When the World Beer Cup announced its list of winners earlier this month, the beer industry had plenty to talk about. Among the kudos for the medalists at the big international competition, as well as the commiserations for those who didn’t make the cut, brewers and beer insiders couldn’t help noticing that one award seemed a little strange.
The fact that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale had won another Gold Medal wasn’t weird — for many Americans, that beer has practically defined good beer and great pale ales in particular for over four decades. But what stood out was the category: Despite its name, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (SNPA) didn’t win first place as a “pale ale” proper. Instead, it earned its gold as an “extra special bitter,” or ESB, a traditionally English style that, at first glance, looks like the wrong category for the beloved beer from Chico, Calif.
Ron Smith, a frequent judge in other beer competitions who teaches classes on beer styles and sensory analysis at Indiana University Indianapolis, was present at the awards ceremony when the win was announced.
“It was pretty wild — there were a lot of bewildered faces and a lot of people turning to each other and mouthing, ‘Sierra Nevada Pale Ale? What?’” he says. “And then in the ensuing days after that, there was a lot of confusion. Everybody was talking about it. It kept coming up as a joke.”
Beer Style Taxonomy
In part, the head-scratching and wisecracks came from the limited nature of the award category: While loads of breweries make pale ales, for which the competition has a half-dozen different style categories (without even counting IPAs), there are relatively few ESBs on the market. And much like how SNPA has pretty much defined the American take on pale ale since the first Reagan administration, the Extra Special Bitter category has its own style-defining exemplar: Fuller’s Extra Special Bitter, which created the term “ESB” when it was launched back in 1971.
John Keeling served as director of brewing operations at the legendary brewery in London until he retired in late 2018.
“We invented the style,” he says. “The story of how the style got invented was that we were looking for a new winter beer to replace an Old Burton Extra beer. We renamed it ESB in 1971, and that was the very first ESB.”
Keeling has only good things to say about Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in general, SNPA in particular, and brewery founder Ken Grossman, whom he describes as both a hero of modern brewing and one of his personal heroes. But for Keeling, as well as for many outsiders, SNPA isn’t an ESB. It’s a pale ale, and a particular type of pale ale at that.
“I’ve always thought of it as an American-style beer, firstly, because that’s how it was introduced to me,” he says. “It’s a pale ale, yes, but it’s brewed with American hops and it’s got this big hoppy flavor.”
Defining the differences between an ESB and an American pale ale can quickly get way out into the weeds of beer style taxonomy, making relatively small differences in taste, aroma, color, and strength into really big deals. But in a general sense, coming out of Old Burton Extra and the English brewing tradition gives Fuller’s ESB one set of flavor characteristics, while coming out of the U.S. craft beer movement gives Sierra Nevada Pale Ale a very different set of tastes and aromas.
“In ESB, the malt is there, but it’s not as rich as Sierra Nevada malt. And I think there’s almost a caramel note in the Sierra Nevada malt.”
More specifically, the California craft beer is a showcase for Cascade hops, which are known for their distinctive citrus notes, especially grapefruit, as well as floral and piney character. The classic ESB from London uses all U.K. hops — Target, Goldings, Northdown, and Challenger — which tend to have earthier characteristics. Both breweries are known for their yeasts, but the crisp, hop-complementing nature of the “Chico” ale yeast used by Sierra Nevada is wildly different from Fuller’s fruity, malt-friendly yeast.
Adrian Tierney Jones, the author of a number of books on beer, most recently “A Pub For All Seasons: A Yearlong Journey in Search of the Perfect British Local,” served as the head judge at the U.K.’s World Beer Awards for many years, while also keeping over 10,000 of his own tasting notes going back decades. When he first heard about the award controversy, he picked up a fresh can of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale to sample anew, while re-reading what he’d written about both beers in the past. Fuller’s ESB hints at orange marmalade thanks to its yeast, he says, whereas SNPA has a much brighter citrusy note from its Cascade hops. Their malt characters differ, too.
“In ESB, the malt is there, but it’s not as rich as Sierra Nevada malt. And I think there’s almost a caramel note in the Sierra Nevada malt,” he says. In his eyes, the fruitiness of the U.S. beer is far more “vibrant,” while that character is more “in control” in the classic ESB. That said, the two beers are not exactly black-and-white opposites.
“Trying it yesterday, the maltiness, I could see how Americans might start thinking, ‘Yeah, this is an ESB.’”
Shifting Style Categories
That change in thinking might explain why Sierra Nevada Pale Ale didn’t win its medal in the category it is named after. The way we think about beer shifts over time, Tierney-Jones says, and we often use different words to describe the same beer when we taste it a few years — or a few decades — later.
In addition, it’s clear that beer style categories can drift, while individual beers often stay the same. While Cascade hops, developed at Oregon State University, might embody the quintessential U.S. West Coast hop character, it’s worth noting that Cascade has been grown in the U.K. since 2002, according to the British hop dealer Charles Faram. With the spread of craft beer, many traditional British styles have moved to incorporate the citrusy and somewhat aggressive flavors and aromas of “New World” hops. Smith says he started noticing the change in British beer imports not long after the U.S. craft beer movement got started.
“They looked at the specs, they looked at how their beer stacks up, and they were like, ‘That American-style ESB category is a match for our beer.’”
“I started seeing English ales using American hops and I thought, ‘That’s odd. Why would they do that?” he recalls. “They started making some new styles of beer featuring that taste and aroma of American hops.”
That alone means that a traditional British ESB with Cascade hop character wouldn’t be all that out of line. But on the flip side of the coin, U.S. beer styles are shifting, too. Smith notes that Anchor Brewing’s Liberty Ale won a Silver Medal as an IPA at the Great American Beer Festival in 1989, the first year that competition included an IPA category. But with only 5.9 percent ABV, Liberty Ale wouldn’t seem to meet the minimum of 6.3 percent ABV for the “American-style IPA” category today. The same thing has happened to American pale ales, which have become less sweet and much more bitter in recent years.
If Sierra Nevada Pale Ale has been made with the same recipe and the same flavor profile for the entirety of its 44-year existence, what is the brewery supposed to do when the pale ale category moves on?
American Versus English ESB
Weird things can happen at any competition with truly blind judging, which requires tasters to evaluate beers purely by sensory evaluation — without knowing if the beer is named after its category, obviously. Human beings are wonderful judges, but of course they can easily make mistakes, and beer judges love to tell stories about beers that were arguably the first of their style — like Westmalle Tripel — missing out on awards in categories they invented.
For Chris Williams, competition director at World Beer Cup, SNPA’s win as an ESB shows how well Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. understood the character of its beer, as well as the changes in the pale ale category over the years. For about a decade, the competition’s otherwise English-focused ESB category has included an additional set of style guidelines for an “American-style ESB” subcategory, into which Sierra Nevada Pale Ale fits perfectly.
“They looked at the specs, they looked at how their beer stacks up, and they were like, ‘That American-style ESB category is a match for our beer,’” he says. “It’s cool to see a brand recognize their beer that well. And it’s a cool example also of a brand recognizing a shifting palate and the changing taste profiles associated with the American pale ale category.”
It certainly didn’t hurt Sierra Nevada’s odds that the ESB category had about 60 entries in total, versus about 100 entries in each of the six categories dedicated to varieties of pale ale. Williams admits that he was surprised by the win, but notes that multiple rounds of judging repeatedly affirmed that the beer was simply the best in its category.
“I know the different rounds of judging that it went through and the judges that were at the table,” he says. “It was getting pushed to the top against all the other beers, whether English or American style. They just felt that technically — execution-wise — that was the best beer at the table, over all the other ones there.”
For Keeling and more than a few outside observers, the ESB win for SNPA still feels a bit like a bit of a miss.
“I think it’s strange that a beer so different from our ESB wins ESB, when the original one still exists as a reference,” he says.
But great beers are great beers, regardless of the categories we put them in. When Sierra Nevada posted about the win on Instagram, it didn’t mention the category. Most of its fans didn’t seem to notice.
