The tap list of the mid-1990s brewpub contains a trove of near-forgotten styles—extra pales, honey wheats, nut browns—any of which might suggest the nature of American brewing at the time. Ask for a style that represents that era, though, and I’ll give you an amber ale.
That was the midpoint of the “chromatic ales” that were the standard then. They started with golden ales and trotted through the color spectrum: pale, amber, red, brown, and finally ending with a porter or stout. It was an easy, intuitive way to introduce people to a beverage that many people still thought began and ended with pale, low-flavor lager.
So, why are amber ales the key metaphor for the age? Because they capture both the approach to recipe design and brewing process common to the ’90s and because they highlight the palate of the American drinker a generation ago. They were sweet, sometimes under-carbonated, and always full of caramel/toffee flavors. While sweetness has become popular again, the flavor of caramel has not. So, for many people, amber ales are like doo-wop or disco or grunge music—emblems of an earlier age.