Beer Styles, and Who To Blame

If you've ever looked over the style manual of the Beer Judge Certification Program, or looked over the staggering number of style categories for the Great American Beer Festival (79 styles plus multiple sub-categories), you may have wondered just what, or maybe who, was behind this compulsive desire or rationale to sub-categorize every possible combination of malt, hops, water, yeast, and adjuncts.

Martyn Cornell's Zythophile has a fascinating post on the origins of such obsessive compulsion categorization.

In short: Blame Michael Jackson for starting it.