European beer is way better.
It took Europeans 30 years to recognize that great wine could be made outside of Europe, and likewise, it's just taking a long time to recognize that great beer is made outside of Europe. I love many great European beers (and with family living in Brussels, Italy, Germany, and Ireland I often have a chance to enjoy great European beer), but the ignorant stigma that America has bad beer is just so out of date it's laughable.
That North Americans are now proud of North American beer and evangelizing it is because so many people are uninformed, and it takes evangelizing to eventually get people to grasp reality.
For me it was more because every time anyone makes an "America has a great craft beer scene" post, it seems to be exclusively mentioning IPAs. Its good to hear that's not the case
I guess the US went through a phase where people discovered beers could be hoppy, so they went for all the hops briefly before things matured a bit?
Yeah, a lot of people mention IPAs because for about a decade, it's been the top selling craft beer style in the world. Most small brewers feel hobbled because they often
have to have a "premier American IPA" to stay afloat in their first couple of years. This has started to change over the last 2 or 3 years, but it's still generally true that without an American-style IPA, it can be difficult for small brewers to turn consistent profit.
But, that said, there is remarkable variety in craft beer simply because you have thousands and thousands of craft breweries. The number gets thrown out that there's 5,000 craft breweries, but there's likely much more than that, probably close to 7,000 officially open, pouring breweries, and then likely a thousand or more that don't have license to sell but can be served privately and at private functions (ticketed events).
The American IPA isn't going to be unseated as the king of craft beer stateside anytime soon, but there is so much variety, and many brewers keep on an IPA just because it's their most profitable beer, but they usually put their love into something else. But, even within that particular beer, there is so much variety in the category of 'American IPAs.' Your West Coast IPA is still very typically a malty, high hop, continentally hopped, typically strong, high gravity beer, but the East Coast IPA has become the low alcohol, tropical hop, low malt, 'juice' variety of the last 2 years, and there's maybe a dozen deviations across the continent just in those two distinct styles. While 10 years ago I loved that west coast style IPA (Stone, Green Flash, Sierra Nevada, etc), I really don't find them palatable anymore because I've been so used to drinking the East coast / north East / session variant that in a lot of cases I'd rather drink an 'extra pale lager' over your typical west coast IPA high malt, hop extreme beers.
