I got tired years ago of all the IPA madness. But recently I got to try a couple of the new Vermont style IPAs that becoming popular now. Wow! Really excellent and different, IMHO. If you haven’t heard about this new “style”, you should.
http://breakingbrews.com/defining-the-craft-what-is-a-vermont-style-ipa/
http://www.newschoolbeer.com/2016/03/new-englandvermont-style-ipa-is-not-a-thing.html
http://www.mensjournal.com/food-drink/articles/how-vermont-became-the-new-ipa-king-w203293
Yeah, I thoroughly enjoy that one. It’s about the same level of hoppiness as a Sierra Nevada. Still, it’s 4.7% abv, so probably not as low octane as he’d like it to be. But, if China Guy enjoys Sierra Nevada, it’s worth a shot. If you follow various American brewing style guidelines, IPAs really shouldn’t be below about 4.5%. That said, there are British IPAs, or at least nominally IPAs, that are lower octane and would probably be better classified as bitters, like Greene King IPA, which clocks in at 3.6% abv. I’ve had it, and it’s not something I would ever call an IPA, but ChinaGuy might enjoy it if he prefers lower octane beers with just a bit of hoppiness.
Greene King is a good beer, but it doesn’t travel well. Drink it in Britain.
I’m glad there are more flavorful beers available now than in the past, but I also don’t like extreme hoppiness and have been frustrated by the IPA craze since it began. I view the preponderance of extremely hoppy beers as kind of an Emperor’s New Clothes phenomenon: somebody, somewhere, decided he would seem like a tough guy if he was seen enjoying extremely bitter beer, somehow it caught on, and then everybody wanted to seem cool by drinking bitter beer because it seemed to be what everyone else enjoyed. But I like to think that if you could sever people’s perceptions of their own tastes from the world of beer connoisseurship, and get them alone in a room where they could be honest, they’d admit it doesn’t actually taste good. That’s just my opinion.
I’m not sure. I do love hoppy beers, and it’s what got me really into the craft scene. I mean, I was passively into it in the mid-to-late-90s when it was starting to take off, but IPA hadn’t quite gotten a hold of the scene. When I first had that Dreadnaught Imperial IPA, I was just blown away by the smell and taste of it. I had no idea beer could taste like that, and that was a flavor I loved. Then again, my tastes do lean towards bitter, herbal, and floral flavors when it comes to my alcohols. That said, I really do think most IPA drinkers actually do like IPAs. I’m not sure why you would think otherwise. There’s plenty of other craft beer styles you can drink and still be “cool” if you don’t like IPAs.
That’s true, it’s just the faddish nature of it. Yeah, there are other styles considered “cool” but as other people said upthread, you go to a pub and 2/3 of the beers they have on tap are IPAs, or go to the craft beer section of the supermarket and 2/3 of their selection consists of IPAs.
I don’t like hoppy beers, as a general rule.
I go to San Diego a couple times a year, and of course the west coast is lousy with IPAs. It’s difficult to find anything that isn’t hoppy as all getout, but you get (sort of) used to it.
Anyway, last time I was there I really wanted a beer at the airport, and Stone Brewing (as guilty as all the rest in the hop craze) has a little pub in there. I noticed that they had a witbier-style on the menu, so I stopped.
Still a mistake. Even their witbier tasted like an IPA.
I sell a bit of grappa at work, whenever a server asks me what it tastes like the only honest answer I can give is…JP5 jet fuel.
FTR…I love a GOOD IPA…lots of wanna be’s and imposters out there. One of my current favorites is “Fresh Squeezed” by Deschutes.
Forgive an ignorant drinker, but what does IPA mean?
damn…nija’d
I think few of us are really arguing that IPAs or their more faddish siblings are bad, but rather that the breweries are being kind of unimaginative and bandwagon-ish in producing those almost to the detriment of other styles lately.
I mean, I actually like Bridgeport Hop Czar quite a bit, as well as St. Arnold’s Elissa IPA. But there’s no reason every brewery has to have 2-3 variants of IPAs, or that (worse) the breweries seem to be redefining the IPA style as solely centering around hop levels, when in reality, it was originally just a hoppy beer, but with a very solid malt backbone.
For example, there are a lot of “Session IPAs” out now, that are anything but. They’re high hop, but low original gravity and alcohol- i.e. the “session” part. Pretty much by definition, an IPA is a high hop, high-gravity, and by extension high alcohol beer. They made them this way because high hop and high alcohol levels were what preserved the beer on the long sea voyage to India in the 19th century. The strong malt backbone was kind of a consequence of the high original gravity. “Session IPAs” are some sort of chimera that’s neither fish nor fowl; they’re high hop like an IPA, but lower gravity than even your typical plain pale ale. They’re emphatically NOT IPAs, but the breweries persist in naming them that, because they’re very hoppy, especially relative to their gravity.
I think that the current Double/Imperial/Triple/Ludicrous IPA trend is a bit silly, and possibly off-putting to a lot of new craft beer drinkers. I mean, if you’re not into bitter, hoppy beers or stouts/porters you’re looking in the other 1/3 of the craft beer shelf space, and having to choose between various lagers, wheat beers, Belgians and other seasonal oddities like pumpkin-spice stout or lemongrass lager, or what have you.
Well, I do agree with that and have felt that way for about a good five to seven years now.
For probably about six years now (or, about as long as I’ve been drinking craft beers), I’ve been trying to figure out what it is I don’t like about IPAs as a general rule. The bitter hops I like. I love bitter. I do not, however, like a heavy herbal or floral finish, which is what I think my problem is. I have tried a lot of IPAs, and only enjoy a handful. What I’ve found is that the ones I find most drinkable receive a lot of mediocre reviews, usually with reviewers saying they aren’t distinctive. One of these days I will figure out what the common denominator on IPAs is for me.
Anyway, I think I was mostly posting to say that as a beer fan, I’m willing to sample a lot of different things. For me, part of the fun is sampling a really broad base of beers – I’d rather go somewhere and try a few new-to-me beers, some of which I might like, and some of which I might not care for, than go somewhere and drink one beer that I like all night (okay, well I like to do that at a hockey game). As I don’t enjoy most IPAs, I get the most excited about seeing a beer menu that offers a lot of different styles (and not 15 IPAs and 1 stout and 1 lager). I feel that I’m seeing a more even distribution in places by me than I was even a few years ago, but I know I have the advantage of being in a decent market with a lot of choices.
Add me to the anti-IPA bandwagon. As someone who likes to pick up something different when I go to the liquor store I was trying a bunch of different IPAs. I liked ale so it couldn’t be too bad right? After a while I realized I was torturing myself.
This is my favorite beer time of year. This week a bar a go to had Spaten Oktoberfest on tap. Smoother than the Sam version. a very nice beer.
Ugh that is a bad trend. I don’t see it yet but I’m sure it will spread.
Sure but if you’re Italian…tradition!
Probably a good way to find out if that’s what you don’t like might be to seek out beers that specifically call out dry hopping; that’s the brewing process that’ll give you the most floral/herbal type finish.
I’m personally a big fan of lagers, specifically pilsners- Bohemian mostly, but I do like a good German-style pilsner as well. I’m also a big fan of English pale ales/bitters.
Yet most places have very few of either- more pilsners than English pale ales/bitters, but not much of either. But I can easily find 2x their combined number in various IPAs and IPA types, as well as weird beers like “Roggenrauschbiers” or “Tangerine-Spelt Hefe-weisen” or the like.
Excellent, that’s good to know. I keep a beer journal, and eventually I’ll go back and see which IPAs got the strongest reactions (positive or negative) and look up the dry hopping part.