Does anyone feel like stepping back from IPAs sometimes?

No, I step back from IPA all of the time. Sour beers, fruit beers, brown ale, pilsner, helles, stout...

I know what you're saying though.

 

So I have been drinking craft pretty exclusively for about 5 years now. After my palate adjusted to hops, that seemed to be all I wanted. Now, over the last year, that's changed, and I am learning to appreciate a balance of styles on my weekends. I have noticed, on a rare three night in a row session, that the IPA's just fall flat. Palate fatigue is a real thing for sure!

 

I've always rotated between styles, as fits my mood. IPAs can get quite boring, quickly, as they're mostly so similar. Plus, it's just more interesting in general to change things up on the regular.

 

I know what you're saying, once you get a taste for well made IPA's it's hard not to want that hoppy goodness in your mouth. I have been there over the years for sure, I guess I have had LTS strongly five or six times.

Nowadays I try to enjoy as many different styles as I can. So many great ones out there. This strategy seems to make every style I try taste even better. This is doubly true for hoppy beers, the fewer you drink the more you enjoy those you do drink

 

Same here. My fridge is mostly full of stouts, porters, old/strong ales, barelywines, Belgian quads, and wild ales. At most, I will drink an IPA once a week, but usually once every two weeks. I like to have them fresh so tend to drink them at the source.

 

I tend to drink a lot of hop forwards beers in the warm months so by the time Fall rolls around, I'm "hopped out". That's when I'll switch over to German style's like Marzen's and Dunkel's.

 

One of the thing that I often think about is how time has changed things since I got into beer. When I started it was Bud/Miller/Coors and Canadian beers and other imports. I loved English ales if I could find them, and the occasional odd beer from Belgium or Germany. Then there were a few micros as time went by, and then more, but IPAs still weren't that common. Now there are a thousand choices and it's easy to start out "big". For me I appreciated the nuances first, and then the "bam" - will new drinkers these days be able to go from the "bam" to the subtle? Or will they just go to whiskey and wine?

 

I can see where you coming from but honestly I drink enough variety to keep it fresh. Usually I enjoy my coffee beers, lagers, and others to make the IPA still tasty.
Cheers

You can always roll with a Black IPA

 

I love IPAs. I brew them at home. That said, I've found myself steering clear of them when I purchase beer at the store or bar. For instance, we were in NYC this past weekend and I think out of a couple dozen beers that I had while there, I might have had 2 IPAs, and those were on the recommendations of the bartenders. It kills me that at a lot of the great places that we went somewhere between a third and a half of the beer menu were IPAs. I understand that you have to have what people want or they'll go someplace else, but it's getting to the point that I find them derivative and boring.

 

Seriously, it is hard to take it slow with beers like that anymore.

 

I find that about two years ago, I used to gravitate towards IPAs. Over the past few years, they have been all the rage. And breweries know that. Which is why they are pumping them out like wildfire. Easy money in a can, almost sure to sell out for releases.

It seems this coincides with the emergence of the NEIPA. It was so novel to enjoy a tropical, juicy IPA without the bitterness. I used to live in BK around the onset of the style. I was there for the OH, LIC, Singlecut, Finback, Interboro, etc. openings. Everything was fine and dandy. Life was good.

Having had so many of these new school IPAs, they started to all blend in with each other. Citra dry hop this, citra dry hop that, citra lupulin powder that, rinse and repeat (insert new tropical hop here). So many breweries started replicating the same formula.

It's now rare that I seek out an IPA. I tend to prefer to mix it up. For the summer, I'm down with the low abv berliners, goses, saisons, wild ales, hefes, lagers, etc. On cooler days, I'll go for a stout. Every now and again, I'll mix in an IPA. But I typically don't crave them anymore.

 

Went to LIC after spending some quality time at Mikkeller Citi Field, where I drank some lovely Suarez lagers. LIC had 6 beers on tap. 5 were IPAs.

Agreed.

 

Hard to get away from IPAs, especially the New England style! Most of the breweries I live near brew 80% IPAs. That's what makes them money so it will probably continue. If I want other styles, I have to go to the bottle shop.

I'm sure most of us here have access to good bottle shops with variety, so I don't see any reason to be "burned out"..but I can see it happening if one frequently visits breweries dominated by IPAs.

 

Variety is the spice of life.

Too many Ipas, doubles/imperials, now, too many sours. I love ditching them for a good Pils, Helles, Brown...

 

I've been craving porters lately, but it's hard to find much selection in that style lately. I end up drinking ipas because all the dark beers I see are imperial this or that and I'm not into pils/belgians/sours. I'd like to see more 6-8% porters, preferably with some tasty additives like toasted coconut or coffee.

 

I had to last summer for a few weeks. I was hit with the infamous "IPA fatigue" where they all tasted the same and didn't have much flavor going on. It helped immensely when I went back to them. Also going to VT next week, so I've been staying clear of IPA's since last Sunday until next weekend. Sticking with lagers, goses, stouts etc.