This label got me thinking. Its one of those old labels you see floating around the internets in places like this. But look at that pesky little word “style” sitting there in the loop of the beer. I am informed that the label is from 1914. About six years ago, I asked what it was exactly that Jackson meant when he first wrote about style back in 1977. I think today I am wondering why we think Jackson first used the word style as it relates to beer. Interestingly, I think the use on the label and the use by Jackson in 1977 are very closely related.
Hmm. A few more examples for your cogitations:
I think there’s a fundamental difference in that these are using “style” as an adjective whereas the Jacksonian “style” is a noun; a standalone concept rather than merely a means of describing something.
These ‘style’ beers are all in the ‘style’ of a place: Vienna, Bohemia, Pilsen. Perhaps it has more to do with labeling laws than beer categorization.
Yes, Craig said over on FB the word was used in early 1900s ish pre-prohibition regulation. It appears on post prohibition labels, too, all long before the idea of beer categorization struck somewhere about ten years after Jackson wrote his first book.
Why, Monsieur BN? If you read the 1977 piece by Jackson as he wrote I can’t find any such conceptual hard line. You’d have to assure me type v style v category is carved in stone first – then explain why he abandoned it at some point in favour of the BJCP regulatory world. Style in the label and in original Jackson both mean “in the style of” some other sort of beer.