The reason I ask is that I went into the new Pleasanton Costco and they had exactly two beers which were not IPA’s (I think an Oakland United Lager and one other lager). There were at last 20 different IPA’s on the selves. Is all anyone’s buying is IPA’s? I used to like IPA’s but they’ve become a Caricature of themselves, too much about how much hops you can get into the beer.
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I do! But I rarely find beers I care to buy at Costco other than the occasional hazy IPA four pack. Case of Guinness draft cans once a year and they usually have a shipment of chimay blue 750’s around the holidays.
The Danville costco (right on the San Ramon/Danville city line) in the SF Bay Area has a very good selection of nonIPA beers which makes the lask of IPA’s at Pleasanton all the more questionable (Pleasanton is the next city south of San Ramon, so not that far away)
I like ales better and think Belgian style ales are the pinnacle. Porter is second. IPAs are fourth or fifth. While I like IPAs and sometimes I’m really in the mood for them especially with the right food match, their popularity in recent history seems a little overly enthusiastic.
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Very much my regular gripe with beer trends over the last decade. Hops, hops and more hops. It’s been a big focus.
My regular preference is for quite opposing beer styles: wheat beer and porter/old ales. From light and summery to beers for a cold winter. The two opposites can meet though e.g. in the one-off Schneiderweisse Tap X PorterWeisse which I thought was stunning, plus eastern europe does some super dark lagers that I enjoy.
There are certainly plenty of beer styles still to be found, making it easy for me to mostly avoid this recent focus.
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While I enjoy an IPA, my go tos tend to be Irish reds, brown ales, and Mexican lagers, all of which are not on trend right now for the most part, so my costco purchases tend to be meat, peanuts and paper products. Whiskey gets put in the cart from time to time as well.
I’ll drink an IPA when at my local brewery, but it’s not my favorite to open at home. IPAs are just all the rage and I’m not part of that. Which is fine, i like to support my local liquor/wine stores.
I’m partial to Pilsners. Most IPAs are too green for me.
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Why the hell are you shopping for beer at Costco? If you’re only interested in shitty mega “craft”, I suppose Costco is okay, but you will not find the best beers at Costco. The only breweries that you will typically find at Costco are just trying to make and sell as much beer as humanly possible. That doesn’t sound like the recipe for making anything good. If you go to a good beer store, you can find all sorts of things besides IPAs.
I went to Grocery Outlet in Palm Springs several weeks ago, and found Moonlight Reality Czech Pilsner, which is pretty good (not up to Heater Allen standards, but close) and Moonlight Death and Taxes Black beer, which is excellent. I suspect those are better than anything I could find at Costco.
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+1000
If you’re shopping at Costco you’re shopping wrong.
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My local Costco sucks wine-wise, but has had Pizza Port a couple times (IPA 
). The couple San Diego locations I’ve been to also have a lot of local, “craft” beers.
Moonlight was by far one of my favorite breweries. Brian is amazing. It’s been more than 20 yrs since I’ve had a beer or paid any attention to what’s going on in the industry so very happy to hear he is still at it. My company was partially named after his. Used to love drinking his beers from the hand pump at Tornado.
Brian is part of the small group of brewers that take lagers seriously.
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Geeze! my Costco has maybe 6 SKUs total and usually nothing inspiring.
The costcos around here actually have a nice selection of beers including from local breweries @Rick_Allen. In fact i do not recall seeing any budmiloors at the Costco which surprised me
Beers I like:
Floodland
Hill farmstead
Sante adarius
And occasionally Cantillon / 3F
I don’t know if any of them make an ipa. Maybe HF?
Is it still 2020?
Santa Adarius makes a lot of IPAs, they’re just better known for their Saison and Belgian program at their original facility.
Some East Coast names to look for (using my own store as reference)
Schilling
Wild East
Barrique
Dutchess Ales
Dovetail
Live Oak (Austin TX)
Shop for your beers the way you do for your wines, use stores that specialize in finding local/regional producers, and you will find great lagers as well as a growing (IMHO) interest in UK styles, lots more Bitters, ESB and Milds showing up as well as IPAs using UK hops and malts. If you rely on a huge chain store to do all the heavy lifting for you, they will only bring you the highest volume productions from each brewery, which are invariably going to be their flagship IPAs.
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If only bigeest sellers would be available then how come there was no Sierra Nevada Pale Ale? There were Sierra Nevada IPA’s. Around here the merchandise at the costco’s can be highly localized. For instance the San Leandro costco has all sorts of tortilla chips and salsa’s while the Danville costco only has the Mission tortilla chips (which you can find in almost any supermarket, although is a larger bag) and one type of salsa (if you can find it). Danville is also the place to go for prime beef the San Leandro costco not so much. Danville and San Leandro are probably about 15 miles apart as the crow flies. The Danville costco has a fairly amazing beer selection which is about a full aisle at the Danville costco of just beer so the different number of beers available is pretty high. While these may not be all the smallish breweries they aren’t all budmiloors brands either (in fact most of them are not budmiloors beers). The pleasanton costco I expected to be similar to Danville in their selection as I think the demographic would be similar to the Danville costco. Still the fact that the beer selection was so slanted to IPA’s was quite a surprise (all but two of the beers were IPA’s). So was wondering if all folks are drinking is IPA’s as costco’s tend to mirror what the consumer is buying as costco does not want merchandise to sit on the shelf, if the product does not move you will not be seeing the product again.
Hill farmstead has a few IPAs, there is a regular one or two and some special editions (think I have some Limencello IPAs still). The standard ones are ok to good IMO (e.g. nothing special). Farmhouse ales are spectacular
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