2018 Beer Style Guidelines

The Brewers Association’s Beer Style Guidelines are reviewed and revised annually by the BA. These guidelines serve as a model resource for brewers, beer judges and competition organizers, and celebrate the great diversity of beer around the world.

Hundreds of revisions, edits, format changes and additions were made to this year’s guidelines, including updates to existing beer styles and the creation of new categories. Updates of note include:

Juicy or Hazy Ale Styles: the addition of this trio of styles includes representation of what may be referred to as New England IPAs or West Coast Hazy IPAs. The styles will be identified in the guidelines and Brewers Association competitions as “Juicy or Hazy Pale Ale,” “Juicy or Hazy IPA” and “Juicy or Hazy Double IPA.”

Contemporary American-Style Pilsener: the addition of this new category addresses marketplace expansion and provides space for sessionable craft brew lager beers with higher hop aroma than found in pre-prohibition style beers.

Classic Australian-Style Pale Ale and Australian-Style Pale Ale: this split from one to two Australian-Style Pale Ale categories reflects tremendous diversity in the Australian craft beer market and authoritative input from the technical committee of the Independent Brewers Association. Classic Australian-Style Pale Ale can run slightly darker and typically exhibits relatively lower hop aroma. The Australian-Style Pale Ale category provides ample room for a range of somewhat paler, more hop aroma- and flavor-forward beers being produced today by hundreds of breweries in Australia.

Gose and Contemporary Gose: predominantly technical tweaks were made to create more differentiation between these two categories.

The 2018 Beer Style Guidelines are available for download at BrewersAssociation.org