You forgot Black IPA's, which I unironically love and have an extremely difficult time finding compared to 5-10 years ago.

Most probably none of those are proper IPAs. The 'I' in IPA stands for India. IPA is only half-done, if it did not travel on a sailboat around the Africa from England to India.

I work for a brewery in Portland, and we'd like to make over varieties, but hazys and IPAs are what sell.

About 10 years ago it was probably closer to 80% IPAs. It was a big joke here that IPA stands for I Pretend (I'm not an) Alcoholic.

The only reason there is more on the market now is because we all stopped pretending the taste of motor oil with grapefruit gave us a better buzz.

Even now, most breweries will only seem to offer 4 varieties of IPAs, a pilsner/lager and a stout. Maybe an Amber but I feel the Mac & Jack's copycat scene has mostly died out now.

Very true. I thought I hated craft beer because I lived in a small town in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, Minnesota. I moved to Minneapolis, and it's craft beer galore. My personal favorite brewery is Fair State

Live in Seattle and that's not true. 95% of them are IPAs and I just want a good Blonde.....

Same here in New England, but... The restaurants are IPA heavy, and the beer vendors have lots of IPA.

True. It does seem like it is more than 50% sometimes. Unforthcoming my taste buds are pretty burnt out from too many IPAs at this point. I used to love a wide range of beers but now basically stick to a hoppy-nonhoppy scale. I used to love Belgians and ambers and porters and all sorts of beers that were on the maltier side. Not really my jam anymore.

My comment isn’t disagreeing with you. Only adding my two cents.

I live in an city that is on the top 10 list for breweries per capita in the world. And it’s all IPAs. Maybe 20% is not. And yeah it’s nice that I have 20 beers to chose from that aren’t ipas when I go to a place with 100 taps. I just hate having to sort though it all.

There should be an IPA menu, and a non ipa menu.

Also: IPAs have a lot of sugar content, and combined with alcohol sugar gives me a shitty buzz and a headache. I don’t know how people can drink more than one.

Oh, no...I like IPAs...does this mean you guys are gonna make me go back to Reddit?

For anyone who likes IPAs anyway, their low alcohol versions do tend to taste a lot more like real beer than any low alcohol pale lager does.

Yeah, alcohol. IPAs taste like bitter piss as much as lagers do but at least with IPAs I get drunk faster and don’t put on as much weight.

What types of beer would you recommend?

Username checks out

Man, all those "wild things" you mention have existed for ages here in Belgium. IPAs are pretty much the new kid on the block. Weird how different our cultures are.

Do you mean you wish someone would tell the stores? You just said you can get all those other things, those would be coming from breweries.

I love a real ass IPA, but like anything, after a while you get bored of the same old same old. Dabbled with seltzers for a hot minute, but I'm back to wine/cider mostly now. IPAs being so heavy feel more like Trappistes to me now: only during the winter.

A lot of that stuff existed alongside IPAs like Dogfish Head for years. The explosion of IPAs in recent years coincides with the rise of Tree House Brewing, who may not have invented the New England IPA, but certainly mainstreamed it. At their second brewery, you'd see license plates from all over the country and you had to either show up 3 hours before opening or wait 3 hours in line. It was insanity. They were selling out every day at $15-20 a can back in 2014. They made stupid money, and their expansions since then will tell you all you need to know.

Anyway, within a year, the copycats started appearing, and that's when the IPA craze really took off.

IPAs sell.

Well, I also like Isopropyl Alcohol

There are beers that are not IPA but do have taste too.

Me Me Me Me Me

So you don't give a shit that they only sell IPA as long as you're satisfied? Sounds like one hell of an ego trip to me.

You may, we have a space provisioned at the rear of the facility

I mean yeah, sure. You can at every beer store near me 🤷🏻

Have you ever had a hopped cider?

Come to New England and have some Downeast. Don’t need any other cider after that.

This breaks my heart as I’ve been looking to try it since I loved the old one

Lagunitas already makes too many IPAs. I like them, but you would think they would want some variety in their lineup. Its sad to hear that they messed up the old brown ale.

I just want a good brown or porter.

Stout n port game down under is strong. We have good selection here now but it's pricey.

Same here. The few that are available aside from guineas extra stouts and a couple nationwide coffee/oatmeal stouts are like $16 for four cans. I can't afford that.

There was a time where i could walk down the street and get a 4-pack of guinness from the gas station, but now it's all IPAs. That, or cheap beer.

IPAs are still riding a popularity high in the US. It's easy to make, you don't have to be as precise and careful with your beer when you make them, the hops will hide your mistakes. Sign of a bad brewery, is they only sell IPAs. Currently in the US, IPAs are the top selling style, unfortunately. Saisons are so much better, for example.

Basically, despite all the vocal complaints, IPAs sell better.

I enjoy IPAs personally but it does get frustrating when you want something different.

While not the cheapest, IPAs are relatively easy to make and extremely easy to iterate on. IPAs in general allow brewers to fine-tune flavors and thus pump out multiple novel flavors quickly in order to find a market. If you go the stout or lager route, there's really only so much wiggle room as they're mostly 'solved' beers; as in buyers know exactly what they want to taste, and you better deliver that taste. IPAs are also really, really easy to dial in alcohol content without giving up flavor, where as lagers like Budweiser can only lower alcohol content while lowering the overall taste profile, hence the term 'piss water' for low alcohol lagers.

Hear hear. So few and far between to find a good Porter these days. Then when you do, half the hipster two rooms serve them chilled.

Assuming you're in the northern hemisphere, yes? Wait until it's not 100 degrees out and they'll be back

yeah TBH I barely drink beer at all anymore because finding beers I like has gotten to be such a chore.

There's some IPA's I like but I don't like drinking nothing but IPA's every time I drink beer. And pretty much the only "mainstream" beer I spend money on is Modelo, but again, if I drink nothing but that all the time after a while I start to get tired of it.

Belgium is really the best place for beer in my opinion. There is a good variety of local/traditional styles but you can also get the more modern stuff

Lucky you. In the south east is just the typical big name brands and an unrelenting wall of pale ale, unless you go out of your way to a store that specializes in boutique beers

Yeah I feel like the "lol OMG all craft beers are IPA" meme is pretty outdated, and just not true anymore in my experience.

I don't think it's just a west coast thing. I live in the Midwest, and my local Kroger has two beer aisles: one for typical macrobrew/domestic stuff, another entirely dedicated to craft beers. IPAs make up like 40% of the craft aisle, which is a lot, but it's by no means the only option anymore.

Oktoberfest beers are the best beers.

Around here, Oktoberfest beers come out in mid August, drives me nuts.

They're already selling Oktoberfest beers at the stores near me. Feels early, but I do enjoy a good Oktoberfest beer so it evens out.

and only one exploding bottle!

People not in the know might think you're joking, but that's seriously impressive! 😁

Breweries are everywhere now but when I go and there isn’t even one sour on the list I get really disappointed.

I had the best sour a few weekends ago in NH. I really wish there was a wider variety around. They’re always my favorite. Love a good stout too.

So many breweries half ass a sour, Victory-style.

It's nice to have variety, but I'd like to be able to buy a tall can of an amber ale or something on my way home from work.

If youre in the PNW you should try to get to Cascade in Portland Oregon. The best sours and some of the best beer I've ever had.

It gets nutty.

The Bavarian purity laws defined beer in that part of the world as something that can only have hops, water and wheat. German beers tend to be straightforward and balanced

Belgians had no such compunctions and some will put fruit and other stuff in their beers. Their beers are a bit more out there and yeast (clovey) forward. Lots of Belgian beers also add candy sugar that gets fermented off which is how you get some golden ales that don't have heavy bodies but have ABVs of 9% and up (Bud is 4% and wine stays around 15%)

British beers tend to be malt forward (ie, biscuity) ales. Legend has it that when the Brits shipped beer to their far off colonies that they over hopped the beer (hops are the bitter element that also acts as a preservative) the deployed soldiers came home and asked for the pale ales like they had grown to love in India and the IPA was born

Americans kind of picked and chose from a lot of the styles around the world and true to form made them bigger, bolder and borderline obnoxious. A lot of the hops being grown these days have been bred to taste certain ways which is why some IPAs taste like citrus or pine trees.

Edit: typos

jesus christ gose, really? my wife is german and when she had a gose a few months ago she said it reminded her of her childhood (her parents would let her have some when she was like 13 and they'd order large bottle for the table w/ dinner)

I've been liking the NEPA's (orange / citrus based)

Tried one sour and it was meh. Definitely a one beer type for me.

Same here! I even found most my stuff second hand off craigslist / Facebook marketplace. So far have made a great peanut butter porter, coconut milk stout and hefeweizen.

Yeah you need a bucket, an airlock, some bottles, a few hand tools, and some wort and yeast.

Years ago I started to get into it, and looked up how to make beer on Youtube. First hit I got was this guy walking into this industrial kitchen-like room with lots of stainless steel equipment and grinding some wheat. And I'm like "well I guess this is beyond my reach." Then I found a guy called Craigtube and it's like "Oh yeah, this is doable."

You have some pretty cheap ingredients. Beers I made were generally closer to $60.

It's the yeast baby

I've noticed more of those popping up lately, which is good for me because I also enjoy them.

Not just half... Some companies even make IPA Variety Packs! Where the hell is my Stout variety pack? Or my bourbon barrel aged ale variety pack!?

Also, yes, if they listed what hops were used I might actually try some IPAs instead of assuming all of them taste like a bitter flower that's trying to make me gag.

I feel it's almost time to brew Altbier again. It will be good at the start of winter.

In all my beer drinking days, I've seen a kolsh on the shelf or on tap maybe two times. Otherwise I've always had to brew my own.

For me it's bourbon barrel aged pastry stouts and other barrel aged barley wines.

Any kolsch paired with a clean pilsner is a nice combo.

There is an entire family of beers called "sours." They're funky AF. Pretty weird (but I've had good ones).

Dunno if that's what yours was, but might be something to look into if it is and you like that style.

Same. I gave up on beers years ago. I accept it's not worth my money anymore just in hopes of figuring out what people like about it. I still enjoy some wines (though relatively few and I wouldn't consider it an amazing taste). Mixed drinks are really where it's at. Can't go wrong with spiced rum and diet coke! There's also so many very delicious sugary mixed drinks, but I try to minimize those because it'd take like 500+ calories to get a buzz.

Have you tried krieks, sours or lambics?

People's palates work differently. You might just have one that is more suitable for something else than beer, I guess.

Beers just suck. Have fun with bitter bread flavored soda. I like my sugary/fruit drinks lol. They taste good and I get fucked up.

Love their Trippel though

"cigarette butter" as in, milk a cigarette, then churn? Yeah that's about the flavor of an IPA.

Not that I have any room to throw stones in this glass house, but have you tried water?

How dare you.

Ugh, I once made the mistake of not checking what I was ordering at a bar.
Sour pumpkin beer. I know that many people like sours, and I like some pumpkins, but together, I'm out.

Lol you nailed it with "spoiled Newcastle" for ales.

Also, IPA's are so 2010. At least here in the Pacific North West, where the "craft brewing revolution" started.

IPAs must be "babbies first brew" in terms of difficulty while a decent lager or stout is the Dark Souls of brewmasters.

...wheats, whites, stouts, ambers, blondes, lagers, sours.

Berry Monkey tastes even better and is even a bit stronger. It's dangerous lol

We can get almost all of those here, too, though the traditional German ones seem to be less common. What bothers me is that IPA, fine brews, have been a freaking obsession here for about 10 years, and it's driving me nuts. It's at the point where one says "I want a craft beer" and they list 10 IPA, one lager, one amber ale, and Guinness.

C'mon people, take your heads out of your asses and look around!

It really varies by location in the states. Im lucky enough to live in an area with a ton of different craft breweries that do a ton of different things, but there's definitely places here that have fuckall in that area

It has to vary wildly by region in the US, because in the northeast, this "hurr durr only IPAs everywhere" meme hasn't been accurate for like 10 years, if it was ever accurate at all.

I've seen kolsch in the PNW of the US a couple times. It doesn't hit the same as it did when I was in Germany though.

I was able to get a locally produced rauchbier at the Cincy Beer fest about 12 years ago. Cincinnati has a large ethnically German population, but I was still surprised by that.

I thought, not so long ago, this was the same meme but with "pilsner" instead if "ipa" .

I guess things are a trend/popular for a reason.

New England represent!

Even some gas stations have big selections of local craft beer around here.

Or OP lives in Seattle. This place has great beer culture in theory, but in practice it's an IPA hellscape.