Where have all the WOW beers gone?

Your post talks exclusively about IPAs and DIPAs so I'm guessing that your lack of Wow beers is mainly confined to the hoppy styles. I've noticed essentially the same thing, but I've also noticed that many of the IPAs that I have been drinking have featured fairly new hop varieties. So I'm wondering if there are fewer Wow hops nowadays, thus the cause of what you're experiencing.

 

Maybe you've just matured. Or your taste buds have become jaded. Or the market has moved on. Or maybe you've lost the initiative to search. Possibly a combination. There is so much stuff on the market it's hard to believe that there's not something that's perfect for me, or maybe I just don't have the energy to find it. The beers I loved 10 to 20 years ago are gone. I've found a few that I like that aren't as great, but I'll take what I can get. After all, I survived the 70s AAL tsunami.

 

I will state that that I was wowed the first time I tried Pliny the Elder that was sent to me in a NBS BIF by @JayORear - the rest have been very good but not the “wow”.
So generally speaking a beer might only “wow” us once - and those are few and far between. That was my only IPA wow. Mostly I drink stouts and there have been quite a few of those; the first Dark Lord (thank you @ovaltine!), my first Black Chocolate Stout (thank you @Mikexw!) and my first Speedway Stout and my first Ten-Fidy. (No longer distributed here)
Nice trip down memory lane.
Cheers!

 

It’s getting harder to stand out. Half of hazy IPAs are nasty shit that looks the part, the other half is really good stuff. Then there’s the occasional standout.

This is also true of mega stouts. There was a point in time when only a few breweries could pull off a good 13%+ stout, these days every effing brewery does one. I remember when most of my gettable imperial stouts were Lagunitas and Heretic, and that was about it.

 

The WOWs are out there. Now, finding them… That’s part of the fun of this hobby.

 

It honestly sounds like you're just getting burnt out by hops

 

Wow beers don’t have to be … “more” hops/bitter/or full of add-junks-

I was wowed when I was finally able to try Yards Brawler a couple of years ago. Also, when I had Forest and Main’s Bitter. Revisiting old favorites (fresh pride and Joy or Two Hearted) feels the same.

branch out. Leave the bitter beers behind for a little while and the more subtle beers will surprise you. (And the bitter beers will be more as you remember)

YMMV -as they used to say

 

Braupakt has been my latest WOW beer.
Damn that shit is delicious !
I was pleasantly surprised to say the least.
Prior to that, Chimay Green Blonde Ale.

 

One too many fresh trillium IPAs. Really trims the nose hairs for yah.

 

There's an sorts of jokes to be made out of the idea of sitting on a bottle and hoping for a wow.

I'm much too mature to make any of them, of course.

 

More like an OW! than a wow.

 

Depends on your preferences I suppose

 

My future wow beer is a 2009 Super Kitty that got progressively more wow-ish every time we cracked one, most recently 8 years ago. Saved for last.

On the subject in general- I think we all get harder and harder to wow after a while.

Also, if you can't find beer made the way you like it, there is no better reason than that to start home brewing. Many of us started back in the day when there were actually damn few wow beers, especially ones made in America, just some imports and a few American outliers. We had to home brew,, basically. Now it is easier than ever to do it well, and you can brew any style you want the way you like it and wow yourself

 

Hit 8 breweries this week in Knoxville. 1 BA beer. 2 stouts. No barleywines. No porters. Just lagers and IPAs. The BA beer was 2 years old and smelled like interior wall paint.

We walked out of one place when we realized they only had 4-5 light lagers on tap.

 

There are breweries with a safe reference, which also maintain their standard in their unpublished works. So you're pretty sure you get the "WOW" you're looking for, even if you've never drank it before.
Previous experience tells you this. Then if the quality drops for various reasons (sale to the industry or change of brewmaster, for example), in any case during the research process you will have new realities available that perhaps you taste by chance and fall in love with.
It often happened to me at festivals (last time with BEN FUMADE, a Rauch from a brewery called Bondai, which I didn't know at all before, also because it was very small and had very limited production).
However, the invasion of standard artisanal products has certainly made it difficult to find "WOW" products, which are not within reach, also because the quality of "WOW" products often costs a little more money and are marketed by shops of the sector, while the common offer offers you something that is deliberately not "WOW", but which can meet the tastes of the majority of common consumers as much as possible.

 

The definition of WOW! Is that it is a standout. That means it must be different - if only by quality, and not by different in flavor profile. If you think about this logically, the obvious way to be wow’d is by trying items in a new category and/or outside your comfort zone.

What often makes people switch to a new beer style is they try a good beer from that style, they like it, and they try to find more like that. (Same with food by the way.) So, the problem here is two fold: (1) quality of beers has never been higher, so harder for a standout to be found that isn’t a limited release, and (2) you probably aren’t branching out or trying enough beers that are different.

Michelin starred restaurants are restaurants that make people say wow. Not only because they taste so damn good, but because they are so different and unique (flavor, execution, presentation, techniques, etc.). In beer, all you really get is flavor to go on.

Pick any dimension though. When was the last time you had a WOW sexual encounter? Bet it was a long time ago, because good or great isn’t often different. What about a vehicle? A shirt? A pair of shoes? ****? A book? A movie?

One of the reasons TV is considered so good now and why people are WOW’d by it, is because we are in a new phase - they can (and are) doing new things with storytelling that no one ever did before. By contrast, about the only way to wow someone with a movie is with the perfect combination of incredible screenplay, cinematography, acting, directing, editing, mixing, etc. Because essentially every combination has been done 10s or hundreds of times over in the same 70-200 minute format (which is also one reason movies are getting longer).

I know that you are not “demanding” wow beers, but doing so is a lesson in futility, especially as a hops drinker. Now, if you want to switch to the dark side (pun intended), get prepared to fork over some time, energy and money to chasing unicorns. Same with whiskey. Try to just get comfortable with extremely high quality.

OR

Take a break. When you get back, it all tastes better. I am 10x more satisfied with my beers when I have 1 or 2 a week and not 3-5.

YMMV

 

Revisit an old beer that has been around a while and that you haven’t had in a long time…those are the real wow beers.