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But by that thinking, it would be a ok for me to go into work in the morning and brew a stout with only pale malt, no roast barley or roasted malt and advertise it as a stout. <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D -->

That's right. You wouldn't be the first to do it[/url:1rmpw0ys], mind.

Haha touché!

Well I suppose my argument is really that DIPA is synonymous with a strong, very dry, very heavily hopped beer, and to bring out a beer that doesn't meet this criteria and call it such is just plain laziness on the part of the brewery, it's not being experimental, there was nothing experimental about OHaras DIPA, save the experiment of marketing it as something it wasn't...

In today's world stouts are black and have roasted malt, IPAs are heavily hopped.

&amp;quot;simonok&amp;quot;:2y5zhq7u wrote: IPAs are heavily hopped.[/quote:2y5zhq7u]I think it takes a bit of semantic acrobatics to make that true. There are plenty of beers out there labelled as IPAs which aren't heavily hopped. If you take the approach that these aren't [i:2y5zhq7u]really[/i:2y5zhq7u] IPAs then all you're doing is imposing your own belief system. Which is fair enough, but it's daft to complain when other people don't follow it.

On a more general point, I think pale stout and (for the sake of argument) lightly-hopped double IPA isn't a like-for-like comparison. Yes, everyone expects stout to be black. Stout is a broad style. But double IPA is just a sub-style of IPA, itself a sub-style of pale ale: leaving codified guidelines aside the lines between them aren't as (ahem) black and white.

Pete Brown once made the point that the world of beer needs at most seven or eight broad styles. One of those, I reckon, would be the pale, strong and hoppy one. I'd put O'Hara's Double IPA in there, along with BrewDog Hardcore and Sierra Nevada Torpedo. To most beer drinkers they're all the same sort of beer, and it's helpful to group them together as such.

&amp;quot;TheBeerNut&amp;quot;:34ox6jla wrote: I'd put O'Hara's Double IPA in there, along with BrewDog Hardcore and Sierra Nevada Torpedo.[/quote:34ox6jla]

And as if to prove TBN's point about the arbitrary nature of labeling, none of these call themselves by the same style name:

BrewDog IPA - explicit imperial ale
Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA
O'Hara's Double IPA

Well semantics aside, we could argue about it back an forth all day, and I'm not tryin to say my belief system is more valid than the next persons.

I'd consider DIPAs to be a style of beer that I'd be fairly partial to, I've tried close to 20 commercial examples and certainly wouldn't rate the O haras one at all, and I certainly wouldn't lump it in with Torpedo and Hardcore.

Sorry I'm not sure how to quote....

But what you said about most beer drinkers categorise them together, i wouldnt really agree with, a macro drinker might bundle them into the same category, but the discerning crafy beer drinker would surely differentiate!

But sure I suppose ale is just that warm flat stuff they drink in England ;-p