Beowulf—the classic Anglo-Saxon epic poem adored by teachers, feared by students, and butchered by the 2007 film of the same name—is one of the earliest surviving examples of Old English literature. Its lines are a fertile breeding ground for such timeless themes as heroes and quests, honor and loyalty, and good versus evil. These universal archetypes are found in diverse literary traditions worldwide and span the full history of written human communication.
Style guides are a bit to beer as archetypal criticism is to literature: an attempt to tease unifying themes (styles) from what Carl Jung termed the collective unconscious (countless individual examples). Sometimes the analysis is uncomplicated: IPAs feature heaps of hops, stouts possess rich roastiness, and hefeweizens showcase heady hues of banana and clove. At other times, the distinguishing features are less pronounced, which is one reason competitions will always have a Specialty Beer category.
Strong ales of British and American provenance—barleywine, stock ale, old ale, and wheatwine—occupy a small but vocal corner of the stylistic corpus. They’re all closely related, and the qualities that separate them are more fuzzy gray smudges than sharp black lines. Rather than classify these strong ales according to their distinguishing features, then, let us consider the common themes that connect them to one another.