I was at Draai Laag the other day when a group walked in. They were totally unfamiliar with the style of Belgian beers they brew, and the brewmaster asked them what they usually drank. They all said “IPA”. This made me think about beer and wine. 20 years ago, when wine started to go more mainstream, “merlot” was the wine that people asked for when they wanted a ‘fine wine’. It was easy to pronounce, and they didn’t have to remember anything else. Every winery in the world started making merlot (eventually leading to a huge glut). It seems to me that when people want a craft beer- anything other than a crappy FAP- they simply say IPA. They probably don’t know what it is, and they haven’t ever had another craft beer. But it is easy to say and remember.
I’d equate it more to Chardonnay.
Or Apothic Red.
Yes
I was in total agreement with you (despite my unrelenting love of IPA) until I got to the statements in bold. IPA doesn’t strike me as something that one orders the first time they’re having a craft beer — and, IF it is, then it’s definitely going to be something they remember, and, at that point, they will know what it is.
Knowledge of Belgian styles will come with time. It was at least a couple (if not more) years into my craft beer appreciation before I learned of (some) Belgian styles; I assume they same holds for many (most?) other Americans who are just starting to dip their toes in the craft brew waters. Just as a dry sponge first soaks-up the liquid nearest to it, craft beer greenhorns will soak-up the styles that are most-easily accessible — and, these days, IPA is definitely one of those styles, and traditional Belgian styles are not. Granted, more American brewers are dabbling with Belgian styles now than they were a decade ago, so that knowledge is a bit easier to acquire now than it was then.
Everybody has to start somewhere, and, honestly, I don’t think many people really start with IPA. Most people don’t even like IPA when they first taste it (I know I didn’t), but many come to eventually like it (I’ve seen this happen for numerous folks).
This is just another permutation of the “I’m sick of everybody doing IPA” thought, which certainly has its place and validity, but let’s not make it more than that.
p.s.: I do think Jorge’s “Chardonnay” observation has legs. Really sticky, hoppy, super IBU-y hoppy legs! ![[tease.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/c/c5b32b76bebaa359b0452ae247b61189ffe5fa7e.gif "tease"){kind=small}
I would probably lean towards the IPA-Chardonnay analogy. Hops have become like oak, in that it’s an ingredient one can use to cover up a lot of mediocrity. Absolutely everyone has one (to the point you are counter-culture if you don’t) and if you’re making it in an ‘in-your-face’ style, you will probably be able to sell it.
Belgian beers, by and large, are trickier to brew, and to do them decently you really can’t just do one every one in a while. When I first got into the biz 15 years ago there genuinely no substitute in the domestic market for Belgians, even something as broad base as Hoegaarden. Nowadays that gap has closed considerably, especially when you factor in the inflated shipping costs.
I will agree that IPA has become the totem in many ways for what the craft brew market “IS” to the casual observer. Everything is ‘bitter’, and the better ones seem to be ‘more’ bitter. And too often the poorly made one-off attempts at bad Belgians are just ‘sweet’. So if your friends are gushing over a steady diet of bitter options, and the Belgian styled offerings that appeal to you a little bit more are still uninteresting and dismissed, it can become quickly discouraging. But the best thing about the brew scene is the volume of quality choices for those that care about it. Just as there will be people that claim to love wine and drink nothing but oaky Chardonnay, there will be those into craft beers and pursue nothing but IPAs, even when given other options. But the adventurous ones like most of us here can try dozens of well made variations without trying nearly as hard as we used to, and if the IPA available still ends up being the favorite of the bunch, then so be it.
Of course, I didn’t mean it at all as a bad thing (in spite of the Sideways view of merlot) but that merlot is a prototype for “I want something other than Bud”. I was referring to the name IPA rather than the style of beer. There is a real comparison to the chard thing- I have tons of friends who will ONLY drink big hoppy IPAs. They look for bitter and are not concerned with less bitter and more complexity. But quite frankly, WGAS and good for them. They are pretty knowledgeable, but like a style and don’t see great needs to try other stuff.
But your statement that you don’t think that most people start with IPAs is what interests me. Where do you think people start? Maybe people start with brown ales, ambers, pale ales. But I do think that the name IPA has about as high a Q rating as one might get among newbies (and again, not a bad thing).
We had this discussion yesterday at my son’s birthday party as well as a related one- whether the craft beer movement will die out. I do not see that happening. Once you are introduced to beers with flavor- even if it is not your particular style- you cannot go back to Miller.
Probably the real gateway beer is Pale Ale, but those are getting harder to find (besides Sierra Nevada and Deschutes which are both quite good - especially Sierra Nevada), particularly on tap. I think from Pale Ale it becomes a pretty easy conversion to IPAs.
I can’t think of a beer bar I’ve visited in the last two years that had more than one Pale Ale on tap, while I can think of several that had 7 or 8 IPAs on tap. Frankly, if you threw a dart blindfolded at a tap list in Bend, OR, you would be more likely to hit IPA than everything else combined. Obviously people are drinking lots of IPAs or there wouldn’t be so many on tap.
My reasoning behind calling IPA the Merlot of the beer world is that there is really only one style of Merlot, compared to Chardonnay, where styles can range from no oak/no malo to full oak and butter. You need to ask a few questions about what kind of Chardonnay you’re going to get, while Merlot is just Merlot, it’s just a matter of quality. Because of the BJCP standards in the beer industry, an IPA for the most part tastes like an IPA. The hops may be different and the malt focus may or may not be there, but it tastes like it should to be called an IPA.
We bought a case of Sierra Nevada pale ale a year ago for parties and cannot get anyone to drink it. My wife swears the recipe changed and it is not as good as it used to be???
I haven’t had it out of a bottle recently, but I had it out of keg recent and thought that it was fine. BTW, the bottled Sierra Nevada is not the same as the kegged version. The bottled is called Pale Ale and the kegged version is called “Pub Beer” (I think they officially call it draught-style Pale Ale). The Pub Beer tastes similar but is 0.5% lower in alcohol than the bottled version.
Say what? We are able to sell most of the classics (Duval, Chimay, Affligem, even the new Mont des Cats) at significantly LESS than their American knock offs (mostly around $10.49 per 750ml and some, like Hoegaarden and Leffe for HALF that).
One style of Merlot? Compare your typical fat city Napa version with something from Friuli. Night and day.
Honestly, I think most people start with brands, not styles. For example, I think most folks start with what has been marketed to them, or is readily available (they’re dry sponges) — stuff like Sam Adams, Red Hook, Blue Moon (yes, lots of people think this is craft), and maybe even Sierra Neveda (although I do think Sierra is too hoppy to appeal to the true newbie).
In the hands of a craft beer enthusiast who is offering guidance, I would hope a newbie would be started off on fine domestic lagers and pilseners, pale ales, hefeweizens, brown ales, and maybe some porters. Honestly, I would also hope that a guiding enthusiast would also consider European options, specifically British ales and Belgian styles, too, as I think many are very appealing to newbies and veterans, alike; English ales actually used to be my favorite beers — and that was at the very beginning of my craft beer drinking days.
Between the East Coast style, the West Coast style, and everything in-between, I find the range of IPA styles to be just as great as the range of Chardonnay styles. The different hops, used in varying amounts, at various points in the brewing process seem akin to the oak/no oak malo/no malo options of Chardonnay. Racer 5 tastes wildly different than Harpoon — they’re not even recognizable as the same style of beer to me, and I suspect many would agree.
Some of sentiments here might be discussed to an extent in the IPA rant thread. For an analogy, though, more than Merlot, Chardonnay, and (I’ll add) add Malbec, which is becoming ubiquitous, I think what is happening with producers, at least, is what happened with New World wines in the mid to late 1990s. They starting becoming over-the-top extracted, oaky liquid jams. And that style quickly became a hit with some influential writers and consumers alike. That’s what I see IPA becoming.
So now I have to track down bottles of Harpoon and Racer 5 (though I’ve had this numerous times).
This! And thus my comparison.
Brian,
Can you give me another recommendation besides Harpoon. It isn’t available in Oregon. Racer 5 obviously isn’t a problem.
Sam Adams Latitude 48 IPA would be a pretty strong counterpoint to Racer 5.
Obviously, we could include DIPA’s to drive the point home even more, but I don’t feel that’s necessary.
Brooklyn Brewing Co’s IPA is very different than the typical West Coast style. Many English IPAs are so wildly different than many American IPAs that they really should be given their own category (and I suspect they actually are). Port Brewing’s Wipeout will never be confused for Summit’s IPA, although Summit’s Saga IPA is a pretty good Midwest version of the West Coast style. I recently had a Manzanita IPA (from somewhere in San Diego) and it was barely recognizable as an IPA, imo. Deschutes’s IPA is pretty pathetic, so that might make a good comparison to something like Alesmith, Stone, Saint Archer, Anderson Valley, Caldera, RRBC, or any of the other numerous super-hoppy West Coast IPA’s. Even Red Hook’s IPA is pretty weak, although I will admit it is readily recognizable as IPA; Deschutes’s IPA comes across more like a Pale Ale to me than it does an IPA.
I could blather on and on about this, but will stop here … I just can’t wrap my mind around the idea that all IPA’s are of the same style.
There probably is something to be said for the brand loyalty idea. Which reminds me of a favorite story.
My first introduction to craft beers was Samuel Smith (which I still consider to be fine beers across the board and don’t get enough talk IMHO). I would go into places that has nice beer selections and ask, “Do you have any Samuel Smith beers?”. If I heard this once, I heard it 20 times: “No, but we have Samuel Adams.”
Seriously?? Why say that? What do Samuel Smith and Samuel Adams have in common except the name Samuel?!?! That still blows my mind.