Every single one except IPA and trash-tier kettle sour with 7 different kinds of fruit.
You mean NEIPA-s. Good old bitter clear without adjuncts west coast IPAs are rare nowadays (at least in EU). Hell, lately I have tried literally 10s of IPA-s that claim to be “west coast”, but are just NEIPA-s with a bit less haze …
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Yup yup yup.
Shit, I get excited when I see a new pale ale.
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In the UK:
Milds
Od ales
Darker maltier bitters/ESBs/ESAs
Session stouts/porters that haven’t been imperialised or stuffed full of lactose, oatmeal or
flavours
So essentially anything malt-forward.
Have also noticed a long slow decline in the availability and popularity of Belgian ales.
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Seen a few new milds recently. And ESBs. Breweries such as Anspach & Hobday, Boxcar, Bouttiliers, Elusive and Marble still regularly brew more trad beers.
It could be easy to blame new school breweries and obviously there are those breweries sticking to hazy beers, sours and flavoured dark beers, etc. However to an extent I think a lot of the old school breweries are phasing out darker beers in favour of golden ales and golden ales labelled as IPAs.
I guess Belgian Ales were an alternative to twiggy bitters and lagers. So have they declined or is it just that we have more variety now? And UK brewers producing those styles?
I would also like to give a quick shout out to a pseudo style that left us far too soon. I mean, of course, the glitter beer. This style promised to Lisa Frank up any style of beer, but especially the Hazy IPA. It seems it was around for a moment, but has sadly left us. I will spill out a De Struise Pannepot in its hono(u)r.
Newest trend I see around breweries is the Peanut Butter and Jelly beer. These just sound horrible to me, I have to draw the line. Other than Sabro mania, that is the only real trend I am seeing. While I tire of mediocre NE IPA, a good NZ NE IPA is still rather desirable to me. Motueka, Moutere, Nelson Sauvin, Rakau ect hopped stuff or the post-Neomexicanus hops.
Smoked porter, I haven’t seen one in a long time and Dieu du Ciel stop making one, is was so good!
So, Brut IPA. Dead just about everywhere, showed up in force in Czechia, mostly among the mid-tier breweries (but even some top tier ones) basically last year and new ones are still coming out this year.
Certainly not what I expected. I mean, it showed up in Croatia in early 2018 and the last one was brewed in early 2019.
Still being brewed in the UK.
In fact, in respect the previous post, Smoked Porters are still turning up as well.
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Smoked has been always acquired taste. So it has never been too popular…
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The first time I had a smoked beer, I was in Germany. It was like a John Woo film: as I was ordering it my German mate was jumping sideways shouting, “Nooooooo!”, trying to block that Rauchbier bullet.
(It may just have been that it was more expensive than a lager and it was his round.)
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I do love my hazy ipas, but nowadays I get really excited when I encounter a west coast ipa in the wild! Or that rare black ipa sighting! Silly really, the more breweries, the less diversity it seems. And no, using another hop or adjunct and giving every batch a new name doesn’t really make it more diverse.
Then again, if I look good, there’s so much around, in so many styles. Volume wise and definitely when looking at ‘new beer releases’, it seems that hazy and pasty stuff is the bulk, and they definitely get the bulk of the attention, but there still plenty of other beer to be found.
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The beers that I have had during lockdown have been much less varied style-wise than before. Lots of hoppy pales (APAs, IPAs, NEIPAs), flavoured stouts (imperial and regular), quite a few pilsners and a handful of sours. Anything else I’ve kind of gone out of my way to procure.
Styles that I’ve had very few of in the last couple of years:
Non-flavoured Berliner Weisse
Cream Ales and California Common
Any German style by a non-German brewery (I had a Dunkel from London recently but that’s about it) especially Altbier and Kolsch
Mild Ales
Dubbels & Tripels
Old Ales
Red/Amber Ales (I normally have about 15-ish a year & have had 4 in 2020)
I can see that brewers will want to brew popular stuff, especially during a lockdown when they are struggling. California Commons are a hard sell at the best of times.
And of course I cannot speak for the wider beer-buying public, but since COVID I’ve been buying fewer mega-beers. So IPAs, pilsners and the occasional strong stout are the best beers within my reach right now if I want to keep monthly ratings around 30-35. Top-rate sours not so much. Plus, I’ve been drinking whatever comes in bottles/cans (only been to the pub twice since March), and bottleshops aren’t exactly chock full of bottles of milds.
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Funnily enough I noticed over the summer that ‘crispy bois’, i.e. German lager styles, were becoming popular.
My Kolsch count is 8 in the last 12 months, all but one was from a UK brewer (Godstone, Unity, Elusive x 2, Tempest, Mechanic x 2, Fuller’s).
Similarly I’ve had 7 Helles/Exports, all from UK breweries (Steam Town, Brick, Mad Squirrel, Utopian, Dig Brew, Hofmeister, Goose Island Shoreditch)
Also 15 UK Pils (BrewDog, Fountain, Crafty x2, Free From, West Berks, Lovibonds, Triple Point x2, Dark Revolution, Deya, Vibrant Forest, Big Smoke, Phantom, Cotswold).
Not styles I look for as I am not a great fan. Have also had a few different Bocks and Hefes from UK breweries but clearly not as popular as the crizpi ladz (Goose Island Shoreditch x.3, Pillars, Bohem, Fierce, BrewDog, Double-Barrelled, Dorset).
However bog standard Berliner Weise is definitely a style that has been usurped by the Flavoured variety.
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Yes, I should’ve exempted Pils and Helles from the’German styles by non-German breweries’ as I’ve seen loads of these in the UK.
I don’t like most smoked beers but smoke goes a bit better with a robust porter for me. Doesn’t drown out the other aromas as much
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Here in Poland every new release is either a way too sweet Hazy IPA, a fruited sour, or a fruited Gose. Like someone mentioned earlier these are essentially glorified fruit juices. As for stouts it’s mostly pastry stouts, yes, but as I’m not too big on stouts anyway I don’t really care.
Grodziskie saw a short revival about 5 years ago, when it was available in every convenience store across the country as a staple product; these are gone now, I couldn’t even find them in various online shops. Sometimes a new Grodziskie gets released, but more often than not it’s some kind of unholy combination with fruits or other flavorings and disappears from bars/off the shelves quickly. Guess the style is just too unpopular to be consumed on the regular, and only gets released for short periods of time to cater to “tickers” who rarely drink the same beer twice.
Indeed, I often buy beers on ebrowarium but nowadays it’s difficult to find other beers than NEIPA’s, Fruited goses or pastry stuff. It’s becoming a bit onedimensional.
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