Every beer style is a set of expectations: how strong, how bitter, how dark, and how it should taste and feel. The BJCP guidelines describe those expectations for more than a hundred styles, and they are the reference most homebrew competitions judge against. The BJCP Style Library puts them inside Foambyte, next to the recipes you build from them.
Who the BJCP Style Library is for
It’s for homebrewers designing a recipe for a style or entering a competition, and for nano and small breweries that describe their beers by style and want each batch to stay within it.
How to use the style library
- Find a style. Search by name or browse the list, sorted by style.
- Compare the numbers. Each style shows its ranges for IBU, OG, FG, ABV, BU:GU and SRM, with a color bar from the palest to the darkest example.
- Read the description. Open a style for its overall impression, aroma, appearance, flavor, mouthfeel and comments, plus history, ingredients and commercial examples.
- Build from it. Choose the style in Recipe Studio and the recipe’s vitals are checked against it as you build.
What you can do with the BJCP Style Library
- Look up any style’s numbers. OG, FG, ABV, IBU, BU:GU and SRM ranges for every style that has them.
- See the style’s color. A color bar runs from the lightest to the darkest beer the style allows.
- Read the full description. The BJCP’s own text for aroma, appearance, flavor, mouthfeel, comments, history, characteristic ingredients, style comparison and commercial examples.
- Check your recipe against the style. Recipe Studio’s green and orange indicators and radar chart use the same ranges.
- Go deeper on foambyte.com. The public BJCP style guide adds our own guides to brewing many of the styles.
A worked example: an American IPA
The American IPA (21A) calls for 40–70 IBU, an original gravity of 1.056–1.070, a final gravity of 1.008–1.014, 5.5–7.5 % ABV and a color of 6–14 SRM. Its BU:GU range of 0.71–1.0 tells you more than the IBU alone: the bitterness should be at least about seven-tenths of the gravity points, so the beer comes across as clearly bitter.
A recipe with 1.062 OG and 45 IBU sits inside both the gravity and the IBU ranges, but its BU:GU of 0.73 is at the low end; at 60 IBU it moves to about 0.97, right in the style’s sweet spot. Recipe Studio shows that shift on its radar chart as you change the hops, and the IBU calculator shows how each hop addition contributes.
The BJCP Style Library and the rest of Foambyte
Styles are the starting point of Recipe Studio: the style you choose sets the ranges for the in-style indicators and the radar chart. Batches inherit the recipe’s style, so Batch Tracking and tank cards show which style each beer is.
The BJCP Beer Style Guidelines are used with the permission of the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP); the most current guidelines are available at bjcp.org.
Browse the styles in Foambyte for free and build your next recipe to style.