"Natural" beer styles?

Revisited yet again... So some ideas about this:

1. Natural styles aren’t marketing terms like almost all beer styles -- they relate to perception

2. A beer can be more or less a part of a natural style

3. It can be in one or many natural styles, but not zero


Are those enough rules?

I might offer these as natural styles and examples...

A. Malty - Abbey ales, porter, East Coast style IPA
B. Hop forward - American pales, IPA, Black IPA
C. Sour - gueze, american sours, Berliner Weisse
D. Fruity - Hefeweizen, lambic, fruit flavored, tropical yeasts

And then some basic modifiers as well

Smoke, salty, strong (>= 7.4%), session (<= 4.6% abv), dark, pale

So even a beginner could look at a beer and click...

Malty and the system would look at the name and abv and add "dark" and "strong"

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The problem we’re trying to solve is a consumer-friendly way to group beer.

This would be a companion to and not a replacement for our existing styles.

If a beer can be "more or less a part of a natural style" - what’s the point? I get the desire to simplify, but at this rate, we might as well resort to calling it all "beer" and just moving along.

Scroll bars or a flavor wheel sort of thing may be more informative, though requiring more user input

Originally posted by JoeMcPhee
If a beer can be "more or less a part of a natural style" - what’s the point? I get the desire to simplify, but at this rate, we might as well resort to calling it all "beer" and just moving along.

So, a brett beer that is not malty, hoppy, or fruity would be sour.

I thought the only Natural beer styles were Ice and Light.

If you are following majority of beer drinkers. Should they be split in blond & dark?

If you are talking about adding extra words to the shelf talkers that some retailers use, then you are on the right track Joe.

Originally posted by joet
To explain, 99.999999% of people in the world don’t know or care what a Weizenbock is and they are not informed in the slightest by this word.

Originally posted by StefanSD
If you are talking about adding extra words to the shelf talkers that some retailers use, then you are on the right track Joe.

I prefer fakies