IPA craze: When will it be over?!

It is an historical fact that public tastes change.200 years ago Porter was overwhelmingly the most popular.This declined and Mild Ale took over (to this day you see signs saying "Ale and Porter Brewers") and then Pale Ale (aka Bitter) took the lead.Then it was the turn of lager,which is still the biggest seller.
Not only do beers themselves evolve within styles but so does what people want.

 

What craze, its just people liking beer. So many new styles of beer are coming out weekly/monthly. Beer is the craze, not IPAs.

 

IPAs are the most popular craft style. Looking on the Internet, they don't crack the top 5 styles. They are very popular with Ba members, a small set of the beer drinking population.

This had some data that was interesting. The popularity of IPAs varies by state, from a share high of ~35% to a low of about 5%.
https://www.brewersassociation.org/insights/beer-styles-by-state/

 

The second sentence should have read "Looking on the Internet, stouts don't crack the top 5 styles"

I will blame that on jet lag this morning.

 

Yeah, that claim re: stouts had me raise an eyebrow or two (well, that's all I got). For 2015, the IRI data (limited as it may be, as noted in the B.A. link) had Stout at less than 2% of the total Craft segment.

But, of course, here on the BA forums, "popular" is based on the number of posts about beers of a certain style, not actual real world sales.

 

Or the number of that style in the top 250, IPAs and Stouts.

 

I dont think the thirst for IPAs will ever go away. However, I do think the crazy chasing and waiting in lines will. Eventually, breweries will expand to meet demand and new places will open up that will divide consumers. You see it starting here in the North East. Trillium, at one time if you wanted their beers you had to get there and wait in line, now you can get a cases a week out. Other Half, just a few months ago they were selling out to the initial line in the mornings, now you can go in later in the day and grab whatever you want with no line at all.

 

I don't think the waiting in line is gonna go away, because new breweries are gonna keep opening up. So sure, you may be able to get Tree House or Trillium (not Maine they don't want to expand) in the future in supermarkets, maybe even in Europe, but there's still gonna be a new brewery that's gonna be trendy and attract people. Those breweries have been added to BA less than 5 years ago, so I don't know when they really started (can't find the info) but they've very young. No reason breweries with that level of quality aren't gonna pop up soon, or aren't popping up right now.

Have you tasted Auval from Québec, Canada ? Their level is seriously high, like Trillium high. I've brought back Trillium, Alchemist, and Auval IPAs to France and tasted them with friends. All less than a month old thanks to thedoctor who traded them to me. My friends agreed : Auval and Trillium are at the same level. And their production is really low. But it's already made the buzz over there so it's incredibly hard to find the good stuff. You have to be within a 50 km radius of their brewery to find it in stores. So I believe we are far way yet from the chasing and waiting in line. It'll only stop once there's an overproduction of hops (it's the opposite at the moment) and the market is saturated with amazing IPAs. I think the market COULD be saturated with good IPAs, I mean in number of good IPAs it's very hard to keep up. But since you can't find most of them anyway... the chase is still on.

What I feel though is that I can't only drink IPAs. You end up not liking balanced low hops IPAs. It is good once in a while to just go back to Belgian stuff or stouts for a while, with only light IPAs. So that when you go back you can appreciate them even more. You can't really test 4 IPAs in a single session properly, your tastebuds get tired and you don't do them justice.

 

When will this flavorful beer phase end, I want a return to watery beer. LOL

 

There was a thread here "What defines an IPA" , if you create one called "What defines a beer" i bet most replies will be the brand name of some IPA.

 

When the last taste bud dies of IBU overdose.

Then maybe taste will comeback.

 

I've been away awhile but I felt this deserved a response...

Absolutely I say it with a straight face.
There are more trends and gimmicks today than ever before because there is simply more of everything than ever before.

To steal (and paraphrase) from the world of television, we currently live in a world of "peak beer." There's more variety and more access from more breweries than ever before. With that comes an increasingly scrappy effort to gain attention and market share, hence gimmicks and trends. Does all of that mean that there is less of everything good about craft beer? Hell no.

Beer drinkers have more of everything now than ever before, most importantly quality and variety. There isn't a common style that the majority of the country doesn't have access to and with that covered the industry is now starting to making the (formerly) uncommon (like Gose or Berliner Weiss) readily available. That was inconceivable just a decade ago.

To say that gimmicks and crazes are "the state of Craft Nation" is simply not true. Well, I suppose that could be one's perception if that's a lot of what you pay attention to or talk about. For myself, I find it easy to tune that stuff out and enjoy the unprecedented abundance of quality beer in stores today. Gimmicks and crazes are simply a byproduct of the industry's success. It's not craft beer's downward spiral.

 

IPA's are here to stay and the lupulin craze won't be going away any time soon.

 

Thanks for the thoughtful response, but we definitely don't seem to be looking at the same thing, and I really don't see how we're at a point where there's more of everything. In particular, this- "There isn't a common style that the majority of the country doesn't have access to" strikes me as being simply incorrect. There are plenty of styles that are rare at best- and if you add the caveat that one should have access to well-crafted versions of every style, not just token ones, it just gets even less diverse.

We're at a point where established brewers are rebranding their entire lineups to "connect" with the modern craft beer crowd. Others are re-working recipes of established beers. Other newer breweries are abandoning their original lineup to focus on trendy IPAs and such. The variety- real, genuine variety- is dwindling and being replaced with the illusion of variety via the endless variants. The ones who are shaping this landscape are only interested in certain flavor profiles, so it sure seems like this is what we will be dealing with for some time.

So, while there is plenty of good stuff going on in certain areas, the overall feeling I'm getting is one of superficiality and myopia these days.

 

I could go for an IPA right about now

 

Do you mean like this? http://kneedeepbrewing.com/tap/

Besides the 13 beers labeled as IPA's, you can bet that the Red, Stout and Saison are all hop bombs as well. Not to mention that only 6 of the 22 beers are under 7%.

For the record, I love IPA's!