Enough with the hops already!

Belgian beer definitely has had more complexity than American beer until recent times, however all beer uses hops. Hops are a lot more complex than anyone even knows, and their potential for beer enhancement is not limited to IPA's, bitterness, or tropical flavors. They are an essential ingredient in every brewing process and to be fully respected.

 

Well said. There still plenty of variety in styles being brewed even here in the U.S. to keep us all content. IPAs and BA Stouts may seem to be the trend, but craft brewing in the U.S. is seeing a renaissance of a diversity of styles. Keep your pants on folks, we're just beginning...

 

Just line the shelves with Stone Ruination and call it quits .. that beer to me is the king of Drinkable IPAs that are just perfect everytime. . Not so harsh and hoppy it hits you in the face but man is that stuff good .. Just make sure the enjoy by date is good !

 

To all of the "stop whining" and "get over it" posters, would you feel the same way if you didn't like pumpkin beers and they suddenly became the cool thing, and every store you walked into had 90% of its shelf space covered in pumpkin beers or your favorite craft beer bar suddenly changed all of its taps over to pumpkin beers?

No one is saying hoppy beers shouldn't exist or that IPAs should go away, but I don't think that a little more variety would be a bad thing. It is getting old to me to see a brewery like SN (for example) come out with a new seasonal release and....it's another IPA, but oh wait look, this time it's with RYE! And the very important point that shouldn't be missed is that this new beer comes at the expense of another beer that many folks liked. I miss Glissade, and I will really miss Tumbler if the rumors are true.

 

Great point. However, I went to one of my local liquor stores last night, and I think this has already happened! I was trying to find some German Oktoberfest beers but they were buried in a pumpkin patch.

 

Basically.

I get kind of bummed when I go into my bottle shop (especially in the summer) and it's a ton of APAs and IPAs. Some of us want to drink some different beer in the summer...

 

If your so tired of the countless offerings from the thousands of breweries the US market has access to, then try your hand at it and brew your own.

Homebrewing, you can do anything you want with a beer..

 

FTFY

By the way, I like how you read right through what he was saying.

 

I'll take a good IPA, whether DIPA, IIPA, or IPA over any other style. That's me though. I love my hops.

 

Speak for yourself. As far as I'm concerned bring on the hops !

 

I'm with you there. I'm thoroughly disgusted with our current legislature and two-faced governor. N.C. has been ahead of the curve for decades and these fools are determined to reverse that and thrust their fundamentalist-type beliefs into law. They will be voted out! Opposition to these morons is rampant and getting very organized.

 

Are you speaking for someone else?

 

I'm really surprised how butt-hurt some are getting about this.

 

You are right. I'll bet 99% of folks that bother to read any of this stuff more than generally agree about things. Thanks for your comment. I usually stay very positive, but sometimes get hung up on semantics.

 

luckily for the OP, hop forward beers took a dive with this week's deliveries. I just went to the store and there's no fewer than a dozen different breweries with pumpkins out this week. ugh, I don't get...at all!...but the OP should be able to find something new to try this week that's not hoppy.

 

I used to think it was just people being homers, but Im starting to think theres something to these freshness and 'lack of being subjected to shipping over thousands of miles by FedEX' thing. Drink local indeed.

 

I've been vocal in this thread, mainly about there being too many IPAs. But just so everyone knows that I'm not a hop racist, I went to the bar and enjoyed the crap out of a Stone Enjoy By today.

 

I'm guessing that's not all you're tired of getting blasted with.

 

In home brewing you have access to 50+ yeast strains. As for his question, yeast strains, to my knowledge, don't fluctuate as much as hops because most all breweries develop house strains and reuse that strain for many generations. This is both at advantage to the brewer for financial reasons as well as evolutionary reasons. They will save money by not using fresh yeast every batch and the yeast will evolve and develop house character.