Trying to figure out how an award-winning recipe I found in the AHA recipe section for Vienna Lager cites an SRM of 28, which is way out of style. The ingredients listed come out to about an SRM of 12 when plugged into a couple of different beer SW programs. Also noted no real IBU values for that same recipe, by Sprague and Kohl. Trying to replicate a recipe that far off tends to lead homebrewers down the wrong path. Any thoughts on why their values were skewed so badly? WHEW and BREW!!!
i find the more popular a style is and the higher regard it is held in competitively ie. WCIPA, NEIPA, Imp Stout, Kolsch, the better studied it is and the more examples of highly reviewed recipes there are, and ones that are on say tested version 10 rather than just a theoretical, never-actually-brewed one.
vienna lager isnt super obscure, but it also suffers from being shattered into negra modelo style vienna, historical vienna, old-school homebrew heavy on the crystal malt and oxidation "vienna" amber lager, etc etc.
becuase of this frankly i dont even consider it as a hard style, i consider it a malt type.