Tropical IPAs=Malternative?

I think I get what you are saying. But what is this baseline "beer" you are referring to in a diversity of flavors that craft beer offers. A good dubbel taste like banana bread dunked in caramel to me and I love that and it tastes nothing like a PBR - If an IPA is made with water, malt, hops and yeast then why be critical that people prefer a certain type of hop profile. What makes an IPA more like an IPA than another...IPA. I have never had any of the highly touted IPA's from the east coast that fit this mold so I can't speak to my personal preference, but I love that you can taste flavors that are so strong or distinct just from the four pure ingredients of beer. If tropical IPAs were the first beer ever made then they would be your standard for beery flavor, since it is a beer. To AAL drinkers, a stout or any IPA doesn't taste like "beer"

So I guess my question is how can tropical IPAs taste less like beer, it is beer and beer is so diverse. what beerier beer would you want it to taste like? I am not trying to be smart I just don't really get it.

 

I enjoy tropical too. Get your hands on some Clown Shoes Mangö, it's a delicious Kölsch

 

I don't think they are any less of a beer, I love the variety of IPAs out there. My issues is that the majority of people dismiss or give negative reviews to IPAs that are not juice bombs and super fruity.

For example. Recently I have seen/heard a ton of people talking about how bad Pliny the Elder is because its not super juicy. Its not a bad beer its just not their preferance.

 

Most all the big beers over 12%+ ABV are more like a Cordial or Cognac IMO than what most people consider a beer. Only characteristic making it a beer is the brewing process. Should we throw those out as well with the tropical IPAs?

 

"Tropical Notes" is crap. There is no such flavor in any beer I have had.

 

I agree with many of the later postings. An IPA that can become citrusy or tropical by its very hops is not an easy thing to do. It should be celebrated.

I see some blurred lines though.

I've had HT and other OH IPAs. They are slowly but surely moving away from that abrasively bitter hoppy "mess" many of us grew up on and into a more balanced brew. They are more APA than ever before. Many of these beers end at such a low gravity reading that they end up being bone dry too. Malt presence is low. IBUs is low. The hops can really shine with their perceived "goose berry" or "melon" like flavor. In some sense, the old IPAs are dying off as this new era of beer drinkers tend to prefer, and brewers listen as they want a truly more balanced "IPA".

I'm iffy on adjuncts though. What GF Sculpin does? I don't know. I just had a Fortunate Island with GF Zest, and that blew me away.

^Tropical Notes is a thing. I use it a lot. For me an IPA can taste like hop candy, which is a sweeter than normal mouthfeel. It can be lemony, grassy, tropical (which in some sense can mean citrus, berries), piney, dank, and I've lately used the "Orange Juice like" flavors. My taste buds usually go through quite a bit with these new hop varieties. The new wave are these less than abrasive "IPAs". There is definitely room for both types though.

 

Then the issue is with the reviews, not the beer itself. There's plenty of reviews out there of beers being "too sour" when in fact that is what the beer is supposed to taste like. Same goes for IPAs when people don't understand the intended flavor profile.

 

Okay, I get that.

 

I think you'll find the vast majority will disagree with you (including me).

 

This could be read as saying the generic taste of beer isn't similar to tropical fruit, but to weed and pine trees.

 

Your username suggests IPAs aren't your main thing.

 

back·bon·er

/bakˈbōnər/

noun

1. a person who views any hop-forward beer with an SRM of 15 or less as "unbalanced" and in need of a malt backbone

SF Neckbeard: What do you think of this new IPA from Cellarmaker?
Torpedo Drinker: Well, it's definitely hoppy, but it needs a little backbone to stand up against the hops.
SF Neckbeard: To "stand up"? WTF are you talking about? Mosaic the hop is not a schoolyard bully!
Torpedo Drinker: Kinda. It's just this whole juicy tropical trend, ya know All these unbalanced beers these days...
SF Neckbeard: I completely disagree. But I get it dude, my father's a backboner too. ​

 

Agree completely.

 

I get that beer changes and evolves, and believe or not, I wholeheartedly embrace experimentation (I'm a frequent defender of DFH in those 'what's with all the gimmicks' threads).

What you're projecting as a hipster mentality of whining about people not really appreciating beer is off base. What I'm lamenting (and apparently I'll be repeating myself a lot) is it's all anybody ever fucking talks about anymore. And it's impacting the market (negatively, in my view), in that the overwhelming majority of beers on the shelves are IPAs.

I say it makes them less beer-like because they showcase zero of the other ingredients required for beer. Out of yeast, water, barley and hops, if the only flavor contributions come from one ingredient, how close can you really be to a whole?

 

It's the lack of diversity of flavors. I guess I would definite beer-ness as the interplay of at least two of the ingredients necessary for brewing beer. Yeast + malt = Belgian Dark Strong Ale or Hops + Malt + Yeast = Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. There's none of that. Malt is there to provide fermentable sugars which the yeast then turn into alcohol, an then they best GTFO if they know what sells and what's good for them, so you're left with a beverage, that while technically a beer, tastes like a bag of Skittles and has about as much diversity of flavor.

 

I see this sentiment all the time. "I like my beer to taste like beer," and while I expect that from Budweiser and the millions of people that refuse to accept anything other than an American Adjunct Lager as beer, we're all fans and drinkers of craft beer, members of a site dedicated to rating and discussing craft beer. Yes, I know, I know, old world styles like German Pilsner, Kolsch, Bock, Hefeweizen, English Bitters, etc are just as much craft beer as Hipster Brunch Stout and they can offer "clean," "grainy" flavors with "crisp," and/or "refreshing" texture and they are not AALs, but are such styles meant to be accepted and revered as the essence of what True Beer™ tastes like? The farther away from these styles a beer gets the less it tastes like beer? Even if it was brewed with nothing but water, yeast, malts, and hops?

I simply disagree. It would be very different if stuff like Not Your Father's Root Beer or even Evil Twin's Molotov Lite (with orange and mango juice added) started to become so wildly popular that they began to outstrip every other variety and flavor profile craft beer had to offer, but that's just not the case.

Do you have a problem with all IPAs or just the tropical ones? If it's just the tropical ones, virtually all of them brewed with no added sugars or juices, then what makes them more "malternative" in your mind than "regular" IPAs? What even is a "regular" IPA? Or do people in general like "pine juice" more than beer? Add me to the list of people that don't understand where you draw the line. Or why.

 

I think tropical hops are just trendy right now: Galaxy & Citra come to mind. They both have tropical notes like melon, mango & passionfruit. There's also some brewers like Cigar City that are gaining distribution. Finally, the "Northeast IPA" style, where most if not all of the hops are added in the last 10 min of the boil or at flameout, is gaining ground.

Tropical hops in an unbitter beer (often with way too much caramel malt) is a much more approachable style to the newbie. So, that might contribute too. As beer culture grows, the gateway beers grow with it.

You go back 5+ years and very bitter pine & grapefruit beers were popular as Northwest hops and West Coast IPAs were all the rage.

So, in my mind it is just a trend in beer.

 

I love my juicy IPAs and think those bitter pine bombs are a thing of the past. Once in a while a brewery will come out with a good one though. Modern Times Lost Horizon was pretty decent.

 

Very true, unfortunately 'natural flavors' is a very large category that can also mean the flavor is added post fermentation. Not saying that all beers with fruit go this route, but a lot of the more mass produced ones do.

 

I'll agree with you that IPAs are dominating and overshadowing many other beer styles in our world. But it's simple supply and demand. People are demanding these hop flavors, so that's what breweries are churning out. However, I don't think it's negatively impacting the market, but rather the opposite.

More people are getting into beer, even if it is because of these "juicier" hop flavors, but then those same people (a good amount of them at least) are expanding and trying other things as well. Brewers are responding by creating more flavors in more styles than ever before. I could walk out of my office right now, across the street to the local package store, and pick up a bottle of beer, in just about any style I want. I couldn't have done that 5 years ago.

The landscape is changing, the beers are changing, and the people who are drinking them are changing. While the market may be over-saturated with IPAs in your eyes, with 10x the amount on the shelves that there was 5-10 years ago, there's also more of every other style, and there's 10x more people buying the IPAs too.

If we drink what we like, and buy what we like, who cares what everyone else drinks and buys? It doesn't make them wrong, just different than you.