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Tomorrow is IPA Day, a global marker for craft beer’s most beloved and iconic style. And it is reflective of where the craft beer industry is nowadays that less people will be celebrating it than ever before.
Founded back in 2011 by Ashley Routson, along with Ryan Ross, IPA Day quickly became a social media event that was embraced craft beer lovers and industry professionals around the world.
Those kind of things seemed like stupid fun back then when the craft beer biz was more youthful and everyone was in love with high-octane IPAs.
IPA Day 2019 finds a profoundly different craft beer landscape. Fewer breweries are bothering to celebrate it. And even the kind IPAs that consumers are gravitating to have changed.
When Routson got things rolling back in 2011 the IPA was craft beer, particularly what had become known as the West Coast IPA, those high ABV, abundantly hopped brews that captured the imagination of a nation.
Flash forward to 2019 and even though the industry is still cranking out West Coast IPA’s, beers like Stone Ruination have been overshadowed by the New England/Hazy IPA phenomenon that the Alchemist’s Heady Topper brought to the fore.
America’s infatuation with higher and higher IBU counts has given way to new juicy IPA variations that play down the bitterness that craft beer consumers have clearly burnt out on.
In 2011 most of these IPA’s came bottles, and today it’s just as common to see them in cans.
Back when IPA Day first launched big Imperial IPA’s in 22oz “bomber’ bottles lined retail shelves. Now that packaging configuration is disappearing along with the term ”Imperial” which is now more often referred to as called a Double IPA.
2019 finds IPA Day barely acknowledged by the beer press, trade organizations and breweries that once celebrated it widely. With craft beer’s momentum slowing the business has gotten more considerably more sober and events like IPA Day probably strike many as both juvenile and naïve nowadays.
In 2011 there were 1,989 craft breweries operating in the US. Today that number is more like 7,500 with reports of brewery closures on the rise….
Even though the IPA remains craft beer’s dominant style, brewers are returning to lagers in droves, crafting beers that they hope can compete in the low-carb, low-alcohol, and lesser calorie Michelob Ultra realm.
And in today’s increasingly competitive craft beer environment more brewers are hunkering down and celebrating events like IPA Day less, if they want to survive.
