anybody else annoyed with the whole IPA craze?

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clintandhisbeer

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First things first, I enjoy an IPA from time to time but the industry is being overly consumed by it... I went to one of the local beer stores earlier and decided I would turn away from the Belgian part of the store and try to find some Belgian style beers in the american beer section to save some money... Well after walking down the two ailes it seemed like all I saw was "IPA" "double IPA" "imperial IPA" and so on and so on... It kind of annoyed me that the market has become pretty much nothing but IPA... I saw the section for green flash and 4 out of the 5 beers they had were IPA, the other being a black ale, which I'm sure had a big stack of hops... I don't understand why IPA has gotten this big, a lot of the time they come completely unbalanced with overloaded hops and little malt profile.. I personally think Belgian beers are the best styles but since they don't have 100 IBUs they get little attention... Smh so many closed minded people
 
If you're lucky enough to have a beer store that has a "Belgian" section, and an "American" section, that's great! But why would a Belgian be in the American section? Or do you mean a Belgian style, but American made (like Hennepin)?'

In the American section, I would expect to see AAAs, APAs, and IPAs, and maybe a few random others as those styles are American styles. I wouldn't expect to see dopplebocks or Belgians, unless I'm missing something.
 
This is how a healthy market works. When people stop buying them, the beer companies will stop making them. Until then, expect more of the same.
 
First things first, I enjoy an IPA from time to time but the industry is being overly consumed by it... I went to one of the local beer stores earlier and decided I would turn away from the Belgian part of the store and try to find some Belgian style beers in the american beer section to save some money... Well after walking down the two ailes it seemed like all I saw was "IPA" "double IPA" "imperial IPA" and so on and so on... It kind of annoyed me that the market has become pretty much nothing but IPA... I saw the section for green flash and 4 out of the 5 beers they had were IPA, the other being a black ale, which I'm sure had a big stack of hops... I don't understand why IPA has gotten this big, a lot of the time they come completely unbalanced with overloaded hops and little malt profile.. I personally think Belgian beers are the best styles but since they don't have 100 IBUs they get little attention... Smh so many closed minded people


I'm with ya here. I like IPA here and there.

Everybody and their mother makes many different iPas these days. I love me a good IPA, but man the ****ty one out number the good ones. Due to this I've lost my love of IPA which IS what initially grew my love of craft beer.
 
I did end up getting cedar creek - clover kicker saison / ommegang dubbel / and victory - golden monkey... They are great beers but I was hoping to try something new
 
No. Love IPAs... I'd try them all if I could. Also like lots of other beer.

Anyone else sick of the beer trend around here? So hipster.
 
Belgian and sour is starting to grow. GR Brewery Vivant only does Belgian. I see them all over.

But hops are still king. I've been on a lower hop kick lately. Stouts and pales kind of thing. A nice IPA to change it up jow and again.
 
Belgian and sour is starting to grow. GR Brewery Vivant only does Belgian. I see them all over.

But hops are still king. I've been on a lower hop kick lately. Stouts and pales kind of thing. A nice IPA to change it up jow and again.

Hopefully the hop heads will be making threads one day with the title "Belgian style beer is everywhere and it sickens me" haha then I will be a happy man lol... Like I said guys I do like IPAs just not my first choice of beer
 
Hopefully the hop heads will be making threads one day with the title "Belgian style beer is everywhere and it sickens me" haha then I will be a happy man lol... Like I said guys I do like IPAs just not my first choice of beer

That's how I feel about Belgians. Very much like them...but IPA is the go to for me.
 
Very impressive!! Do u have like 5 or more mash tuns, kettles and burners?? Or do u just brew all the time? I recently acquired another mash tun, kettle and dual burner so I can make 2 beers at a time..... And I thought was cool lol


Just brew all the time. I have 3 additional chest freezers for fermentation so always something in the works...thank god my SWMBO loves beer because this is all in a 1br apt.
 
Big hopped beers is what seperates our country from from the others when it comes to beer... I get that.. Don't see the Germans, japenese, Mexicans ect ect ect making these hop bombs... I guess its cool to have an identity
 
Just brew all the time. I have 3 additional chest freezers for fermentation so always something in the works...thank god my SWMBO loves beer because this is all in a 1br apt.

Lucky u!! My old lady only drinks framboise so she doesn't get excited about the brewing... I would make it for her if it didn't take 2 yrs lol.. But all in all she's cool with me brewing whenever I want which is once every 2 weeks
 
Personally, I don't like the misnomer that IPA, in itself, is a style. Pale Ale is a style. India Pale Ale is really a holdover from the 1800's when, Pale Ale was marked with the word India to denote where the beer was 'destined for'. So, 'India Pale Ale' meant, a Pale Ale destined for India.

With that being said, no. I don't think the market is oversaturated with 'IPA's', or any other style for that matter. Whether I choose to agree that 'IPA' is a style or not, I don't think the market has nearly the saturation it needs in regards to consumer choices.

If you can brew it, there is probably somebody, somewhere that will like it. Brew it up, tear it up! It is just going to get more bizarre and better as we go along!
 
First off...thanks Clint!

We literally were closing in on almost a week without an IPA rant thread. I was getting jittery!

IPAs are like 20% of beer sales. Out of the hundreds of beers at some of the stores I go to, maybe 10-20 IPAs, DIPAs, etc. Maybe 5-10% of the store. Just sounds like you have a crappy store.

Or...maybe...you are biased towards IPAs. You will always see what you are looking for, whether in a good way or bad. For every person on here that can post a pic of a crappy bar serving 9 IPAs out of 15 taps, I can post my local watering hole that has 10-12 IPAs out of there 150+ beer list.

Its not a craze. People buy what they like. Buy what you like. If you can't...brew it.

EDIT- And I can't stand the "unbalanced" argument with IPAs. They are supposed to be hop-based. Also, many styles are unbalanced!!!! Especially ironic given you like Belgians. Yeast-based beers. No one ever says...too yeasty for me, where is the balance! If you truly only drink milds and the like, then fine, call it unbalanced. But when someone says IPAs are unbalanced while sipping on a sour or the like...

readImage
 
First off...thanks Clint!

We literally were closing in on almost a week without an IPA rant thread. I was getting jittery!

IPAs are like 20% of beer sales. Out of the hundreds of beers at some of the stores I go to, maybe 10-20 IPAs, DIPAs, etc. Maybe 5-10% of the store. Just sounds like you have a crappy store.

Or...maybe...you are biased towards IPAs. You will always see what you are looking for, whether in a good way or bad. For every person on here that can post a pic of a crappy bar serving 9 IPAs out of 15 taps, I can post my local watering hole that has 10-12 IPAs out of there 150+ beer list.

Its not a craze. People buy what they like. Buy what you like. If you can't...brew it.

EDIT- And I can't stand the "unbalanced" argument with IPAs. They are supposed to be hop-based. Also, many styles are unbalanced!!!! Especially ironic given you like Belgians. Yeast-based beers. No one ever says...too yeasty for me, where is the balance! If you truly only drink milds and the like, then fine, call it unbalanced. But when someone says IPAs are unbalanced while sipping on a sour or the like...

readImage

Well I guess u missed the part where I stated that I enjoy IPA, and I guess u missed the part where I stated that I wish there were a wider variety in styles. A lot of the ipas are not well rounded.... Pretty much just dump a **** load of hops in and it'll sell well.. The store I shop in has a very wide variety of breweries (pretty much everything that is distrubted around Texas)... Like I said I just wish there was a wider variety of beers being put on shelf's.. And your reference to Belgian yeast is irrelevant.... Its not they u see all these companies saying " let's pours 5x's the yeast for super yeast extremely dry beer...
 
IPAs are a popular and wide-ranging style category. Yeah, dump in a lot of hops, because...

People like different things. There are IPAs I really don't care for because they use hops in combinations I don't like. And a lot of people love them.

There are so many IPAs because people love them and hops growers keep coming out with new varieties. It really has nothing to do with the amount of Belgian beers. That's a separate problem. Trust me, there is a LOT of potential for Belgian beer variety. It can't be helped that the store you went to didn't stock much of it. It's also a popular and growing area of craft beer. Probably the current next big thing.
 
I would wear hop cologne if someone made it.

(mental note: make hop cologne)


That said, someone mentioned stouts as the real next big thing. There's truth to that. There are more American made stouts now than I ever thought possible. This is a good thing. But screwing with stout is dangerous. Pretzel stout? Sea salt and caramel stout? No. Salt goes on food.
 
First off...thanks Clint!

We literally were closing in on almost a week without an IPA rant thread. I was getting jittery!

This. I seriously thought this thread was a joke at first.

The store I shop in has a very wide variety of breweries (pretty much everything that is distrubted around Texas)... Like I said I just wish there was a wider variety of beers being put on shelf's

Sounds like your beer store is the problem, if most of what they're stocking is IPAs.

There are a lot of crappy unbalanced IPAs on the market, but there are plenty of good ones too. I'm not a huge IPA guy myself, only like 'em every now and then, but I still manage to find enough other styles at my beer store to keep me interested.
 
I'm not an IPA guy either, but I think stupidly hopped is only one of the current beer trends. It might be one of the biggest, to the point where a brewery is almost doomed to failure (I say almost because I know there are exceptions) if they do not produce an IPA. It's a staunch departure from light beer with a fairly easy to decipher flavor profile. A knee jerk reaction for those who left macro beer. No offense to those who like IPAs, especially if they stick with them for a long time, but I notice that every person (that I know at least) who gets into craft beer starts with IPAs. When they start homebrewing, they start with IPAs. And eventually they branch out to others, but it's (almost) always the IPAs at first. That's how I started. And how every homebrewer I know personally that I can think of started. Same when when a city becomes a craft beer hub, it starts with all hoppy all the time. And then it starts to branch out.

BUT...

Like I said, only one of the trends. I was getting tired of absolutely every style of beer being crammed into a bourbon barrel. That one seems to be fading a little bit. But session beers are big right now (or at least, Session IPAs are big right now). But big beers are still big too. And sours are big too. So it's not as one sided as you seem to think it is.

And like @Yooper said, if you're looking in the American beer styles and American brewers, expect to see hoppy, because hoppy is what defines American beer compared to the rest of the world. And the king of the hop is IPA.

Me personally? I'm waiting for English styles to be a trend. I haven't found many US brewers to do English styles right. US-brewed Belgian-styled beers are very common (around here at least), and often very good. But I have yet to find many breweries to routinely do good traditional English ale. It's always an Americanized interpretation and they never pull it off right. English Brown Ale with Citra? Yeah, uh, no thanks. Of course, the Brits are mimicking the Americans and beginning to use more of the American hops, so perhaps I'm just dragging my feet and trying to stop the sands of time.
 
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