What will be the next style to explode, and why?

Gruets are poised for a big run also. They are like sessionable and totally contemplative. Totally cool stuff.

 

LOL, what will they think of next....

 

eggnog stouts

 

Interesting how Blue Moon's Belgian White Witbier has really taken over American beer drinkers in recent years, yet the Witbier style as a whole has gone virtually undiscussed and unrecognized as an "exploding" style in craft beer. I guess it tells us that most Blue Moon drinkers are non beer enthusiasts just like 90+% of BMC's drinkers couldn't tell you what the term lager means is let alone an American Adjunct Lager and they've guzzled down 1000's of cans/bottles in their lifetimes.

 

Douseldorf, Cologene, Dortmund,Munich,Frankfurt I forget the name of the city that has the nuremburg ring. Apologies for any misspellings. I did like Aventinus (wish I could've tried the barrel aged version) and Celebrator, but I would put CBS, Black Note, Heady, Hopslam Rochefort, St Bernadus, above them. For all the people here that seem to think I'm just bashing Germany I'm not, there's alot of great things about Germany, but this is a beer site and at least for my palate German beers don't measure up to American or Belgian beers. I will say however they do a better job pairing beer and food than most places here. The other great thing about the US is there are breweries that do a good job brewing German style beer in the US, in my experience the reverse isn't true. To each their own but I wish German brewers would experiment more, all those styles from Germany that you like were new once too, even if it was centuries ago.

 

English barleywines. People are still going to want that "BIG" beer just more malt forward.

 

exactly!

 

It's gonna be berliner weisses and sours. Pretty much anything with wild yeast, bacteria and fruit.

Sour Power!

 

I don't know if you've heard of Bo and Luke, but that day is getting closer than you think-
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/26850/85986

(fwiw- it's an excellent beer, mostly because the base beer is so well done).

 

Had a local smoked rye porter the other day (4 Hands Brewery's Smoked Pigasus), delicious.
I'm a fan of smoked beers in barrels; the flavors compliment each other well.
As for a smoked BA IPA, I would love to try one because I never have.

 

That's a really good point. Has the witbier style lost street cred b/c of a succesful mass market version? Maybe the craft market needs a bit of an underground element to it, and sucessful craft breweries don't want to push a witbier in fear of losing some cool factor from going "mainstream".

I would like to see witbiers blow up a bit more.

 

Fair enough. Did you try much Helles while in Munich? This was style, sampled from the source, was the single biggest reason I began to seek out and appreciate quality German beers more. Bigger, bolder beers, especially IPAs, were my first love. But my palate expanded and shifted after traveling.

 

mead certainly has some momentum right now, I just saw cans of mead the other day. I don't think it will ever reach the level of IPAs, but its going somewhere

 

Mead is much tastier than cider IMHO; happy to see it doing well.

 

There are probably more Blue Moon drinkers out there who drink other craft beers than there are regular posters in this echo chamber.

Allagash White. It's their most popular beer by far. It's also the top selling draft beer for their Chicago area distributor.

 

You can probably thank Skyrim for that.

 

I almost mentioned this in my original post - but Allagash was founded in the same year Blue Moon came out. Blue Moon and Allagash White are so popular that it surprises me no craft breweries have really made anything close to as successful as these. I see Allagash White at so many bars, and I love it. But it would be cool if I were at a place with a huge selection where I wanted to try something new and there was one other wit to try from.

 

Allagash is wonderful, but really good beer bars should/would include an original Belgian.

 

Mead? In cans?

ISO!

 

Craft lagers. Just look what Jack's Abby is doing.