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Having a beer this evening, and I realize that my knowledge of beer trends is very old. In the 2010s, there was the big shift to IPAs that I remember, as well as lots of people complaining about only being able to get IPAs at bars. Then in the 2020s, there seemed to be this tilt towards sours and goses. That's the last I heard, honestly.
Does anyone know where the beer trends are going? What's cool now?
As a resident of Czech Republic, the idea of 'trends in beer' seems bizarre. Beer is a daily drink. Asking for a 'trend' in beer is like asking for trends with Coca-Cola. Sure people do try but generally the big established brands produce pretty good lager which is what almost everyone drinks.
It seems in America it's something else, not a basic commodity.
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Do you really not have trends in what styles are popular? The Czechs never had an IPA revolution? Nobody ever got into sours? Every brewery simply sells the exact same product they've been making for 300 years?
And Coca-Cola definitely goes through different trends. The diet soda trend of the 80s, the wide proliferation of flavors in the 90s, the "health drink" trend and diversification into soda-substitutes in the 2000s, the "inject diet coke directly into my veins" performative addiction of the current era. Not to mention the occasional burst of nostalgia and brief increase in popularity of the old glass bottles every few years.
I'm sure there are Czech hipsters and I do know craft beers exist and are drunk (as the chart shows), but it's not really my thing. I've been offered some craft beer and such, wasn't generally bad.
Wasn't generally better than what you can buy in store, just different. I'm not going to 4x my beer costs to get something 'different' now am I?
Due to parentage and upbringing (public school) I'm inacapable of understanding what 'cool' means. Or at least what normies mean by that.
E.g. very early on when at 15 I was out drinking with my high school class (more like a state run & funded prep) and the girls were smoking unfiltered cigarettes & instead of being normal and thinking "they're being so cool" I thought "they think this makes them adults" and having a bit of a laugh internally.
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I live in an advanced (1st wave or close to it) and travel frequently to a 2nd wave city. I get to watch things develop and spread in real-time, and I also started brewing and drinking while underage.
I'd say Cjet has it most on the nose. Non-alcoholic beer and lower-carb is now 1st wave. Right behind that is hazy IPAs which I can't fucking stand, and behind that is sours which I'm extremely picky about. I have started thanking breweries and bartenders that still have a West Coast IPA on rotation.
I have to say that Sierra Nevada is still, even as such a huge brewery, still keeping the faith in terms of quality and consistency. Oskar Blues still makes the stuff I like as well, their double IPA is sublime and competes nicely with Good People's snake handler.
I understand the backlash against traditional IPAs and them "Blowing out your palate" but I personally enjoyed only drinking 2-3 beers per night and having an awesome buzz.
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There is at least a tiny trend towards healthier beers. Non alcoholic and low carb, without too many sacrifices for flavor. Athletic brewing company is the local option small time brewing option for me, but all the major beer makers seem to have been chasing non-alcoholic and even lower carb versions of their old offerings.
Its probably not necessarily as "cool" as past trends, but I think there is money in it. It requires more science than artistry, and the effort being carried out by the big beer makers suggests that they are at least trying to tap into an underserved segment.
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And I remember (and so does my liver) the preceding trend to IPAs in craft beers, at least in my local market during my college years in the mid-2000s: strong, sweet, meal-like belgian or trappist beers.
I do not miss them. Whatever is next, I hope it's not a return to that.
These are some of the few beers I think are truly disgusting. Sickly sweet, heavy and extremely alcoholic.
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I can only comment about the Pittsburgh beer scene, but for the purposes of this post I'm going to assume that it's similar to elsewhere, though the brewpub craze started a little earlier here than it did elsewhere. In 2005 there were only 4 breweries in Pittsburgh. One was Iron City, which is the local mass-market beer that competes with Miller, etc. One was Penn, which is larger than most micros and is terrible. There was Church Brew Works, which had the novelty of being in a church and also made terrible beer, and East End, which was relatively new but only slightly less terrible than the other 2 micros. In the 2010s a lot more micros started popping up, and most of them, like Hitchhiker and Voodoo, were heavy on the IPAs. The reason for this is that good beer is expensive to make and IPAs are the most forgiving; if something goes wrong there's less likelihood of having to deep six the whole batch. Now there are something like 78 breweries in the Pittsburgh area and while most are terrible, there are actually a few decent ones. Towards the latter part of the 2010s and into the 2020s, somebody realized that a lot of beer drinkers simply don't like IPAs and if they could make a decent lager or kolsch then somebody would drink it. Also, if your area is at a point of brewpub saturation then you can't get business by simply being the only game in town. As a result of this, most places, both here and elsewhere, seem to have diversified their offerings to a point that I wouldn't say there's any particular trend right now.
Sours and goses have certainly gained market share (I first had one at Allegheny City Brewing in 2016), but, much like IPAs, they're polarizing. I think part of the IPA trend has to do with the fact that most mass-market beers are under-hopped and people felt superior saying they liked something that was totally in the opposite direction, even if it was so bitter it blew out your taste buds to the point that you couldn't taste anything else. I would also note that there seemed to be a trend in wheat beers starting around 2006. Anyway, one trend I've noticed in recent years is the Hazy IPA (also called a New England IPA, though I was in Vermont last year and didn't see it on any menus). It gets its name because it's unfiltered and looks cloudier than most beers. It's similar to an IPA but has a lower alcohol content and is much less bitter, and has fruity, usually citrusy, undertones. But that's just one example. Any brewpub that's small enough that the to-go options are limited will usually have something that's a sort of house specialty and a few other things that are worth trying. It's usually a good idea to go when they aren't that busy; the bartenders in these places love beer and are very helpful about pointing you in the direction of something you'll like.
Silly story time. I once went to a Thai restaurant and got an IPA (might have been a double or imperial IPA even; I don't remember), because there was one available and I did like them. Then, I ordered my meal way spicier than I probably should have, for reasons (probably not good ones). In any event, this was the moment when I actually learned just how significant pairing food/beverage could possibly be. I had heard of people doing pairings before, but I never really grokked it, if anything, it was always a really subtle effect. But this time, hooooo buddy, this time. Pre-meal, this IPA was an IPA, extremely bold and bitter. Meal arrives, I shove whatever quantity of extremely spicy in my mouth, and at some point finally decide to rinse some down with a little beverage. I kid you not, that IPA tasted sweet after all that capsaicin. It was wild.
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Took them long enough. I've always hated IPA's, largely because they give terrible hangovers. Probably because they're loaded up with preservatives to play it safe with the batch like you said.
There's a reason lagers are so popular.
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