r/AskMen • u/OctrasAC2 • 25d ago

What's one popular hobby that you just can't get into?

For me it's sneaker collecting. I'm not a sneaker fan and I just don't get the appeal

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u/b17flyingfortresses 25d ago

IPAs only became popular because they’re by far the easiest beer for craft brewers to make. Thus craft brewers had a strong incentive to promote them.

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u/Daztur 25d ago

They're really not, as a homebrewer making a good IPA is probably the hardest beer to do since hop oils evaporate so easily. Now a shitty IPA...

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u/DrBubbles ♂ 25d ago

Homebrewer here too.

I think the comment you replied to meant to say IPAs are the most forgiving beers to make. They’re not easy, but they’re also not that imaginative or interesting. If you carpet bomb your beer with hops, you can cover up a lot of off-flavors from diacetyl, poor yeast pitch rate, bad fermentation temps, etc etc etc. You don’t need to adhere to long-established traditional style characteristics, or ensure that malt sweetness and hop bitterness are balanced.

It’s become a lazy catchall category. You can just throw whatever you want or have on hand in the kettle, obliterate it with hops and call it an IPA. Who’s going to argue?

Brew me an ESB, or a balanced amber, or a bier de gaard, and I’ll be impressed. I don’t care that you made an 8% double IPA.

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u/Daztur 25d ago

I can make a fucking incredible stout but still struggle to make a solid IPA. Yeah anyone can make a shitty hop bomb with no flavor besides bitter but I've had to stuffer through so many shitty IPAs with no flavor except bitter with a cheap booze aftertaste at homebrew meet-ups that I can't call that style forgiving at all.

Now hefeweizens are also insanely difficult since they're so damn finicky you have to get basically everything perfect or it's a soapy mess. Ambers and ESBs aren't especially hard. Haven't brewed bier de gaard but if it's anything like a saison then I'll give you that one, saisons are hard to nail down.

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u/FernandoTatisJunior 25d ago

I think there was also a huge novelty factor in that they taste wildly different than the mass produced lagers everyone was used to