When the 2015 Beer Judge Certification Program style guidelines were first released, like many home brewers and judges I flipped through to see what was added, deleted, adjusted, or renamed. A lot jumped out at me (did we really need to list every Experimental IPA by color?), but two of those things are especially relevant today. The first was that my venerable Altbiers had been reduced to a single style category. I wept.
I ripped my clothing. I pulled my hair out (that actually might have just been normal hair loss, now that I think about it). But then I noticed that the guidelines had actually given me a new place to enter Altbier, which brings us to the second relevant revelation in the new guidelines: a new sub-category in Specialty beers titled “Mixed-Style Beer.”
I might not have seen it but for a note in the German Leichtbier style description that noted that “Leicht-style” beers (light versions of standard versions) would best be entered in Mixed-Style. Voíla. In an instant I had not only a new category to play with, but also a variety of Altbier I hadn’t previously brewed: a Light Altbier.