New England style IPAs will continue to dominate in 2018

I don't know, this is the best I've been able to figure of the complaints
-NEIPA lovers are new beer lovers who aren't real smart about beer yet
- NEIPA lovers act too smart about beer.
-All they care about is haze because they aren't sophisticated enough to know if they enjoy the taste of beer they drink
-They like NEIPA because it's the cool thing to do, not it became a cool thing to do because NEIPA is a delicious style they enjoy, like any beer drinker enjoys any style they like.
-The beers have the wrong name, shouldn't be called NEIPA, they aren't IPA. This is bad due in part to slippery slope, in part to guilt by association.
-They're too popular
- NEIPA is very hard to get here
- Some people wait on lines, which is bad because...hmmm, I have no idea why someone waiting on a line is bad for someone else.
-The brewers use techniques that certain people find objectionable due to ... not really sure why, but some folks definitely complain about this.
-There is a higher percentage of bad/flawed NEIPA and a lower percentage of good/well crafted NEIPA than is true for other styles, though no info presented to make that case
-NEIPA are more perishable than other beers, which is bad because not everyone is capable of not buying too much beer.
-To the persons who suggest jealousy as a motive- I have started to think this is a valid observation.
-They're murky, and murk is bad in IPA. But it's okay in hefeweizen where you have to make sure you get every last bit of it by swirling the bottom third and pouring.
-There are some who like NEIPA who make posts on IG and FB that others disagree with, or find offensive, so the style is bad, and all the people who drink it are bad.
-They don't like any new things such as NEIPA, and any person who likes any new thing is bad.

Everyone can add their own, or any I missed

 

Says the dude who has been on BA for a little over two years.

Please.

 

Even DDH Fort Point? I agree generally, though. After 2ish of most NEIPAs I'm ready to change it up.

LMAO. NEIPAs are literally known for being full-bodied, first off. Maybe you just haven't had any good examples?

 

Kinda like when all those new deadheads ruined the scene.

 

You mean Phish. Phish did that.

 

This thread leads me to draw two conclusions:

1. I am in the minority lucky enough to live in a market where my town has not been descended upon by the widely feared night of the living hazebros.

2. Salt, vinegar, chocolate, coffee, toffee, caramel, vanilla, pine, grass, hay, leather, banana, and rye bread all taste like beer. But juicy fruit?! AB. SO. LUTELY. NOT. That doesn't taste like beer.

 

Sourpatchkids
(tm)

 

People that like sour beers don't think that if a beer isn't sour that it isn't good.

 

I haven't thought of either light or full body as characteristic of NEIPAs. NEIPAs are known for being remarkably soft and "pillowy" in the palate, and some people may confuse that for full-bodied, just as many incorrectly refer to the inordinately thin Guinness Draught as being full-bodied.

This is a site for beer advocacy, first and foremost (hence the name), but it's also a site for beer criticism (hence the ratings feature). It's perfectly reasonable to critique the New England IPA substyle.

Many professional brewers have little respect for NEIPAs because they represent a dumbing down of IPAs. They eschew dryness and bitterness, key components of IPAs, and they often rely on intentionally low attenuation (which would be called under-attenuation in other contexts) to produce actual sweetness along with utilizing "juicy" and "tropical" hops expressions to produce perceived sweetness and familiar flavors. They double down an accessibility by aiming for extraordinarily soft palate effects. And, in many cases, they go well out of their way to produce unnaturally turbid appearances and low head retention to make the beers worthy of being posted on social media (which, like it or not, is a non-trivial driver of their popularity). NEIPAs are, in many cases, cartoonish beers. While many long-time beer aficionados have embraced them as a change of pace or because they never really enjoyed dry or bitter hoppiness in the first place, NEIPAs' primary appeal is to craft beer novices whose palates haven't yet developed much. There always has been a place for gateway craft beers, so I have no issue with the existence of the substyle.

The "problem" (to the extent that anything in the trivial world of the craft beer hobby can be a problem) is that there has been such an influx of newer, vocal, social-media-savvy craft beer consumers in recent years that sites like this and Untappd have seen NEIPAs rocket up their leaderboards. So now we collectively have to deal with the fact that these insipid concoctions are being called the best beers in the world. This is influencing breweries to make beers, even non-NEIPAs, sweeter and juicier, and it's making it harder for craft beer consumers who aren't on the NEIPA bandwagon to identify good beers (especially IPAs) and good breweries because the conversation has become so distorted. Many of the acolytes of the substyle are convinced that they're on the cutting edge and truly are enjoying the best beers ever brewed. As you can see from this thread, they can get very perturbed if anyone argues otherwise. It's not unlike the lamentable period in the 1980s when young drinkers flocked to cocktails (no problem so far), but the cocktails they were drinking were cloying nonsense like Cosmopolitans and Long Island Iced Teas. (I'll note that this period was before my time).

And, yes, there are good NEIPAs and fans of the substyle whose palates and opinions on beer I respect. Any of you who are offended by my characterizations of NEIPAs and those who enjoy them, feel free to count yourself among those ranks.

 

Maybe not DDH Fort Point (admittedly I could have a few of those) but that's more of a new-age APA in my book, so I guess I should've clarified "DDH IPA/DIPAs"

 

But what if the hazebros(*) move on to sour beers next?

(*)- a separate demographic from beer enthusiasts who happen to enjoy NEIPAs.

 

There is certainly some overlap where people think that hazy sour beer is better than clear sour beer.

Those people need to meet Mr. Pectic Enzyme.

 

I was wondering which negative route you were gonna choose. I gotta say pretty lame.
How about responding to the point.
Mr. Evenmorearrogance (6/8/2017)

 

We've had at least 4 of these NEIPA good or bad discussions in the last week, can we have a moratorium on this topic? Maybe for like one week? Would that be cool with everyone?

kthxbye

 

I can see a great deal of thought went in to this to make the characterizations and generalities you use to make your opinions look less like like snobbery..

I won't stretch this out to say more than folks have a right to like beer for any reason they want to like it. This includes you, me, AAL drinkers, and "hazebros" as many folks pejoratively call them. Beer advocacy is about not caring about the reasons others drink their beers, and not caring what beers they choose to enjoy, and respecting beer involves respecting other beer drinkers. This is why criticizing beer on the basis of how you like it is Advocacy, but criticizing beer drinkers for the beers they drink, no matter how you dress up those criticisms, is Snobbery all day every day.

 

The point being this?

With all due respect NEIPA's have been around for years. Trends have come and gone since the advent of hazy IPA's. Fruited IPA's and gose just to name two. At this point it is definitely not a stretch to say that NEIPA's are here to stay.

If so, then Fruited IPAs are WAY better sellers than are NEIPAs and, without looking at the numbers, I'd say that Gose outsells them as well. And Session IPAs, another "fad", outsell all three by a longshot. Again, just estimating here, but I'd venture to say that Founders All Day IPA probably outsells all three on its own.

If you want to talk about industry wide trends, then we can talk about them. If you want to talk about trends that only affect beer dorks, then we should make that distinction. NEIPAs are the latter.

https://www.craftbrewingbusiness.co...tyle-is-this-potentially-a-long-term-problem/

http://beveragedynamics.com/tag/craft-beer-trends-2017/

Oooo . . . burn. I'm going to need some aloe for that one.

 

I'd like to agree with you, but these things are way too fun to give up on just yet.

 

NEIPAs are so popular, no-one drinks them anymore. (Kinda)---Yogi Berra

 

Thank you

 

No problem, man. Was feeling particularly dickish when I responded to you this morning. Don't take it personally. I'm just a dick.