This is a west coast phenomenon, I’ve found the Midwest and east coast to have a lot more variety. It feels in Seattle like beer bars have a “token” stout in the same way that they have a single house wine. Hops must be what sells though.
Extremely hoppy beers aren't just a west coast thing, though; it seems there are a lot of bandwagon breweries that latch onto trends. 10 years ago it was 2k+ (yes, >2000) IBU IPAs, lately it's more sours. SF and Portland seem to be the epicenters.
I feel your comment about the "token" stout; I used to go to the Refuge (https://www.refugesc.com/) quite often but one of the reasons I stopped is because their beer list is so overwhelmingly Belgian and I just want a regular stout or porter now and again.
I'm increasingly suspicious that (typically) high relative ABV of high-IBU beers is a significant factor in influencing consumer choice, perhaps moreso than hops enthusiasts would like to admit.
I definitely do fast math of $ vs % alcohol and volume. It’s less that I want to be drunk and more of a “super size me” feeling, like I’m getting a better deal.
Bingo. It's to the point now where OG craft breweries are faced with cutting their once staple lines to replace them with IPAs. IPAs represent 26% of the craft beer market and its still growing.
IPAs may have originally flooded the craft beer market because they are easier to brew consistently and keep longer on the shelf. But they've rocketed to the top of the beer sales charts because the people who buy beer love hops.
People have been talking about the "next IPA" for years now. Yet there's no indication that another style is going to usurp them. In fact, it's somewhat the opposite, as other styles are being adapted into IPAs. Nobody has made a heffeweizen IPA yet, so I think there's still further to go.
Yeah, as a Michigan resident, the gp's criticism sounds like something that would have been said 10 - 12 years ago. Sours, lighter styles (session ales), spiced ales and other interesting variants are typically a lot more prominent on menus at hip breweries.
Even with a relatively interesting scene, my feeling is that beer has lost a certain amount of novelty and glamour around here. Bars are less central to young people's dating lives. It's more novel/fashionable to be a connoisseur of cocktails or marijuana strains. People are more healthy-oriented than ever, and beer is one of the more calorie-heavy ways of getting a buzz.
At this point, it might even just be an Oregon and Washington thing: if anything, it was the year of sours in BC. There are still breweries pumping out ten different IPAs, but most seem to have pulled back to a couple of core varieties and there's a bunch more experimentation going on up here.
I'll agree with this (or at least what I think you're implying).
The beer of northern New England is mostly driven by what tourists from Boston and NYC (more for Vermont than the other two) will shell out $10 for and a great many of those people want an IPA that you can patch the road with so that's what gets brewed. I can't comment on what things were like 10+yr ago since I wasn't paying attention to beer then.
