer without having to think about it too much. Think about descriptions of recipes on menus in restaurants. The best ones will have simple descriptions. The more difficult ones will go into long details about the ingredients, the preparation, and the chef’s ego . . . and yup, it will come off the same way with beer judges.
If you supply an overly long explanation of your beer, you’ll likely irritate the judges by making them think you’re pompous or that you are trying to hide something. You’re giving them a description of your beer, not the recipe; remember that.
If you spend too much time explaining your beer, you’re also giving the judges more reasons to deduct points. If you mention ingredients, judges will expect to find them. If you give them a general concept, then they will automatically give you more leeway. My best advice is to be specific enough so that they understand you, but general enough so that they give you the benefit of the doubt. I won a gold medal at the last National Homebrew Conference (NHC) with a specialty beer described as “colonial stock ale with molasses and spruce tips (citrusy taste), 2 years old, 8% ABV.” It didn’t talk about how I handled the spruce tips, or that it had several other unusual ingredients. I mentioned the ones you could taste, and gave some general guidelines to set their mind properly before they tasted it.
I always try to think about the “style space” when formulating a recipe. The style space is the style parameter range a beer occupies — including its alcohol content (ABV), bitterness (IBUs), color (SRM), etc. — and its relationship to other styles. Consider the difference between an American pale ale and an American IPA. They are similar, but occupy different positions within the style space since the IPA has higher ABV and IBUs. Actually, the raw IBUs may be less interesting to us than the overall balance of bittering units to gravity units (BU:GU), what I call the Daniels Ratio after Ray Daniels, who first coined it in his book, “Designing Great Beers” (1996, Brewers Publications). American pale ale and IPAs are closer in BU:GU than in IBUs, which gives them a more similar balance.
When creating a new recipe, try to avoid hitting the style space occupied by another beer style. Don’t say something is a “darker American pale ale” because that could be an American amber ale or an American brown ale. Come up with something different. Avoid near misses of existing styles as well. Otherwise judges may think you tried to brew a classic style but didn’t get it quite right and then tried to pass it off as a different style. Try to visualize your final product and look for places within the style space with no clear fit. Describe your beer to a judge friend and ask them if they think it matches anything; if not, then you’re clear.
Getting Ideas
It’s a lot easier to clone an existing beer or brew a beer within a well-established style than it is to come up with a new idea. Fortunately, you don’t have to be completely original — you can “borrow” ideas from other sources if you aren’t getting a flash of inspiration. One thing you can try is to sample commercial examples that don’t fit established styles and see if you get any ideas. You don’t have to try to replicate a commercial beer; you can try one and then decide to take it in another direction. For example, I brew a brown IPA, but it’s not intended as a clone of Dogfish Head’s Indian Brown Ale. All you need is inspiration from one of the commercial examples; you can decide on your own recipe later.
If you’re a BJCP judge, then you can ask to judge specialty beers (or fruit/spice beers) at competitions that get a lot of entries. (And if you’re not a judge yet, c’mon, it’s just a test — take the damn thing already.) If you ask for one of these categories, the organizers will love you since few people request those assignments. In addition, you may get some great ideas. The NHC Second Round is a wonderful place to judge these styles, as all the really bad ideas have been weeded out in the first round.
You could also think about food and wine concepts. Think of food pairings you like, or food and wine matches that work well. See if you can take the dominant flavorings from some of these examples and apply them to beer. Tasting is tasting, and if a flavor combination works in one realm, it stands a good chance of working in another. For example, if you like spicy and malty flavors together, see if you can work that into a recipe.
If you do have an idea about mixing two commercial styles, here’s an easy way to see if you like it. Get two commercial (or homebrewed) beers of the styles you’ll be fusing, and blend them. Taste the blend and see if you like the results. You may have to vary the amounts you blend of each beer to get an idea of how well it works. But if you want to know what an IPA with Vienna malt tastes like, try blending an IPA and an Oktoberfest. The blend won’t be an exact match with what your recipe will be — in this example, both the bitterness and Vienna malt character will be reduced — but it will allow you to quickly test if the basic concept is sound. Keep in mind that some pairings that are known to work well. Hoppy, pale beers work well, as do malty beers with low bitterness. Watch out for known clashes. I have a dislike for burnt, deeply roasted grains with citrusy hops. Beers that are spiced or are sour rarely have high levels of bitterness or hoppiness. That’s for a reason. Sour and bitter clash; sweetness balances both. It’s as true in food as it is in beer. When you use harsh grains and harsh hops, you get an extra-harsh beer. Garrett Oliver’s “The Brewmaster’s Table” (2003, HarperCollins) is a good reference for understanding the flavor components in beer as well as the interaction between food and beer.
Commercial Examples
Here are a few commercial examples of beers fitting the theme of this article. Try these and see how to fit them into the style guidelines. They don’t. Then try to describe them to a judge using multiple styles. It’s much easier.
Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale is a 7.2% ABV, 50 IBU cross between Scotch ale, IPA and American brown ale made with brown sugar.
Surly Bender is a 5.1% ABV, 45 IBU oatmeal brown ale made with Belgian malts and malts from the UK.
Chouffe Houblon Dobbelen IPA Tripel is just that; a 9% Belgian tripel hopped like an American IPA, using Tomahawk, Saaz and Amarillo hops.
On my last trip to Belgium, I visited a very small artisanal brewery, Millervertus. They were very creative in creating beers that blended styles. I tasted a bitter witbier with plum, a beer that tasted like a strong Düsseldorf altbier, a bready tripel (sort of like a cross between a tripel and a Belgian pale ale) and a smoked beer. He used the Orval yeast, so his German-like beers all had a Belgian character. Very interesting indeed.
As you can see, American craft brewers and Belgian artisanal brewers don’t care much about hitting styles. They’re just trying to be creative and come up with some interesting, tasty beers for their customers to enjoy. That’s good advice for any homebrewer.
Recipe Variables
Once you have a concept in mind, it’s time to start formulating a recipe. There are two basic models you can follow: you can either make a variation of an existing base style by adding elements from another style, or you can attempt to combine attributes of two or more separate styles to create something completely different. We’ll talk about the variation option first, since it’s easier.
This might be an obvious step, but it bears repeating. Make sure you have a good recipe for your (unmodified) base beer style. Adding more ingredients isn’t going to make it better, so please be sure you’re happy with your original beer. You can even use the original as a control batch against which to judge your experimental fusion beer.
Examine the attributes of the variation style (that which you are fusing with the base style). It helps to understand what makes a recipe fit a certain style. Compare recipes of similar styles to help identify the key differences. For instance, what makes a porter different from a brown ale? Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer’s “Brewing Classic Styles” (2007, Brewers Publications) is a great resource for this exercise. In many cases, it’s just a difference in specialty grains. Look at the base grains, the specialty grains, the yeast type, the hop varieties, the bitterness level and the overall strength of the beer.
Identify what you want to vary. Pick the attributes that make the style unique and then think about how you want to fuse them with the base style. In my example of a brown IPA, I took the specialty grains that can make a brown porter (various crystal malts and chocolate malt) and fused them with my base IPA recipe.
Many brewers in the UK are creating new pale ales by using American hops. They leave everything else the same, but just change the hop varieties. It’s still not an American pale ale since the grain and yeast are British, but it has a different character. You can create interesting beers by following a similar pattern of changing the country of origin of some of the ingredients. For example, try making an Oktoberfest or Dunkelweizen but use a Belgian Trappist yeast, for instance. That would be sort of like merging the German beers with a dubbel.
In addition to the country of origin (US, UK, German, Belgium) of the ingredients, you can also vary the strength of the beer and the use of adjuncts. If you fuse styles of different strengths, you can decide how strong to make the result. You can add distinctive grains (e.g., rye, spelt, buckwheat, oats) or fermentables (e.g., honey, molasses, brown sugar, sorghum, maple syrup). Don’t make too many changes at once; remember you still need an easy-to-describe concept.
When merging two styles, look for the common elements between them. It’s helpful to use two recipes representing the styles, and then analyze the similarities and differences. Do they use the same base malt or the same yeast? Are they the same gravity or bitterness level? Pick out all the things that are the same between them and put that in your fusion recipe. Then start taking a look at the differences. You’ll want to borrow enough from each recipe so that your fusion beer reminds the taster of both styles, but not so much that all the flavors become muddled. It might help to consider base malts, specialty grains, adjuncts, bitterness level, strength, late hops, yeast, and fermentation technique separately. Fill each of those attributes with one element from either of your parent styles, and see if the combination is appealing to you. The process will take some trial-and-error, as well as some imagination.
Putting it into Practice
So now you have a basic recipe. Time to brew it, right? Not so fast. You need to take a moment and think about what you’re going to brew. Does it make sense? Does it sound good? Remember that just because you can combine two styles, doesn’t mean that you should. Some concepts are simply bad ideas that could taste horrible. The is an old episode of the TV show Friends in which Rachel is cooking an English Christmas dinner. Two pages of her recipe book stuck together and she wound up making a dish that was half English trifle and half shepherd’s pie. One comment was that it “tastes like feet.” Don’t let your beer wind up that way! Run through a mental “sanity check” before brewing your beer.
A good fusion beer needs to succeed in both concept and execution. We’ve discussed the conceptual side, but not as much about execution. Here are some common pitfalls in making these type of beers, and how best to avoid them. The keys to a great specialty beer are balance, flavor and drinkability. Whatever you do, your beer needs to be enjoyable to drink. The flavor profile should be clean, and any special ingredients should be well balanced. When in doubt, err on the side of restraint. Many good concepts are ruined because brewers over-emphasize the special nature of the ingredients at the expense of overall drinkability.
One way to improve drinkability is to understand common clashes in flavor, as well as how flavors balance and complement each other. While there are many examples I could cite, the ones that I think matter the most for fusion beers are:
Phenolics and harshness: Avoid using harsh hops or grains with phenolic yeast, or in using multiple sources of phenolics or harshness in a beer. Highly sulfate water can make hops harsh, and water with a high pH can extract harshness from grains. Certain hop varieties can be harsh, as can using lots of hops in long boils. Combine any of this harshness with a Trappist or weizen yeast, and the result will be amplified.
Dark malts and citrusy/piney hops: Sometimes found in stronger stouts, I’m not a fan of this flavor combination. The acidity clashes and the citrus flavors make the dark malts seem like stale, bad coffee.
Yeast, spice or fruit and bitterness or late hop character: Ever notice how most beers with a lot of yeast character tend to have low bitterness? Think weizens, witbiers, and lambics. Same with fruit and spice. If you add too much bitterness or too many late hops, the hops can step on the yeast, spice or fruit. Worse, you might still get both, but they could clash. Unless you have found a combination you know works, it’s best to avoid trying to overhop these types of beers.
Fruit and spice I think merging fruit and spice beers is a classic fusion. However, keep in mind the combinations need to work just like they do in food. For example, plums might work with cinnamon, but not with rosemary.
Sour and bitter: Sour beers aren’t usually bitter. Those two flavors are not naturally appealing to the palate, so combining them makes for a difficult flavor combination. Acidity and sourness can come from unlikely sources, so be sure to account for the use of any fruit, large amount of dark grains and citrusy hops.
If you try to avoid these known clashes and start experimenting with ideas that are known to work, such as blending fruits and spices, making darker variations of normally pale beers, making Belgian versions of American, English or German beers, using German base malts in American beers, brewing ales as lagers and vice versa, making pale beers hoppy and bitter, while making dark beers malty and with lower bitterness, then you will have a better chance of success. Remember to apply your recipe tweaks sparingly, and to keep good notes. Don’t change too many variables at once, and keep experimenting. Finally, if you brew a combination you don’t like, let it age for awhile. Some flavors take awhile to meld, and many beers improve with time. I look forward to judging some of your creations in competitions.
Recipes:
I’ve included two recipes to give you an idea of how to put these concepts into practice. The first one is a brown IPA, which is my normal IPA recipe with the addition of some darker malts and using brown sugar instead of honey. It uses late hopping for bitterness and adds the darker malts during the sparge, both of which should cut down on the clash of malt/hops that can happen in hoppy darker beers. The second one is a black witbier, which is my normal witbier recipe with darker malts and a slight tweak in spicing. Darker malts were used, but again only during the sparge. I changed the usual coriander and orange peel to star anise and tangerine, since I thought those spices would match better with a darker grain bill. I was actually thinking about a Chinese red braised beef dish for the flavorings, and wondered how they would fit. Check it out and let me know, or drop me a line with whatever original combinations you came up with on your own.
Cherokee Nation
(American Indian Brown Ale)
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.070 FG = 1.014
IBU = 66 SRM = 37 ABV = 7.4%
Ingredients
9 lb. 10 oz. (4.4 kg) Maris Otter malt
7.0 oz. (0.20 kg) Munich malt
7.0 oz. (0.20 kg) wheat malt
14 oz. (0.40 kg) CaraVienne malt
14 oz. (0.40 kg) crystal malt (40 °L)
7.0 oz. (0.20 kg) chocolate malt
3.5 oz. (0.10 kg) Special B malt
14 oz. (0.40 kg) Turbinado sugar
10.5 AAU Centennial hops (FWH)
(1.0 oz./28 g of 10.5% alpha acids)
32 AAU Tomahawk hops (20 mins)
(2.0 oz./57 g of 16% alpha acids)
2 oz. (57 g) Cascade hops (0 mins)
2 oz. (57 g) Centennial hops (dry hop)
Wyeast 1272 (American Ale II) yeast
Step by Step
Mash base grains at 152 °F (67 °C). Add crystal malts and dark grains during recirculation and sparging. Run off 8 gallons (30 L). Add sugar to the boil. Use a 90-minute boil, hopping according to schedule. (Note: FWH means first wort hops, hops added to kettle prior to boiling, while you are collecting wort.) You’ll probably lose some volume to the hops soaking them up. Ferment at 68 °F (20 °C).
Cherokee Nation
(American Indian Brown Ale)
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.070 FG = 1.014
IBU = 66 SRM = 33 ABV = 7.4%
Ingredients
5.75 lbs. (2.6 kg) light dried malt extract
14 oz. (0.40 kg) CaraVienne malt
14 oz. (0.40 kg) crystal malt (40 °L)
7.0 oz. (0.20 kg) chocolate malt
3.5 oz. (0.10 kg) Special B malt
14 oz. (0.40 kg) Turbinado sugar
10.5 AAU Centennial hops (20 mins)
(1.0 oz./28 g of 10.5% alpha acids)
32 AAU Tomahawk hops (20 mins)
(2.0 oz./57 g of 16% alpha acids)
2 oz. (57 g) Cascade hops (0 mins)
2 oz. (57 g) Centennial hops (dry hop)
Wyeast 1272 (American Ale II) yeast
Step by Step
Steep grains in 3 qts. (~3 L) of water at 152 °F (67 °C) for 30 minutes. While grains are steeping, begin heating 5.0 gallons (19 L) of water in your brewpot to a boil. (Note: you need to peform a full-wort boil to get the proper hop utilization in this hoppy beer.) Combine “grain tea” and boiling water, then stir in dried malt extract (DME). (Shut heat off and stir DME in carefully to avoid excessive foaming.) Top kettle up to 6.5 gallons (25 L) and boil for 90 minutes, adding hops at times indicated. Add sugar to the boil. You’ll probably lose some volume to the hops soaking them up. Ferment at 68 °F (20 °C).
The Other Michael Jackson
(Black Witbier)
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.052 FG = 1.012
IBU = 15 SRM = 24 ABV = 5.3%
Ingredients
5.5 lbs. (2.5 kg) Belgian Pilsner malt
4.0 lbs. (1.8 kg) flaked wheat
0.5 lbs. (0.23 kg) flaked oats
0.25 lbs. (0.11 kg) Carafa® Special II
0.25 lbs. (0.11 kg) Pale Chocolate malt
0.25 lbs. (0.11 kg) CaraVienne malt
3 AAU Hallertauer hops (90 mins)
(0.75 oz./21 g at 4% alpha acids)
0.25 tsp. dried chamomile flowers
zest of 2 tangerines
1 whole star anise, crushed
Wyeast 3944 (Belgian
White Beer) yeast
Step by Step
Step mash Pils malt, wheat and oats starting with a 122 °F (50 °C) rest for 10 minutes followed by 148 °F (64 °C) for 60 minutes. Add dark grains during recirculation and sparge. Collect 6.5 gallons (25 L). Use a 90 minute boil. Add spices at knockout and steep for 5 minutes. Ferment at 68 °F (20 °C).
The Other Michael Jackson
(Black Witbier)
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.052 FG = 1.012
IBU = 15 SRM = 25 ABV = 5.3%
Ingredients
1.5 lb. (0.68 kg) Pilsner dried malt extract
2.0 lbs. (0.91 kg) wheat liquid malt extract
0.25 lbs. (0.11 kg) Carafa® Special II
0.25 lbs. (0.11 kg) Pale Chocolate malt
0.25 lbs. (0.11 kg) CaraVienne malt
3 AAU Hallertauer hops (90 mins)
(0.75 oz./21 g at 4% alpha acids)
0.25 tsp. dried chamomile flowers
zest of 2 tangerines
1 whole star anise, crushed
Wyeast 3944 (Belgian White Beer) yeast
Step by Step
Steep specialty grains at 148 °F (64 °C) for 30 minutes. While grains steep, begin heating 2.5 gallons (9.5 L) of water to a boil in your brewpot. Combine water in brewpot, “grain tea” from steep and dried malt extract and bring to a boil. Boil for 90 minutes, adding hops at beginning of boil. Don’t let wort volume drop below 2.5 gallons (9.5 L) during the boil. (Add water, if so.) Stir in liquid malt extract during the final 10 minutes. Add spices when boil is finished and let them steep for 5 minutes prior to cooling wort. Cool wort, transfer to fermeter and top up to 5 gallons (19 L). See all-grain recipe for remaining instructions.
Ingredient notes: Get chamomile flowers at a spice store, health food shop, tea shop or craft store. Google “buy dried chamomile flowers” to find online sources. Chamomile tea is usually pure chamomile flowers (check the ingredient list). Use only the orange zest of the tangerines. Do not use the white pith. Using broken pieces of star anise is cheaper; use the equivalent of one whole star.
