It probably doesn’t happen a whole lot, I just assumed if it was easy to find a few breweries doing it, that it may be a more prevalent thing, especially considering the current trend of so many beers advertised as +8% that don’t taste it at all. It might just be my developing palate, but 15 years ago I could taste every drop of alcohol over 7 or 8%, now? Goes down smooth. it might just be the massive amounts of adjuncts and barreling being used these days.
Earlier this year there were threads in a local Facebook beer group that called out a few Virginia breweries that got independently tested and the ABVs were way off. All of the sudden these “I can’t taste the ABV” 16.5/15% beers were re-listed at 12, 11, 10%, etc.
I mean, it’s not very hard to calculate ABV, so assuming no malice means they were just being negligent. In some areas it’s illegal to sell beer advertised at a specific abv and being off by more than a few points of an ABV (it might be +/-0.3, but it could be more or less depending on where you are).
Hmm, interesting. Ya I only heard of the opposite, but more due to hop creep in dry hopping process, that blasts the alcohol up rather than down, without brewers realizing if they aren’t aware of the phenomenon.
You make a good point, I think I was mostly thinking about stouts when I said that. I’m still not certain about some “double” IPAs (usually hazy) that have next to no detectable alcohol.
I’ll definitely concede that hop creep may be messing a lot with “lower” ABV beers. It ain’t session-able if the alcohol creeps up.
The hop creep might jump them like a half percent or so, but I’m actually not sure that hop creep jumps it up a bunch. When I talked to Jason Perkins at Allagash about it for an article I was doing, he said it wasn’t like it would jump 3% or something. But to get that higher alcohol, the yeast eats more of the malt, which makes it seem boozier due to less body. AKA slightly more booze, slightly less body gives boozier feel when you have a really hop crept DDH IPA.
Looking at the posts above, there’s definitely a geographical aspect to which styles are fading out. Perhaps the US is leading and in many European countries, some of the styles in decline in the US are still on the rise, like Brut IPAs and saisons?
Although the explosion in IPAs seems to be everywhere…
When I was in Florida last Oct, if brewery had a Brut IPA and a NEIPA. I was ordering the Brut. Didn’t care for the Brut styles (Belgian) before breweries started IPAs. In fact first Brut I had was from home brewer before they caught on.
How much of the apparent fade out of American Strong Ale is real, though? It was always a bit of a catch all category and now RateBeer has Imperial Red and Imperial Brown things go there where they once would have been ASAs.
Right but no one makes those styles anymore either in NYC at least. If you make a high booze style it will be DIPA/TIPA, imperial stout, imperial Berliner, other high alcohol sours, and maybe a barley wine or imperial porter.
As I understand it, that’s something to do with the special nature of the water. Imperial Berliner? I wish I could say we’re not similarly afflicted. Still better than Brut IPA. I’d say better than pastry stout too, but at least any bulimic experience is temporary.
I rarely see ASA anymore which is a shame, they can be awesome. Also, Black IPAs. I love them! They are almost never around except for a few staples like Uinta Dubhe. Like many of you I see loads of hazies, sweet stouts and a ton of sour variations. When I see new, non-hazy IPAs I am excited. I do see a lot of clean lagers getting made still, so that’s good.
That’s actually a pretty great point. It could be that the beers haven’t just disappeared, but that both marketing of it or online listings of it are defining some of those “catch all” beers differently.
Ran into a new brewery (at least to this site) over in Dunedin today. I’ll add it later. And they had 2 Hefeweizen and an American Strong ale on draft. Got myself one of each which I’ll be rating in honor or this thread.
I definitely find myself ordering these types of beers much more often when I see them than a few years ago. For example, I do like IPAs, and prefer them to say a hefe or a Belgian wit. But recently seeing hefes or brown ales and such has become so much less common, and IPAs are more common than water in breweries, I find myself skipping IPAs more often. Especially in breweries where I’m fairly sure the IPAs won’t exactly be a Lawson’s or Stone…
Imperial Berliner? I wish I could say we’re not similarly afflicted. Still better than Brut IPA. I’d say better than pastry stout too, but at least any bulimic experience is temporary.
