Tree House NEIPA Dominance

I find their milk stout collection appalling and undrinkable. I get it, it’s not like they’re messing up when they make these beers, they’re well crafted, but they make these sweeter than sin and it’s...really bad to my tastes.

 

TG makes outstanding stuff, but now that Sosus and Hop Smack are available in cans around me, they just sit on the shelf because of their absurd prices. Their lager and oatmeal stout also sit on shelves because they're beers nobody wants from a hazy IPA Brewer. The price of Pseudo Sue has also increased by 50 cents around me, so that beer is also sitting on shelves way longer than in the past.

 

The point of that tweet is that Toppling Goliath's IPAs predate the NEIPA craze while containing some (but not all) elements of NEIPAs. Notice that the tweet didn't mention low attenuation and lack of experienced bitterness, NEIPA hallmarks that its beers (to their credit) don't share. Those are the very hallmarks that set the NEIPA substyle apart now that most IPAs have morphed toward possessing haze and juiciness ("post-New-England IPAs"). I don't know why it's so important to some people to shoehorn these beers into a style that they predate and that they only partially and largely superficially match, but that's evidence of continued widespread consumer confusion within the IPA category even among people who consider themselves fans. It also makes me wonder what is going on in people's palates if they can't tell the difference even when the difference is being spelled out for them.

From a hedonic perspective, this is a crucial factor as to why Tree House beers receive such high ratings here: The flood of people new to craft beer in the '10s has brought along a lot of people who don't much like beer unless it's really sweet, and there certainly seems to be a positive correlation between abundance of residual sugars or lactose and ratings here and at Untappd. Tree House did a great job of matching to these newer consumers' preferences. There's no way, no matter how hard Tree House might've tried, that it could've generated anywhere close to as much buzz and hype as it has if instead it almost exclusively made equally well-executed but dry beers.

 

Oh for sure. To clarify, it's no mystery. In general, the latest wave of hype beers have, generally, been sweet, and accessible in the way that ice cream, candy bars, and hamburgers are. I don't even mean that as a dig, all of those things have their place, and there's no denying that they are universally popular.

But in the same way I don't consume ice cream, candy bars, or hamburgers on a regular basis, the new wave of sweet beers is not especially to my tastes.

 

What about the popularity of sours among the Beer Geek (e.g., BA) segment of the craft beer market?

Cheers!

 

I should mention that I've only had one TH beer, Green, and it was truly astonishing.

 

Most of the sours that have set tongues around here wagging in recent years are fruited kettle sours, most of them fruit-forward and many of them low in sourness and indeed high in sweetness (residual malt sugars, fructose, sometimes lactose). The complex and challenging slow sours certainly seem to have faded into a niche product among BeerAdvocate users. I think the rise of fruited kettle sours is very much consistent with the rise of NEIPAs and pastry stouts. Collectively, they're the cloying Cerberus of sweet and familiar accessibility, and it's no accident that they're often the three "styles" of emphasis at fashionable breweries.

 

You are making claims here (e.g., "Most..."). Do you have actual nationwide statistics here? Please provide that information (e.g., a link).

Cheers!

 

Nah Heady and Focal have come here legitimately for a while, though it’s always on-premises only. But when they do come down just about every craft bar in the city gets some, so it’s definitely not the case of a sketchy bar/bottle shop getting their hands on muled stuff.

 

I'll pass on the homework assignment, but I encourage you to do your own research if you're interested in those numbers.

 

Just from my observation there are very few brewers making the aged sours that are the standard bearers of the style (lambic, oud bruin, flanders red, etc.. ) and yet very many beers labeled "sour" on the market. To be fair, the American brewers making traditional sours are generally well respected in this circle but just looking over the shelves it appears that the majority of beers with a sour label on the market are the simpler kettle sours

 

I can't imagine that's exactly true. When a brewery can sell 50k barrels a year and have lines and sell out pretty much every day, you know they are doing something right. Especially with zero distribution.

Maybe people actually *gasp* like TreeHouse?

I know its the in vogue thing to shit on NEIPAs for a sexy pilsner, but I don't see a single brewery doing the level of what TreeHouse is doing week after week.

 

Right on!!!!

They were NEIPA before it was "cool."

Heady was the most turbid, floaty ridden beer of its day and but had a sharpness and bitterness that (for me) blows away those Treehouse juice bombs. A fresh Dinner gave Heady a run for its money and just haven't had enough HF over the years to comment.

Now original Nelson, well .............

 

I love Tree House IPAs but most are very same-y - juicy and fruity with no one flavor overpowering another, next to zero bitterness, very pale malt profile, super pillowy soft mouthfeel, medium in body, etc. They’re great but they don’t usually excite me much. The last time I went, I got four different hoppy beers and could hardly tell the difference between them.

Trillium, on the other hand, swing for the fences. Most of their IPAs are insanely good, some are okay and a few really miss the mark. The latter is especially true of their recent foray into triple IPAs imo. At least they take risks though.

 

To your first point Other Half in NYC comes to mind.

To your second half I do like the Tree House beers ive have had. They just are not that much better then a lot of stuff I drink. I'm not shitting on them just trying to apply reason to an absurd situation.

 

Other Half makes less than half of Tree House's current production, and is expanding to try to make up to half what Tree House does every year. But I would but Other Half in that same line of NEIPA goodness, but Tree House still knocks it out of the park when it comes to beer after beer, and Tree House does amazing stouts as well, which you really don't see as much of in the NE.

 

Which narratives?

How come they send it your way but not to Boston!?

I think the zero distribution part is one of the main reasons they sell so much out of the brewery.

Clearly the beer is good, and people love it too. But if they like it, there's only one place to get it...so...

 

So you want a separate IPA category for Toppling Goliath IPAs?

I think he's curious where you got your information aside from anecdotal evidence.

I could just as easily say Gueuze are quite popular if I look at the ratings, not kettle sours. But I don't know how well lambics/Gueuze sell.

 

No, I want New England IPAs folded back into the American IPA category because people can't tell a non-New-England IPA from an NEIPA in the present era in which most newly created IPAs are at least a little bit hazy and juicy.

As for Jack, nah, I don't think he was looking for an answer in good faith but rather using a rhetorical device to undermine or at least question my claims. Of course, he himself provided no numeric evidence for his implied dubiousness. I will say that some of the local industry personnel to whom I speak,* on both the production and retail side, say slow sours move very slowly while fruited kettle sours are just about the hottest segment in beer in Minnesota right now. A large proportion of the slow sour makers in Minnesota have curtailed their offerings and production accordingly (Fair State, Wild Mind, Indeed, Fulton, etc.). I see years old and very good slow sours languishing on the shelves at prices at which pastry stouts fly. I haven't seen the actual numbers to which the industry is responding. Whatever buzz there may be around slow sours in 2019, and honestly I don't sense there's much of it, it's not enough to drive major sales, whereas the also quite expensive NEIPAs, pastry stouts, and fruited kettle sours move very briskly (for now).

* I track brewery developments in Minnesota and western Wisconsin, which I post in the Midwest and Great Lakes forums, respectively.

Added: Tilquin, one of the truly great lambic makers in Belgium, recently entered the Twin Cities market to a collective yawn from consumers. If people around here actually cared about slow sours, there would've been a stampede to the bottle shops and bars carrying it.

 

I wouldn't do this either though. I find New England IPAs have virtually nothing in common with the American IPA (West Coast, East Coast, Midwest...whatever).

The only thing the two styles have in common is that they both use A LOT of hops. And they're hop forward.

But aroma, taste, and appearance are all vastly different.

If it said Cantillon on the label it would (if I recall correctly it's a blend that includes Cantillon, but not everyone knows that).

When Cantillon or Drie Fonteinen hit the shelves here they're very expensive, and only last a few hours at the stores.