The web site discludes American styles because: "However, most of the American style beers recognized by the BJCP have been developed since World War II, therefore have been eliminated from the contest."

The same is true of many of the Belgian styles, most of which only date from post World War 1.

Also, modern English beer bears little resemblance to things brewed 100-200 years ago there.

And some of the German styles don't date back to the Rennsaisance either.

It would be a much more interesting contest if it were more historically accurate, in my opinion.

I'm not trying to attack anyone here, but after seeing Randay Mosher's talk on Belgian beer at the AHA Conference in Cincy in June it was a bit of an eye-opening experience. The things they were brewing in Belgian prior to World War 1 were completely different than anything we think of now as Belgian beer.

While I've done some research into IPA developement, I'd never looked in Belgain beer history and had just assumed things like dubble and tripel had been around a lot longer.