Creativity and innovation in craft beer are pushing change at an incredibly rapid pace, but that change isn’t always visible in our day-to-day brewing and drinking. We polled some industry pros for thoughts on whether or not these recent trends have staying power.
Fruit Beer
Background: Fruit beer once meant oversweetened lambic or berries thrown into a wheat beer, but this trend hit critical mass when fruit started appearing in hoppy beers. Now we’re seeing grapefruit, pineapple, habanero peppers, watermelon, mango, strawberry, and more in commercially released IPAs, and there’s no sign of letting up.
Expert Opinion: We give this trend another 18–24 months before it implodes under the weight of ten thousand extra retail SKUs. While there is, and always will be, a place for fruit in certain beer styles, the concept of pushing nonstop novelty to sell craft beer will ultimately produce consumer fatigue.
Hazy IPAs
Background: Thank New England for pushing haze and turbidity in hoppy beers to higher and higher levels. Today, though, the haze can be found across America, from Portland, Maine, to the San Francisco Bay. The fluffy and soft mouthfeel of these beers, combined with lower levels of bitterness and heaping helpings of aroma hops, provide a flavorful take on the IPA style…at the expense of appearance.
Expert Opinion: This one elicits some strong opinions, both for and against, with diehards convinced the trend must end and others embracing it as the new normal. Realistically, this trend is still in its early days, and most predict that we have at least another 3–5 years of hazy IPAs ahead of us…if not longer.
Barrel-Aged Everything
Background: It was a novelty when Goose Island put stout into used bourbon barrels. But the flavors worked well together, the beer won awards, and eventually the concept of barrel aging beer took off. Today, any brewery worth its salt is buying barrels and throwing beer into them.
Expert Opinion: Aging beer in barrels is a fun experiment for brewers, but what makes it work is how the flavors in the most popular barrel-aged beer styles—stout and barleywine—are complemented by time in barrels. While most experts agree that things have gotten a little out of hand (barrel-aged IPAs, anyone?) and that barrels will not magically make a marginal beer better, they don’t see any signs of this trend slowing down.