Are IPAs becoming less popular?

I do see more session style IPA's on the shelf. I can see the appeal of the session IPA but personally if I want a sessionable beer I go for a pilsner. There are not nearly as many good pilsners/lagers on the shelf as IPA's but it is not too hard to track down some awesome lagers. There will probably be some good ones from Sierra Nevada and Ninkasi again this summer.

 

My own curiosity at this point.

 

I haven't noticed any drop off of Big IPAs here in St. Louis. They still appear to be flying off the shelves.

 

Not unpopular, just ubiquitous....

 

Not in my world, if you have some you would like to get rid of message me. And nothing West Coast is ever "Trending down"...in my humble west coast opinion

 

IPA's still reign supreme in San Diego!

 

Same thing in most beer bars. What's the point of having 30 taps if 20 of them are similar IPAs. Give me some variety in styles.

 

I'm seeing quite the blast of newcomer "craft" drinkers who don't really like the taste of the old school highly abrasive IPAs. For years they have turned their palates away from it. And now breweries are producing these slightly sweeter less IBU heavy juicier type of IPAs. They are almost more APA in nature than IPA.

Give it another 5 years and we'll hear these recollections of people missing the days of in your face tongue numbing bittery IPAs that set our standard being forced out, in favor of the juicier IPAs.

From Other Half IPAs, to Alpine, to Heady Topper, I don't truly consider these IPAs in thh truest sense of what I have known IPAs to be. That just may be a subset of IPAs as a whole that I have a problem with.

 

Side note... "session IPAs" are not selling as well as everyone thinks they are.

 

I think other styles are just becoming more popular than they were before.

 

It's definitely already a thing. I've had several waitresses at restaurants say "well the IPAs we have are....." and list a bunch of random beers that are just not Bud/Miller/Coors, but not all IPAs.

 

The tend in craft beer right now seems to be barrel aged beers. I think you're gonna see a lot more brewers creating barrel aged brews and releasing em in 2016 to compete with the Bourbon Counties and the barrel aged Narwhal. It seems as if craft beer goes through trends. At one point in time Westy was all the talk and rage, so Westy 12 and quads in general were the thing. Then the freakishly high IBU/double IPA's were the rage. Then it seemed like everyone had to make a session IPA. And now it's barrel aged. I hope the root beers are considered a trend. I don't even know how they can be considered "beers". But in general, I don't think IPA's are ever going to loose popularity. I think the notion that breweries and consumers always need an insanely hopped up beer is going to go away. I think balance is really the "trend" if you will in IPA. A drinkable IPA, but one that isn't gonna blow your tongue outta your mouth with the bitterness. It also seems like everyone has a base beer that undergo mass amounts of variants too last year. Anyone have a reply to my thoughts?

 

Shop owner in Cali. And this is just on the local scale.

West coast overtly hopped hop bombs have tanked for me. I have n00bs asking for "clean"
tasting IPA or American style "IPA's" and more drinkable sessional beers.

Older heads just pop in for limited releases, mostly just for the "sought after seasonal of the moment, which tend to be bba stouts.

Sure IPA's still move, as being the highest per volume (think lagunitas IPA)

But the enthusiasm is surely missing from some of my clients.

once again just a relative observation.

-cheers

 

No.

 

no

 

definitely not, but oh well

 

Hopefully you're at the tip of a new trend, but it sure doesn't show around the Chicago area -- IPAs are hugely dominant on shelves here.

I found the notes to which I alluded; I didn't date them, but I know they're within the last 6 years because they're on my current letterhead -- pretty telling:

2,363 American IPAs (13,086 currently)
1,082 DIPAs (4,970 currently)

I didn't note English IPAs, but I did APAs: 2,060 (8,419 currently), and RIS: 531 (1,524 currently).

Pretty crazy boom in 6 years.

 

IPA's are still very popular in my household.

 

For what it's worth, I have noticed that the microbrewers that have opened up in last half year hear in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, and bear in mind that our brewery scene is less than five years old and in its infancy compared to other areas, have opted to not brew a flagship DIPA and some not even an IPA, citing that IPA burnout and/or just wanting to go in a different direction. I wonder if new breweries opening up are finding it cost prohibitive to brew immensely or overly, depending on your personal tastes, hopped beers due to the reported hop shortages and increased demand for hops by more and more brewers. On a different note, I have noticed a "sour craze" among beer drinkers in this area, so maybe a few hopheads have shifted their priorities or are just expanding their horizons.