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I'm not a beer historian but I think the American craft beer scene is a 'thing' because home brewing was legalized in 1978 and it took this long for a fabric of
by fnord123 7y ago
I'm not a beer historian but I think the American craft beer scene is a 'thing' because home brewing was legalized in 1978 and it took this long for a fabric of breweries in the US to develop to mirror what already existed in Europe or any other country.
I think the influence of American IPA is quite limited and only adding to the selection rather than altering how others do anything ("influence"). That said, Duvel has a triple hop beer which tastes awful, so maybe I'm wrong and the hop fetishism is contagious.
- davidw 7y agoAustria has good beer, but here in Oregon there is a far larger variety. 40 years ago, Austrian beer was probably as good as it is now, but American beer was probably worse (I wasn't exactly of drinking age then), and there was far less variety.
- thequux 7y agoDuvel triple hop is, indeed, vile, but there are other Belgian breweries that are taking on the IPA and doing an outstanding job of it; Brussels Beer project comes to mind immediately, but I'm sure that there are others. I'd take a BBP Delta IPA or Dark Sister over nearly any American IPA. That said, the IPA style was originally British; it's called an "India" pale ale because they added a ton of extra hops to preserve the beer well enough to make the trip to India. It then got brought to the US, who picked a metric (IBU) and optimized it beyond repair, and the American take on IPA has certainly made it back to the UK (e.g., a good half of Brewdog's repertoire)
- fnord123 7y agoThey stopped making Dark Sister. And that was more in line with an English Porter.