THE GIST
A nascent, grassroots campaign to get Ukrainian Golden Ale recognized as a distinct beer style by brewing competitions and the general public has gained new drive and attention as Russia’s invasion of the European country continues. For two years, Lana Svitankova—a writer, translator, beer judge, and ambassador for Kyiv-based Varvar Brewery—has coordinated with other Ukrainian beer professionals to describe, classify, and promote the style. With the plight of the Ukrainian people now visible to the world, the effort has taken on greater nationalistic symbolism.
In January, Svitankova and eight other Ukrainian beer professionals met in Kyiv to taste as many commercial examples of Ukrainian Golden Ale as they could, eventually distilling those notes into a taxonomic description. Their classification describes a pale, malt-focused Golden Ale, made with pale malt, wheat, and optionally caramel malts; it also includes any type of hops, a neutral yeast strain, and the optional addition of coriander seeds.
[Editor’s note: Svitankova is a contributor to Good Beer Hunting.]
Svitankova originally anticipated that receiving the designation would be a “statement” for Ukraine and its brewing industry, evidence that the country’s brewers “can do something special” stylistically. Then the invasion happened. “With the current situation, it became like a crusade of sorts,” she says. The United Nations estimates Russia’s war has so far created 2.8 million Ukrainian refugees. Svanitakova lives in Zurich, Switzerland; others working on this project are living in Ukraine.
The campaign is overseen by a loose collection of individuals tasked with drumming up public awareness of Ukrainian Golden Ale and emailing decision-makers about its inclusion in various style guidelines. The group has submitted descriptive information about Ukrainian Golden Ale to the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), an international organization that certifies beer judges for homebrew and commercial competitions. It has also asked beer rating platform Untappd to add it as a style on its app. Both Untappd and the BJCP say they will review these requests, leaving the current status of Ukrainian Golden Ale in limbo.
WHY IT MATTERS
Competition organizers and beer databases add, revise, and debate emerging beer styles regularly, but few are imbued with the contemporary weight that Ukrainian Golden Ale carries. (In 2021, for example, Untappd added Smoothie/Pastry Stout, Corn Beer/Chicha de Jora, and Italian Pilsner to its database; BJCP added Grape Ale to its fruit beer category and Brut IPA to the specialty IPA section the same year.) Ukrainian Golden Ale, however, has become a tangible symbol of Ukrainian culture and identity for those promoting it as a distinct style.
“It’s national pride, to say you are not lagging behind all the rest of the world; you also have something of your own in terms of beer,” Svitankova says. “If people see Ukraine and talk about Ukrainian stuff, it helps keep the news on the surface. It helps with visibility and now, visibility is the only thing we can get.”
Aside from Ukrainian Golden Ale, Svitankova says the country doesn’t have a beer style or technique to call its own, creating a sense of “strong imposter syndrome” among the country’s brewers and drinkers. The most ubiquitous beer in Ukraine is brewed by Obolon, a producer of not just beer but soda and mineral water whose Kyiv brewery is the largest in Europe by brewing capacity; however, Obolon brews mostly mass-market Lagers that Svitankova dismisses as not uniquely Ukrainian in ingredients or technique.
But the BJCP and Untappd both say that a vocal campaign to have a beer style added to their catalogs does not automatically constitute grounds for inclusion. Procedures for adding styles to the BJCP guide and Untappd platform vary, but both require an emerging style to be distinct from existing versions and be widely brewed, either at a homebrew or commercial level. Svitankova describes Ukrainian Golden Ale as distinct from its Belgian counterparts because of its low or nonexistent levels of yeast-derived phenols and its relative sweetness.
“The BJCP and any good body that has some sort of guidelines is a descriptive body, not a prescriptive body,” says Kristen England, education director for the BJCP. “We’re describing things that are already there, we’re not prescribing something that should be there.”
According to Svitankova, the style emerged in 2009, and today at least 13 breweries in Ukraine brew this type of beer as part of their core lineup, though most do not label it “Ukrainian Golden Ale,” but “Golden Ale.” She says Ukrainians drank 1.25 million liters of this beer in 2021, equivalent to approximately 12,800 barrels, nearly as much beer as Salt Lake City-based Epic Brewing produced in 2020. British beer writer Mark Dredge’s 2021 book, “The New Craft Beer World,” describes the Golden Ale brewed by Kyiv’s Varvar Brewery as “neither the English kind nor the Belgian one,” but a beer that “could be considered a uniquely Ukrainian beer style that defies easy categorization.”
England says that campaigns to add styles to the BJCP’s core style guidelines or its compendium of regional styles are frequent. But the process is slow: Styles are sometimes added provisionally first, with some then moving into “Local Styles” in particular geographic areas. In 2021, for example, Catharina Sour and New Zealand Pilsner moved from Provisional Styles into the Local Styles section for Brazil and New Zealand, respectively. That move took six years, and that they were added at all is unusual.
“We get a lot of requests in, however the vast majority don't hold water under the slightest research. The ones that get 'approved' are rare,” England says.
England says grassroots campaigns for emerging styles can be problematic because they are sometimes prescriptive (trying to create a style) rather than descriptive (categorizing an existing style). According to BJCP materials, Catharina Sour was created in 2015, while New Zealand Pilsner was first brewed in the mid-1990s.
“If it’s a grassroots thing trying to recognize the history of the style, that’s completely different,” he says. “But if there’s a grassroots movement trying to say that there is a style but not so much really yet, but it’s looking to be [a style], what we always say is, ‘Great, let’s give it a second.’”
England notes that the beer industry is fickle. Trends and substyles come and go year to year, and the BJCP wants to make sure that a particular beer style not only has staying power, but is distinct and high-quality. (For example, a poorly made version of an existing style does not constitute a new style, just a bad beer.) For all these reasons, the BJCP is still reviewing Ukrainian Golden Ale, and hasn’t decided whether and where to include it in guidelines.
Untappd is likewise aware of the calls to add Ukrainian Golden Ale to its database. This requires a 60% supermajority vote among Untappd’s roughly 350 global moderators during the next style vote, slated for April. During these votes, which take place two to four times annually, moderators review a slate of style additions or revisions proposed by moderators and users.
The time it takes for a style to be officially added can vary from mere weeks to years, depending on how strongly moderators feel about its inclusion. Until now, Untappd’s moderators have never voted on the merits of including Ukrainian Golden Ale. Kyle Roderick, executive vice president of product at Untappd’s parent company, Next Glass, says 11 beer styles and substyles were added during the last style vote, out of 60 proposed additions and changes.
“This is an opportunity where we get wind of a new style being considered, and it’s something we’ll absolutely be adding to the April style vote,” Roderick says of Ukrainian Golden Ale.
Like the fate of the Ukrainian state itself, the status of what might be considered its national beer is also unresolved. The BJCP says that Russia’s invasion has paused the group’s efforts to collect information on Ukrainian Golden Ale from beer judges, brewers, and other experts in Ukraine and Poland, and that those efforts will resume once security has stabilized. In the meantime, Svitankova continues to work to keep the issue in the public light.
“Every time a new style appears somewhere, people brew it. And I would be happy if I would go somewhere, for example, in the U.S. and on the pub or bar board was ‘Ukrainian Golden Ale,’” she says. “I would be immensely proud of that.”
Words by Kate Bernot