Your Favorite Style Journey (through time)

Bitters / pale ales have consistently been my go to, since around 2001. Not very interesting, I know.

Definitely rotate between buying more/less of certain other styles depending on mood/season etc

 

For me it's probably just been the path from simply good everyday beers to "extreme beers" and back again. It doesn't mean I don't love a good BA stout, but I'd like to think I enjoy a well made amber ale as much as I do something like BCBS.

 

I started with wheat beers (Blue Moon, Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat), then a friend got me into craft beer about 4 years ago with an Oskar Blues Ten Fidy. Stuck mostly with stouts, hefes, and amber ales for a couple years. Finally developed the palette for pale ales and then IPAs about a year or so ago.

 

BMC -> Wheat beers -> Everything but IPAs and sours -> IPAs (still no sours )

 

started a long time ago with mostly english and irish style ales. quickly moved to Unibroue's offerings and then pretty much everything rapidly after that. culminating with a seemingly insatiable thirst for IPAs

 

Lagers> Wheat/Witbier/Fruit > Pales/IPAs > Stouts/Porters > Sours

About sums up my progression over the last ~10 Years. Now I rarely drink the beginning of the list and focus on the last of it. haha

 

woah dont sell pale ales and bitters short! esp well kept cask bitters. can be every bit as complex as the big boys. they are prob my 2 fav overall styles. i hate the notion that something has to be hopped to the brim or high in ABV to be complex. totally not the case in my 14 yrs of good beer drinking.

 

Haha - no I totally agree (otherwise they wouldn't be my favourite). Just meant that comment in the context of not having much of the "journey" that the OP was looking for.

In the UK on holiday right now. In heaven.

 

i hear you. hey u find something you like and stick with it. I wish I was in a pub in london right now sucking down fresh cask bitters. im with u on that being heaven. where are you at? PM me if you wanna chat. no need to clutter up someones thread. cheers.

 

This is actually a good exercise to see how I've winded myself through beer styles. Major shift at around 2.5 years ago as I moved from San Diego to Portland. Blew my world right open

San Diego
5 years ago: Fat Tire/Dead Guy/Ambers
4 years ago: Porters
4 years ago: Stone IPA/Sculpin/ IPAs
3 Years ago: More IPAs/Pale Ales/Tripels/Quads

Portland:
2 Years ago: Sours/Wild Ales
1.5 Years ago: Farmhouse/Saisons/DIPAs/Sours
1 Year ago: All lighter Euro styles Farmhouse/Altbier/Pilsners/Kolsch/Hefeweizen/All Lagers/Roggenbiers/etc...
Now: IPAs/DIPAs/Farmhouse/Pilsners/Berliners/Sours/Wilds/Wheats

Styles I usually never order anymore: Tripels/Quads/Reds/Ambers/

 

My journey was AAL, Euro Lagers, then I pretty much started exploring all of the Colorado craft brewers and went from brewer to brewer, not style to style.

 

Belgians --> Stouts --->IPAs--->Lambics--->IPAs

 

Lagers. It's the depth and splendid breadth of the malt in all it's various stages that truly captivates me. It can taste like honey, like bread crusts, it can taste like fruit or like chocolate. From the pilsner to the dopplebock it's the lager that is the most graceful, the most time consuming, the fussiest, the hardest to perfect and to control and the one that so many people will pass over as boring because it's not flamboyant.

 

You, Sir (Sweet Lady), receive a slow clap from me...

Agreed with everything you've stated. I've discovered that indulging in style extremes has allowed me to find and enjoy nuances in beers (eg. pilsners) that I would have not given a second thought to a few years ago. It's the subtle aspects that I'm finding real enjoyment in...

 

Stone got me started. I only drink their beers for almost two years. Now I'm exploring belgians.