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Last weekend, a tweet about IPAs went viral, once again highlighting a central tension between craft breweries and casual drinkers that has caused both parties figurative and potentially literal heartburn since time immemorial. (Or at least like 2014 or so.) Namely: despite promising consumers better beer variety, quality, and innovation, the craft brewing industry sure seems pretty fixated on India pale ale, a style of beer that many people simply don’t enjoy.

But here’s the thing: for every one person Mad Online™ about the lack of crushable craft pilsners available at their local brewery, there are like, 4-5 people ready, willing, and able to pay top dollar for the haziest, juiciest, hop-forwardest IPA on offer. IPAs sell very well! It’s a documented fact! Many brewers and craft beer enthusiasts—many of whom are aging, and whose palates/esophagi have been absolutely torched by years of hop burn to the point that lagers are all they can really handle—find this reality annoying and deeply limiting. But breweries have to pay the bills like everyone else, and double-dry-hopped whatever-the-fuck is typically going to sell better, faster, and for more money than… well, pretty much anything else in the wide world o’ fermentables.

In some ways, this is a version of that virgin-vs.-Chad or “they don’t know” meme formulation: a sophisticated, neglected devotee completely overshadowed by a coarser consumer whose straightforward taste and profligate spending simply must be accommodated. It’s also just a good reminder that Reinheitsgebot-humpers on Beer Twitter braying about the subtle coriander glories of Allagash White (or whatever) are not a good representation of the U.S. beer market at large. There are plenty of niches for savvy, specialized brewers to capitalize on—just ask Friend of Fingers Bryan Roth—but for now, America’s volume drinkers still love them some IPAs. Sorry if this offends!

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🧾 The Settle-Up

• Alco-llaborations Are Everywhere. I Blame, Also Absolve Myself in This Story

• You Already Knew Minneapolis Was A Craft Beverage Labor Hotbed; What Will Organizers Do During Craft Beer’s Biggest Conference?

• Craft Beer’s Carbon Footprint: It’s Big!

• If I Were Going to Resurrect A Venerable Beer Publication, I Simply Would Have Done It On Easter, But I’m Different

• But Not As Big As Poland Springs’ Parent Company’s, Which They’re Barely Even Pretending to Care About At This Point

• If You Weren’t Jokerfied Yet, This Story About Pornographically Expensive Painted Pappy Bottles Should Do Trick

• Teamsters at Boston’s Burke Distribution Authorize Strike as Contract Negotiations Stall

• “Foreign Alcohol Conglomerate Urges Major Economy to Drop Foreign Alcohol Tax: More at 11”

• Behold: The Greek Yogurt Byproduct-to-Hard Seltzer Pipeline

• Heaven Hill to Build $135M Distillery in Bardstown; Will It Be Union?

• “Should You Buy Wine NFTs?” Asks Bloomberg, To Which I Say: Aren’t You Supposed to Tell Us, Bloomberg?

• The Bored Ape x BlockBar x Monkey Shoulder Scotch Collab Is… Something, I Guess?

• OR Alcohol Watchdog Pushes Back Against Senator’s Booze-By-Mail Plan, Mirroring National Battleground

• Would You Get A Devils Backbone Tat for Just One Year of Beer? Yeah Me Either

• Bonus: Kate Bernot (Good Beer Hunting, Craft Beer & Brewing) Jess Infante (Brewbound), and I discussing a lot of these headlines on our most recent Twitter Spaces session of Beer Byliners, which you can listen back to here!

📲 The best Fingers meme ever and/or lately

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