Power to the people. In any industry that produces consumer products, trends come and trends go. Some are driven top-down by companies hoping to find an audience for an idea they’re enthusiastic about, while other trends start small and grow purely on the back of popular demand—sometimes in spite of industry opposition.
No trend, as of late, has overcome so much industry backlash as the growth of New England–style IPAs. What started as a ripple with a small cadre of brewers led by John Kimmich of The Alchemist and his genre-defining Heady Topper became a regional swell once Nate Lanier of Tree House, Jean-Claude Tetreault of Trillium, and others cut the bitterness down and piled on more juicy fruit-forward hops flavors.
Now, in fading days of 2016, the swell is turning into quite the tsunami with breweries such as Great Notion, Odd 13, WeldWerks, Prison City, Brew Gentlemen, Transient, and others taking it national. Curiously, some of these breweries, and many of the beers they’re known for now, didn’t exist the last time we put out an issue focusing on IPAs (and that was only a year ago). It’s not an understatement to say that their focus on this emerging style has helped catapult them to notoriety in the beer world.