IPAs are forever?

It’s without doubt my style of choice, and I am not alone: in 2008 IPAs accounted for roughly 8% of the various brews in the US. By 2015 the share was up to 27.4%.

Data are from the US Brewers Association in an article by their chief economist, Bart Watson, in which he is asking “What’s the next IPA?” (August 2015). Given the enormous growth and demand of the IPA, you would suspect brewers would be looking to discover what the next big thing in craft beer would be in order to get in early.

For many brewers, their IPA(s) are their flagship brews. Yet, as Jon Urch points out in this article, IPAs are costly to make and are at their best when they are fresh. Many IPAs don’t last more than a few months before the qualities of the hops are considerably altered for the worse. In a sense, and contrary to what may have historically been the purpose of adding more hops, modern-day IPAs do not travel all that well: before they reach their destination, the hops may have lost their freshness and the beer is no longer the way the brewer intended, albeit not bad. Paired with the fact that many will drink their first IPAs from supermarkets or liquor stores, where the beer may not have been stored properly and could be way beyond its “best before” date, as a start-up brewer, wouldn’t you want to ask yourself:

– Why would I want to make an IPA?

I will still be searching for the optimal IPA (and yes, the concepts are changing a bit), but I will widen my horizon and look for other styles much more than I do now. There are already a great number of breweries outside of Belgium that create decent sour ales and even rich and tasty pilsners and lagers, styles that I once swore to never drink again.