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Boulder, CO • February 8, 2012—The Brewers Association (BA) recently released its 2012 Beer Style Guidelines. Updated annually, the guidelines currently describe 140 styles of beer and are used in prestigious beer competitions, including the Great American Beer Festival® and the World Beer Cup®.

For this year, a new beer style has been added-the Indigenous Beer Category. The guidelines specify that this beer must contain “at least one regional combination of ingredients and/or techniques must be unique and differentiated from ingredients and/or techniques commonly used by brewers throughout the world…Examples of indigenous beers might include current day versions of highly regional and/or historic styles which are not represented elsewhere in these guidelines, such as Finnish-style sahti, South American chicha, African sorghum based beers, and others.” For competitions, brewers will provide 100-word descriptions of why their entry is relevant to the category, to aid judges in their evaluation.

Since 1979 the BA has provided beer style descriptions as a reference for brewers and beer competition organizers. The beer style guidelines developed by the BA use sources from the commercial brewing industry, beer analyses, and consultations with beer industry experts and knowledgeable beer enthusiasts as resources for information. Much of the early work was based on the assistance and contributions of beer journalist Michael Jackson. For 2012, revisions were aided by over 100 comments and suggestions from Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup judges, as well as other beer industry members.

“These guidelines help to illustrate the growth of craft brewers in the United States and also offer insight and a foundation for helping appreciate the hundreds of beer types brewed for the beer lover,” said Charlie Papazian, president of the Brewers Association.

The 2012 Beer Style Guidelines are available for download in the Publications section of BrewersAssociation.org.

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The Brewers Association is the not-for-profit trade association dedicated to small and independent American brewers, their craft beers and the community of brewing enthusiasts. The Brewers Association (BA) represents more than 70 percent of the brewing industry, and its members make more than 99 percent of the beer brewed in the U.S. The BA organizes events including the World Beer Cup®, Great American Beer Festival®, Craft Brewers Conference and BrewExpo America®, SAVOR: An American Craft Beer & Food Experience and American Craft Beer Week. The BA publishes The New Brewer magazine and its Brewers Publications division is the largest publisher of contemporary and relevant brewing literature for today’s craft brewers and homebrewers.

Beer lovers are invited to learn more about the dynamic world of craft beer at CraftBeer.com and about homebrewing via the BA’s American Homebrewers Association. Follow us on Twitter.

The Brewers Association is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, religion, age, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, or marital/familial status. The BA complies with provisions of Executive Order 11246 and the rules, regulations, and relevant orders of the Secretary of Labor.