Kvass - what style?

Reads 5324 • Replies 27 • Started Wednesday, December 14, 2016 6:54:24 AM CT

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Message YantarCoast P beers 4633 º places 210 º 06:54 Wed 12/14/2016 An Eastern Europe/FSU question: What style is kvass - Low Alcohol or Traditional Ale? On ratebeer it is categorised as both. There doesn’t seem to be any agreement on this: An advanced search of "kvas" gives about 90 results for low alcohol and about 50 for traditonal ale. However, searching for it in Lithuanian ("gira") gives a single traditional ale and around 50 low alcohols. Same with Estonia - 17 LAs and a single TA. The Moldovan spelling (Cvas) yields 12 traditional ales and zero low alcohols.
Message Scopey P beers 24184 º places 727 º 07:03 Wed 12/14/2016 I see your issue! I would personally put them under traditional ale. The actual RB description of traditional ale mentions them.
Message Leighton P beers 33715 º places 1204 º 07:09 Wed 12/14/2016 I would also say Traditional Ale. If you send corrections on those you see that are labelled as Low Alcohol, the Admins can investigate further.
Message HenrikSoegaard P beers 20702 º places 691 º 07:41 Wed 12/14/2016 It should be Trad. Ale. Same as the Scandinavian "Hvidtøl".

Message Marduk P beers 21939 º places 968 º 07:56 Wed 12/14/2016 I would say it needs it’s own separate style. Some styles in RB are merged and they shouldn’t. Other style sit separately and should be merged. Old record playing.
Message YantarCoast P beers 4633 º places 210 º 08:46 Wed 12/14/2016 Thanks everyone for clearing this up.
Message HenrikSoegaard P beers 20702 º places 691 º 05:49 Thu 12/15/2016 I have long argumented for that Kvas, Hvidtøl and Dutch oud Bruin should be a "new" style. They have in common that they are old traditionel very sweet, low alcoholic beers. I am calling the "Sahti" argument.
Message StefanSD beers 2449 º places 57 º 09:57 Thu 12/15/2016 Originally posted by HenrikSoegaard I have long argumented for that Kvas, Hvidtøl and Dutch oud Bruin should be a "new" style. They have in common that they are old traditionel very sweet, low alcoholic beers. I am calling the "Sahti" argument. My opinion, not that anyone is asking, is that Kvass should be its own separate category like mead, cider and sake.

Message gnoff P beers 11277 º places 838 º 10:59 Thu 12/15/2016 Swedish "Svagdricka" could likely be placed in some such category as "traditional low alcohol sweet stuff not produced by that many these days"
Message omhper P beers 40214 º places 332 º 18:07 Thu 12/15/2016 Originally posted by HenrikSoegaard It should be Trad. Ale. Same as the Scandinavian "Hvidtøl". Quite the contrary. Look at the description for Low Alcohol: https://www.ratebeer.com/beerstyles/low-alcohol/75/ It was created for exactly these styles! It is Danish admins that made their own decisions, contrary to existing guidelines. Thus, you certainly cannot use the Danish part of the database an example for other countries.
Message SilkTork P beers 7746 º places 111 º 05:57 Fri 12/16/2016 Low alcohol and Traditional ale are not styles as such, they are crude descriptors which allow us to hold beers which don’t fit any other RateBeer style guidelines. We tend to use Traditional ale for older styles which are still brewed but which for one reason or another we don’t have a style guideline. Low alcohol catches those beers which are low abv but which don’t fit into any other RateBeer style guidelines. Sometimes, a beer can go into either, though if a beer is an older style, for me it makes sense for the Traditional one to be preferred, as I would regard that as the more note worthy aspect of the beer. It’s interesting, as omhper points out, that the Low alcohol descriptor includes some older styles that folks may think of more as traditional than low alcohol., especially as it names Skibsøl, and a search for Skibsøl on RateBeer gives nine results, only one of which is under 3%. Most of them appear to be listed under Smoked. It also names oud bruin, which is another beer that turns out to be mostly over 3%, and that is listed on the site either as a Sour, if it’s over 3%, or a low alcohol if it’s under 3%. Abv can be a deciding factor in what style a beer is. We have various categories for stout, depending on abv. And bitter/pale ale in the UK is regarded as session, best, premium or ale, strong ale, then barley wine, depending entirely on abv. We talked some years ago about having a slightly different approach to categorising our database, and one option discussed was of having more than one criteria to which a beer could be classed - so abv would be one criteria, and colour another, and hop levels another, for example. Since then in the UK a similar idea was developed to describe beers, it’s called Cyclops: http://www.cyclopsbeer.co.uk/ - personally I don’t like it as it’s using subjective taste opinions which influence the drinker, but it does indicate that a number of folks would like something a bit more helpful than a beer style name or category to give them information about a beer. Especially as some beer styles have a certain selling power, so brewers often use style names to sell a beer, even when the beer properly does not belong to that style or have that provenance. Think Champagne and sparkling wine; Lambic and sour ale; Pilsner and pale lager, etc.