I've definitely noticed newer members of the beer scene caring less and less about ticking and new, new, new. There's still a sense of wanting to try new items, but less of an obsession with it. I think that's one (of many) reasons why the SKU monster breweries aren't able to pull shenanigans as much. There's still a place for variety, but I don't know if having 30 IPAs with only the most subtle differences between them is gonna fly much longer. At least simultaneously. I think that newer beer-focused customer broadly wants something and doesn't need a pile of other similar options all at the same time. It's why so many places are starting to go with the commodity approach. I think that matches where the fandom has gone.
Part of it, I think, is that there are just so many options available now. No one needs one brewery to crank out all this subtle variety because there's already a dozen other breweries who make an ipa with a slightly different hop profile than yours. The store shelves have that covered
Bourbon is in the same boat. On any given shelf there’s 50 different bottles that all taste within a 10% margin of each other at vastly different prices. People used to tick them just like beer, but a lot of people realized (after spending thousands of dollars) that there’s not a big enough variation in the experience to justify getting 50 different bottles a year
