IPA go suck it

[Lee English]

Right I'm going to be honest from the start. I'm a little bit under the influence at the moment but this does not discern what I'm trying to say.
Tonight I have been sampling a few pints of the glorious Amber of the gods, many few of which were some of the most overly hoped style of an IPA I have ever tasted.
Now what I am asking of the home brew community is: have you all gave up?
I joined this forum to widen my knowledge after a few years of giving it a miss.
Now what I see is: ipa ipa ipa neipa neipa.
Whats wrong have you not figured out how to get rid of the yeasty home brew twang and decided to hide it with more hops.
This is my point I feel that this craft brewing has come to a point of blah blah blah. "I taste gooseberry " "I taste butter " "I taste an old man's ball bag" but not a single mention of a poor attempt of a proper beer.
We can all throw a bag of hops in a fv. As a long time drunk I can definitely say over hop beers taste the same.....heart burn. I like a hoppy beer but I think it has come to the point where it is starting to take the piss and the beer drinkers are becoming just as bad as the wineos. " I put 4 kg of galaxy in my beer and it tastes like a hoppy beer" no ******* ****! You must be some sort of alchemist to get the flavours of the hop flowers by putting a ton of them in a gallon of beer. Anyway I would love to hear from you over hopping home brew failures and would love to be proven wrong but I think I have hit the nail on the head...

 

[Ajhutch]

I love drinking beer. I enjoy posting about beer. I find they are best not done at the same time.

 

[Cwrw666]

Firstly - you don't get homebrew twang with all grain. That's a kit thing.
Secondly, these hoppy IPAs are a basic missunderstanding in what an IPA should actually taste like - they used to taste just like a normal pale ale. They were heavily hopped because a three month voyage to India sloshing about in a hot ships hold was equivalent to 2 years of conditioning on land and as we all know hop bitterness and flavour diminish over time. So they were formulated to arrive at the destination tasting like normal beer. (whereas if you shipped normal beer to India it would be bland and tasteless by the time it arrived)
And contrary to popular belief they were actually weaker than normal beer at the time.
Also contrary to popular belief, most beer shipped to India was actually porter. IPA was an officers drink.

 

[MarkBowie]

There is a place for a heavily hopped IPA, just like there is a place for any other beer style (traditional or not). It’ll go round to something else, beers like Porters are now making a come back and it’ll go onto something else when the faddyness has worn off. Although I do agree with your inebriated ramblings; it’ll be good when the IPA thing wears off and it evens out again for a bit.

 

[Lee English]

This is what I feel I was trying to say last night while been, let's say a little bit sozzled. But hey a drunken man's words are a sober man's thoughts. I enjoy an ipa but I was at an event yesterday with craft food and drink been sold and decided to take home a few ipa styles to try at home. I think why I was so annoyed to actually put my ramblings on the Internet was that I found them undrinkable and committed sacrilege by poring beer down the sink.

 

[Stephenj]

Do people not just brew and drink beer they like? Fad or not?

Who is anyone to tell me what to brew and what to like? Other than my missus that is.

 

[MarkBowie]

If I’m drinking the hoppy ones I try to go for the fruitier tasting hops. Otherwise I wake up in the morning and my mouth tastes like I have been chewing a pine leaf.

 

[MarkBowie]

Do people not just brew and drink beer they like? Fad or not?

Who is anyone to tell me what to brew and what to like? Other than my missus that is.

Not meaning the ones we brew for our own pleasure, nor telling people what to brew (apologies if it came across that way). I still like tasting other commercial beers I see that I haven’t tried before and going to the odd festival; it’s all just very heavily hopped at the minute.

 

[MickDundee]

There’s a time and a place for all beer types. I have a British Golden ale, a Kolsch and a Hefeweizen ready for drinking at the moment and a Belgian Dubbel in the FV which I will be bottling either tomorrow or Friday. My next brew will be a heavily hopped APA.

 

[Sadfield]

This is what I feel I was trying to say last night while been, let's say a little bit sozzled. But hey a drunken man's words are a sober man's thoughts. I enjoy an ipa but I was at an event yesterday with craft food and drink been sold and decided to take home a few ipa styles to try at home. I think why I was so annoyed to actually put my ramblings on the Internet was that I found them undrinkable and committed sacrilege by poring beer down the sink.

Undrinkable because of the taste or your perception of what beer should be?

Interestingly, I see more people drinking NEIPAs as they are more accessible, low bitterness, fruity, soft. I've lost count of the times in my mates bar, where he doesn't have a draft lager, he's given customers a taster of a NEIPA as an alternative and they've loved it.

Fair enough if you don't like something, but accusations of lack of brewing skill etc. just smacks of jealousy, "I don't understand it, so you shouldn't be allowed to enjoy it either".


Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

 

[foxbat]

(whereas if you shipped normal beer to India it would be bland and tasteless by the time it arrived)

And thanks to progress by the 1970s we had perfected the art of shipping normal beer from brewery to local pub and it would be bland and tasteless by the time it arrived!

 

[AdeDunn]

I brew beer. The style of that beer is just something that happens along the way most of the time. As to my choice of hops, I have a preference for fruity hops. I tried making a single hop (actually a SMASH) with Fuggles, but it wouldn't be my first choice by any means.

I love a bottle of Lagunitas IPA, or Goose IPA though, but found Proper Job to be nothing but bitterness with not much in the way of flavour.

Funny thing is, most of my brews are golden ales and hoppy Saisons, I actually only made my first IPA on my last (#12) brew day, and even then I didn't go down the 300g of hops route. So no, I don't think that every single home brewer is just following fads and trends. I see every single home brewer doing things a little differently, brewing beers they like and enjoy and/or experimenting to see what they can create themselves.

As to what's proper beer and what isn't. Well if it isn't made with grain and yeast then it isn't beer. Adding hops, spices, fruits, honey etc don't stop it from been proper beer, heck just look at full on heather beer! Other than that, just apply the usual ABV and/or distillation rules that decide when something becomes a wine or a spirit.

 

[MmmBeer]

If there's one modern word that really annoys me, it's TRENDING. :angry:

I can fully accept that the style of clothes we wear changes from time to time due to fads and fashions, but do not agree that the same should apply to what we eat and drink. I have never felt the desire to eat Kale or Quinoa, just as I have never wanted to try smoked beer, Nettle beer or Gose.

There are beer styles, brands and hops that I enjoy and others that I dislike and I use this to dictate what I drink and what I brew. I do enjoy hoppy IPA's, but that doesn't mean that everyone will, just as many enjoy other styles like Saison, which I don't. It's different strokes for different folks.

Don't let anyone tell you what you should or shouldn't be drinking. :no:

 

[GerritT]

I like bitter. And I have no fridge. So I brew ales. Pale ales sometimes. Dry hopped sometimes. And I'm a home brewer so that's what I mostly make. I did a pilsner in the autumn, and it was nice. One brew ago was a stout, maybe it's good, I'll find out. I still have some porter somewhere in the back of the shed, it tasted good when a few months old, I'll dig it up after summer. It shares a crate with some show meads. But I like bitter the most, and it comes with the hops. Glory to Greg Hughes. So there.

Your use of "craft brewing" gave more away than you might think.

 

[Duxuk]

I can't help but like what Lee English said in his initial post, drunk or not. It's easy to rely on massive quantities of hops to cover up other inadequacies. I'm drinking a brew I made with Styrian Cardinal. The hop flavour is not massively fruity but has layers of complexity which would beat many an "IPA". I've just brewed a pale ale using EKG for a charity garden party. I didn't want to offend those who aren't used to hoppy beers. I have high hopes that it will be very good but a lot more subtle than some kind of hop bomb.

 

[GerritT]

I can't help but like what Lee English said in his initial post, drunk or not. It's easy to rely on massive quantities of hops to cover up other inadequacies. I'm drinking a brew I made with Styrian Cardinal. The hop flavour is not massively fruity but has layers of complexity which would beat many an "IPA". I've just brewed a pale ale using EKG for a charity garden party. I didn't want to offend those who aren't used to hoppy beers. I have high hopes that it will be very good but a lot more subtle than some kind of hop bomb.

That's why the struggle of brewing below 5% is way bigger than brewing over 7%. It's so more delicate. Since I'm doing a single hop series I find that being bound to limits like "1 hop and below 6%" is challenging AND rewarding. Polaris really strikes nerves, Chinook turned out harsh but tasty, Styrian Goldings is very typical, not even sure how to describe it.
But don't piss on homebrew. Because a lot of beers started out that way.

 

[GerritT]

That's why the struggle of brewing below 5% is way bigger than brewing over 7%. It's so more delicate. Since I'm doing a single hop series I find that being bound to limits like "1 hop and below 6%" is challenging AND rewarding. Polaris really strikes nerves, Chinook turned out harsh but tasty, Styrian Goldings is very typical, not even sure how to describe it.
But don't piss on homebrew. Because a lot of beers started out that way.

And for fox sake stop using the word "craft". It's a hipster word and I hate it with a passion.

 

[Slid]

Right I'm going to be honest from the start. I'm a little bit under the influence at the moment but this does not discern what I'm trying to say.
Tonight I have been sampling a few pints of the glorious Amber of the gods, many few of which were some of the most overly hoped style of an IPA I have ever tasted.
Now what I am asking of the home brew community is: have you all gave up?
I joined this forum to widen my knowledge after a few years of giving it a miss.
Now what I see is: ipa ipa ipa neipa neipa.
Whats wrong have you not figured out how to get rid of the yeasty home brew twang and decided to hide it with more hops.
This is my point I feel that this craft brewing has come to a point of blah blah blah. "I taste gooseberry " "I taste butter " "I taste an old man's ball bag" but not a single mention of a poor attempt of a proper beer.
We can all throw a bag of hops in a fv. As a long time drunk I can definitely say over hop beers taste the same.....heart burn. I like a hoppy beer but I think it has come to the point where it is starting to take the piss and the beer drinkers are becoming just as bad as the wineos. " I put 4 kg of galaxy in my beer and it tastes like a hoppy beer" no ******* ****! You must be some sort of alchemist to get the flavours of the hop flowers by putting a ton of them in a gallon of beer. Anyway I would love to hear from you over hopping home brew failures and would love to be proven wrong but I think I have hit the nail on the head...

Not a bad rant, in my perception. The internet beer-wise is full of this sort of stuff. Perhaps it is a bit over-hopped and over-hyped.

To give some sort of counter point from this Forum's focus, my last few beers have been:
Belgian Dubbel
Belgian Pale
Fishermans Stout (clibit's legacy)
Summer Lightning (clone)
Orkney Dark Island (clone)
Fruitcake Old Ale
Banks Hansons Mild (upgraded by x1.5)
Fullers London Porter (clone)
And some more in a relatively lightly hopped, malt or yeast forward style going back for some years now,

You can read more on the seldom viewed Slid Brewdays 2018 thread - which, I admit is largely a rant-thread about grain crush and the GF RIMS system.

 

[Slid]

And for fox sake stop using the word "craft". It's a hipster word and I hate it with a passion.

YES! I craft boiled potatoes into mash twice a week, or thereabouts. "Craft" my glutimus maximus.

 

[Ajhutch]

It's easy to rely on massive quantities of hops to cover up other inadequacies.

His implication that this is the reason that so many (it may be true of some) craft and homebrewers brew very hoppy beers is simply wrong.