Depends where you live. Areas with a smaller craft brew scene do end up with the “nothing but IPA” problem. But where I live in the PNW there’s simply so damn many that even with 50% of them being IPA’s, you still get a huge selection of other pilsners, stouts, amber ales, hefenweizens… its pretty nice.
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.
I work for a brewery in Portland, and we’d like to make over varieties, but hazys and IPAs are what sell.
Nailed it.
“Welcome! We have 30 beers on tap.”
And dark beers?
“We have this single India pale ale.”
Live in Seattle and that’s not true. 95% of them are IPAs and I just want a good Blonde…
Blondes are not completely uncommon here. They generally have one or something similar on tap at most bars/restaurants.
1 blonde and 47 IPAs that taste like compost. Ambers are good too amd Mack & Jack’s African Amber is a good beer to that I can usually find here.
This always cracked me up:
The brand is not named after the famous St. Pauli neighbourhood in Hamburg, which is home to one of the world’s largest entertainment and red light districts. Rather, the name comes from the former St. Paul’s Friary [de] in Bremen, which was next to the original brewery established in 1857 by Lüder Rutenberg. There are currently three brands of beer brewed: St. Pauli Girl Lager, St. Pauli Girl Special Dark and St. Pauli Non-Alcoholic Malt Beverage. The beer is only produced for export and is not sold in Germany.
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.
My IPAs and my pilsners finish at the same final gravity. IPAs do not universally have a lot of sugar. It’s the same as any other beer of similar alcohol content/starting gravity. If I got rid of the hops, I’d just have a strong English ale.
