“Necessity is the mother of invention,” we’re told. True, true. Sometimes, though, kitsch makes a pretty good case for invention-spawning as well. It was a crisp fall day, not unlike this one, and I was sitting down to plan out beers to brew for the upcoming Christmas parties that my wife and I host at our house.
Attendees include both beer novices and beer nerds, so I try to come up with interesting beers that aren’t too aggressive (I put those in bottles rather than on the taps). On this particular blustery day, I thought, “well, how about a ‘red’ beer, you know, for the holidays?” Kitschy, yes, but it seemed appropriate. After that, alliteration and beer ingredients took over, and I was working up a recipe for Rudolph’s Reindeer Red Rye (RRRR, or Four-R). I didn’t know it at the time, but I was also working up a recipe for a solid Alternative Grain Beer.
STYLE
Alternative Grain Beers are a new addition to the BJCP Style Guidelines, and while I’m ambivalent about the necessity of quite so many separate “specialty” categories I think this one is a good call. Changing out base grains for something other than barley can and does create genuinely new takes on existing styles, and the subtlety of those changes make putting them in a different category appropriate because otherwise the adjustments might be overlooked. The guidelines specify a beer that’s “enhanced by or featuring” the alternative grain.