Are the horizons for home brewing narrowing?

[isomerization]

Well, as far as the age thing goes I'm 28 and don't really care for anything much hoppier than a sierra nevada pale ale. And neipas don't really look like beer to me (I've never had one so I have no idea what they taste like.)

Only one way to find out! Just remember, if it’s brown, pour it down (the drain).

 

[Stand]

I like the philosophical turn this has taken. Seems right to me.

People trying to find meaning. Make communities. Make something.

We might do it different, but it's the same.

Respect

 

[Bilsch]

I have never made an IPA.

Me either.

 

[gunhaus]

I brewed my first beer because i was young and cheap and broke and i believed the nice looking man inside the front cover of popular mechanics when he said i could brew my favorite Canadian style lager for penny's a glass. After THAT fiasco of stale canned malt, and ancient yeast, and pseudo-beer like substance, I took a little break. The next time I had some experienced help, and the goal was to make my own stout. I loved Guinness, but it was very hard to get in my rural area in the late 80'S. With my friends help, I made a pretty damn good stout - NOT Guinness - but damn good. Since then, I have played with a lot of styles, developed some real favorites, and have pegged down a couple of stout recipes i love. And truth be told, if I had to brew ONLY stout . . . I'd be happy and fine and would still enjoy my brew time. FORTUNATELY I don't have to be limited! So I am gonna try what ever suits my whim that day, and trends be damned.

 

[cswant88]

I've not brewed all the styles out there, much less mastered any. IPAs seem to be the hot thing right now, eventually, it will be something else. Personally, I'm not a hop head, generally don't care for IPAs, though I don't find them intolerable. You won't catch me buying or brewing one, unless I was brewing it for someone else and they intend to take it all with them when they go.

 

[mongoose33]

I have never made an IPA.

My name is Mongoose33, and I have made IPAs.

I'm not a big fan of them, but I had some Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing, and was surprised. Not so bitter as to remove the enamel from my teeth, and pretty decent hop flavor and aroma.

So I've been toying with this from time to time, trying to match HLT and then make it better (meaning that I like it ). I know what I want it to taste like, it's just a matter of tweaking until I get there. I want a lot of hop flavor and aroma, a certain level of malty sweetness, relatively low bitterness, and a good dry finish. Not sure that the last is consistent with the former, but I know what I'm hoping to accomplish at some point.

 

[Dynachrome]

Lately I've run into more guys that just brew for themselves at home. They don't do clubs or competitions. They just brew what they like. Some of them have some fairly serious setups too.

 

[seatazzz]

When I started, my goal was to make the hoppiest IPA I could, because I like them. After three years, my focus has shifted to traditional lagers, and making them right. Yes, I do love a properly done IPA, but I like better a nice refreshing lager that seems to satisfy something in me.

As homebrewers, as we gain experience, we will focus on what we like to drink; for the most part, that is why we brew. I have never understood (and have often disparaged) the silly (to me) trends that beer brewing, whether commercial or home, have drifted towards. Gose? Gross. Sours? Why? If I want sour I'll go get some Sour Patch Kids candy. When I drink beer I want to taste what makes it BEER; malt, hops, and whatever magic the yeast will add. As someone who grew up in the 70s and 80s, I remember what commercial "pilsners" used to taste like before they started adding more adjuncts to cheapen the process and stretch their brewing dollar. When we lived in Utah my dad drank "Burgie" beer; of course, back then it was the usual 3.3% ABV that was allowed by Utah's restrictive laws, but I remember it was quite flavorful.

As to the original question; horizons only narrow if you let them. There are so many styles out there, and recipes to follow or tweak to your own taste, that the possibilities are endless. Especially for all-grain brewers; we can make whatever we want, and hang the majority who say we can't, because it's not "to style" or within BJCP standards. Brew what you want to drink, I say.

 

[ESBrewer]

Trends keep changing - it's NEIPA now but not forever. In the internet era these trends will reach everyone globally so they are reinforced. But there are always people who go against all trends + those who couldn't care less of what's in. NEIPA is probably partly about the development of new aroma hops and willingness to experiment on them. Personally, I have zero interest in brewing NEIPAs (or IPA for that matter). But never say never..I may examine this style soon when it becomes retro

 

[isomerization]

As homebrewers, as we gain experience, we will focus on what we like to drink; for the most part, that is why we brew. I have never understood (and have often disparaged) the silly (to me) trends that beer brewing, whether commercial or home, have drifted towards.

Don’t you think these two sentences are contradictory?

 

[Pappers_]

Interesting conversation. I'll just toss out two generational issues I experience in my neck of the woods:

1) my irl homebrew friends in their 20s and 30s are way into (a) NEIPAs, (b) Milkshake beers and (c) fruited kettle sours; my homebrew friends in their 50s+ tend not to be and are more likely to be brewing traditional American, German, Belgian and English styles.

2) internet forums like HBT are trending towards older users, younger folks are more into the app/texting/twitter world; a homebrew club I'm a member of uses Slack, for example, and the 20s and 30s guys are way into it, love it; two of us, both in our 50s, find it challenging, because its too brief, too hit and miss, no one can track what's been said, etc.

These are both generalizations and I know they're not applicable in individual cases.

 

[kevin58]

At one time Porter was the most popular beer in the world. Every major brewery in England produced it by the hundreds of thousands of barrels. Not long after Mild was a staple of those same breweries and was served in every pub and corner bar. Both of those styles disappeared for long stretches of time. I mean completely disappeared. Brewing records show zero barrels of either being made by any commercial brewer once they were gone.

One theory as to why beer styles fall out of favor is that a younger generation comes along and they reject what their parents are drinking. Those beers become "old" beers for old people. Right now, Lager is king. It displaced Ale as the most popular beer. Lager surpassed Ales in the mid 1980's and has been king ever since. However it's rise began leveling out in the 2000's while at the same time Ale stopped it's plummet to oblivion. You could credit those things to the craft beer era.

Beer has always fluctuated and evolved. Tastes change. Styles change. You may see it as a "narrowing". The Porter and Mild drinkers who watched as pubs gradually stopped stocking their favorite beverage certainly must have felt that way. Narrowing? No. Changing? Always.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I tend to always have a Pale Ale or IPA or both on tap...I even brewed an NEIPA. I enjoyed the NEIPA more than I thought I would and picked up ingredients to brew another, but I guess I could not get motivated since every pub has 50% of their taps devoted to this style. I was having a hard time finding a good classic IPA on tap so I brewed one of those instead. I enjoy this beer a LOT (even if it only has 7 oz total hops in a 5 gal batch and my homebrew buddies say I need to use at least 1 lb).

I don't brew too much crazy stuff but I have brewed a mix of beers in the last 6 months...Imperial Stout, 2 x Porters, 3 x Stouts, American Brown, Dubbel. I guess I am about 40/60 this year with Pale/IPA vs Other...though only two of IPAs were in the hazy/juicy category. I am hoping to make a deep dive into Belgian beers over the next year or so.

 

[madscientist451]

People are going to brew what they like. IPAs are popular, so it makes sense that people like to brew them. Brewing a decent IPA requires a somewhat narrow focus, so I suppose the OP's assertion is true.

 

[balrog]

I started because I was on a trip and had an Alaskan Amber and fell in love with it. I'm still trying to nail that one down 6 years later, and it doesn't help that my taste perception memory is not eidetic. But I am all over the board with what I'll brew, with the exception of high abv, or sour, or ipa. It's just a simple matter of preference is all.

 

[beernutz]

At one time Porter was the most popular beer in the world. Every major brewery in England produced it by the hundreds of thousands of barrels.

This reminds me of a recent London pub trip. I dragged my wife specifically to this pub because I read the sign painted on the building and wanted to try a hand pulled Porter. The 20 something bartender thought I was having a go as they say when I ordered a Porter. He had no idea what one was. I went outside and took this picture to show him that at one time in the pub's history Porters were sold here.

The owner and I then got into a friendly disagreement over the sign with his position being that the name of the pub was the Horse and Groom yet there were neither horses or a groom to be found inside.

I did finally get that hand-pulled London Pride Porter at a great pub called The Harp but of the 15 UK pubs we visited it was the only one serving Porter.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I brew what I like to drink. I read enough posts here to know that there are some people who feel any NEIPA or high gravity BA stout is just a crappy beer overloaded with hops, bourbon or adjuncts to hide the fact that they are poorly brewed crap. That's a pretty myopic view by people who are probably bitter that the beer they like isn't the hot topic these days. I've had great and poor NEIPAs, I've had great a poor RISs and pastry stouts. Just because it has a lot of flavor does not mean the base beer was poorly done.

I have to laugh at how haughty some people are about what others like and brew. To dismiss any style as just a means to hide crappy processes etc. is incredibly narrow-minded & arrogant.

As far as homebrewers only wanting IPAs or whatever these days, my homebrew club is dominated by people who mostly brew traditional European styles. Personally, I brew many different styles, depending on what I want or am interested in at the time. My pipeline is dominated by IPAs because I like them. I have a california common on tap right now. Next up is a Tripel. But I may sprinkle in a NEIPA or two in there somewhere to keep the kegerator full. I also have to brew another big RIS to get aging as well.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I think I only brew IPAs to use up hops. Otherwise, I prefer balance.

Balance is in the palate of the beholder. The concept of a "correct" balance for beer is laughable. If someone wants an IPA, then the balance should lean towards bitter and/or hoppy flavor.

For another style, the correct balance is a malt bomb that barely has any perceptible hop character.

I realize that there are guidelines for different styles, but to talk about balance like any particular style doesn't have it is ludicrous. It just balances at a different point because it's a different style.

 

[bracconiere]

i personally just decide on brew day what color i want it to be, and throw a bunch of stuff in a pot.....

so my horizons aren't limited by trying to win prizes by some sorta 'style'.....i don't need a catch phrase for my homebrew....

 

[TallDan]

What we brew and what we post about may be two different things.

For NEIPA, it's a new style with some new techniques that are still being mastered. There is a lot of discussion to be had about those techniques and recipes both for professional brewers and home.

In comparison, if you want to make a great german helles, the work of developing the techniques and recipes has already been done. Sure, we might discuss some variations on the style, but I can find some great recipes and the techniques pretty easily.

So, If this weekend, i brew a helles and a NEIPA, I'd probably find a recipe and brew the helles without posting anything about it here. For the NEIPA, I might have to ask some questions to clarify the processes or get some help with a recipe.



Also, NEIPAs are a currently popular trend, and the most likely style to draw in a new craft beer drinker. If that drinker decides to try homebrewing, it will be what they want to brew first. New brewers will have more questions to post here than veteran brewers, and even when they have a question about a basic brewing process, they'll frame it for the style that they're brewing. That increases the traffic on the NEIPA threads. Go look at the zombie dust clone thread. A few years ago there were new brewers asking basic brewing questions there because that was the first beer they wanted to brew. Now that traffic moved away from that thread and over to the NEIPA threads.

 

[MaaZeus]

This reminds me of a recent London pub trip. I dragged my wife specifically to this pub because I read the sign painted on the building and wanted to try a hand pulled Porter. The 20 something bartender thought I was having a go as they say when I ordered a Porter. He had no idea what one was. I went outside and took this picture to show him that at one time in the pub's history Porters were sold here.

The owner and I then got into a friendly disagreement over the sign with his position being that the name of the pub was the Horse and Groom yet there were neither horses or a groom to be found inside.

I did finally get that hand-pulled London Pride Porter at a great pub called The Harp but of the 15 pubs we visited it was the only one serving Porter.

Jesus! This is worrying. As a fan of british beers and especially porters I want to visit England (or any British country) and do a pub round, taste local delicacies while they are still fresh and on tap.

 

[Stand]

Jesus! This is worrying. As a fan of british beers and especially porters I want to visit England (or any British country) and do a pub round, taste local delicacies while they are still fresh and on tap.

As far as I can tell America is the center of the beer universe. Every brewery is going to make hazy IPAs right now, and they would be silly not to do that since A) hazy beers are crazy good for brewpubs (labor intensive, hard to transport, better fresh, innovation centered) and B) they are what people want.

That doesn't mean those same brewers aren't making other things.

The chances are pretty good you can find anything you want from funky sours to Belgians to German lagers to stouts etc. almost anywhere in the country even if you aren't finding all of them at any one brewery.

I am also annoyed when local bars have 80% hazy IPAs on tap, but I am just old enough to remember America being a joke when it comes to beer monoculture, and we aren't there. Maybe I am missing something, but things seem alright.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Oh, where to begin?

First off - the home-team effect. If you go to a supermarket in France, 95%+ of the wine is from France. Which makes sense - there's domestic relationships, shipping is cheaper, there's less paperwork if you're buying domestically and so on. Compare that with the UK which loves wine but which has little domestic production, if you're importing then you don't really care where it comes from so you end up comparing a French chardonnay versus an Australian one versus a Californian one and you buy whichever is best (to your palate). So an import-led market tends to be more varied, as you're not biased to the domestic style. That describes the US in the mid-80s - the homegrown beer market was little more than adjunct lager, so you looked overseas for inspiration, whether that was the UK, Belgium or whatever. Compare that with somewhere like the UK that had a rich brewing history of its own so tended to brew within that heritage (not least because that's what the customers wanted). So in the mid-80s homebrewers in the US looked around the world for inspiration, whereas now the hoppy thing is enough of an indigenous style that US brewers tend to look to that heritage for inspiration - it's "their" thing.

When a hobby is small, it attracts the experimental people who don't mind that it's "difficult", and probably have a broader appreciation of the hobby - but as it gets bigger it attracts the people who "just want a kit" and aren't into the wider view.

Also don't assume that the things that get the most talk are the things that people are most interested in - in the UK at least I'd guess most homebrewers are interested in traditional UK styles, but there's little mystery to them from a technical point of view. Compare that with NEIPAs where the science of grist (oats/chit etc), hopping, biotranformation etc are still open questions and so will inevitably attract a lot more discussion. But even if that's what gets the most chat, brewers in the UK at least will still brew the old faithful styles.

 

[beernutz]

Jesus! This is worrying. As a fan of british beers and especially porters I want to visit England (or any British country) and do a pub round, taste local delicacies while they are still fresh and on tap.

I went to these London pubs in March (the first 5 were part of a walking pub tour) and I believe the only one that had porter on tap was The Harp. We had a lot of great beer on our trip but if you are looking for porter you should probably do some advance research by calling.

London
The Cockpit
The Black Friar
Punch Tavern
Ye Old Cheshire Cheese
The George
The Horse and Groom
Bag 'O Nails
Southwark Tavern
The Harp
Punch 'N Judy

 

[seatazzz]

Don’t you think these two sentences are contradictory?

No, just voicing my opinion. Sentence 1: Observation. Sentence 2: Opinion.

 

[augiedoggy]

From the perspective of one who has been home brewing beer (on and off) since the mid 80's, it seems that where once we generally pursued a goal of mastering a broad diversity of worldwide styles, today virtually the only concern for most (particularly younger) home brewers is to pursue the mastering of the West Coast and/or NE IPA styles. Just an observation.

As someone who is a co owner of a small brewpub I can say ive been asking myself that a lot lately.. As mentioned the industry and hobby has become about trends with the younger crowd. To me it seems cloudy beers are the rave.. Ive even read recently about hazy kolsch beers being made now... that and fruit or sour beers with the occasional stout made with some sort of odd ingredient like candy bars.. Now im all for experimenting. I just dont like going to a micro or nano brewery with 12-15 beers on tap and only 3-4 different beer styles to choose from because they are all different variations of the most popular selling styles trending and thats honestly what I often see. it all makes me wonder if it was the beer industry that was responsible for the american beer turning to the watery yellow fizzy stuff decades ago or if that was just the hot trending beer so long everything else disappeared?

 

[bleme]

My club's last brewfest, we had 12 taps and half of those were IPA or NEIPA. Our youngest member does brew NEIPA's exclusively, but he's only been brewing for a year though, so give him some slack... I should also say that his NEIPA's are amazing and blow away most of the commercial offerings!

 

[BruceH]

From the perspective of one who has been home brewing beer (on and off) since the mid 80's, it seems that where once we generally pursued a goal of mastering a broad diversity of worldwide styles, today virtually the only concern for most (particularly younger) home brewers is to pursue the mastering of the West Coast and/or NE IPA styles. Just an observation.

My home brewing goals are fairly narrow in scope. I want to master German style Pils, Helles, and Bocks. I fell in love with those beers in the 80's while stationed in Germany.

I try some other brews from time to time but I haven't had an ale that speaks to me like a good Lager does.

I've only been brewing for a few years but have managed quite a few brews in that time. I feel that I have the fundamentals of the processes figured out. The next thing to learn about will be water. Saved that one for last.

Maybe I'll become interested in more varieties of beer as time goes on. For now I'm content with tweaking things trying to get a clean Lager.

 

[day_trippr]

[...]it all makes me wonder if it was the beer industry that was responsible for the american beer turning to the watery yellow fizzy stuff decades ago or if that was just the hot trending beer so long everything else disappeared?

What "everything else"?

In the mid-60s the market was dominated by american pilsners and pale lagers. Fizzy yellow pisswater.
My dad was the only person I knew that preferred ales (huge Ballentine, Narragansett and Knickerbocker fan). My uncles all thought he was weird

This is like The Golden Age of beer wrt availability of styles that I doubt anyone in the USA was even aware of 50-something years ago...

Cheers!

 

[Stand]

I can go to any grocery store and get craft beer. Every grocery store. **** I got a 4 pack of Unibroue tripel from FOOD LION.

Life is good.