IPA and the rise of over-hopped beers

To me, good beer is good beer. And while I have preferences of style and season, a good beer will always be, to me, a good beer. But beer has waves of popularity, and while it's enjoyable to be in the middle of a craft beer revolution currently that can be polarising. I'm not just talking about the hipster "I was drinking it before it was cool" attitude either.

There is a genuine case to be made for bandwagoning in the beer world. Commercial, Micro and Nano breweries can be guilty of it, but its an accurate observation that there seem to be a heck of a lot of Pale Ales out there at the moment.

Like every other type of beer, there is both good and bad Pale Ale, and that comes down to both preference and craft. The trend with Pale Ales in general, and IPA's in particular is to throw a ton of late addition hops into the mix, giving a sometimes floral, sometimes fruity, sometimes bitter flavour. Again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but again it's accurate to point out that it's happening a lot. It used to be that every brewery worth it's salt had a dark ale, then it was wheat beer, and now it's Pale Ale, what's next who knows (I'm hoping for Lambic, but I don't see that as being likely).

Regardless, it's easy to make the call that there are too many over hopped beers around (and the current "big hop Pilsner" isn't helping things) but as long and people are drinking and enjoying them then where's the harm? If a bunch of would be brewers are inspired to mix malt, wheat, hops and water to yeast because they happened to like some high-hop brew then I say "great" more beer is only going to be better for the craft and the industry.

Beer and Advertising

It's a divisive subject, especially in craft beer circles but the reality of the commercial beer world is that there are large budgets and therefore some of the best creative advertising is for beer. Ethically is it right? Well in a free consumer market, technically it's consumers choice, however in reality advertisers use subtle and inventive ways to make their products more appealing. The same can be said for most consumer products, but the results with beer are so often breathtaking!

The offshoot of this is that the creative stakes in beer advertising are high. Accounts are fought for and creative's put some of their best ideas into beautiful explorations of ideas.

Here are some stunners

http://10steps.sg/inspirations/artworks/75-creative-and-humorous-beer-ads/