Have we reached Peak Craft?
Do we really need a vanilla IPA? Yes, I know, I should have known better, but there I was, studying the beers available in my local, and I spotted a new beer from Arbor , generally one of my go-to breweries. Trouble was, it was called Faked Alaska and the description explained that it was a vanilla IPA . I should have know it would be sweet, after all mango IPAs and milkshake IPAs did not get their names by accident. It tasted like a beer made with vanilla. And I did not enjoy it. The problem I have with vanilla IPAs, and the like - well, there are two - is my feeling that the craft beer quest for novelty has led us into places that, in my view, were best avoided. The second problem goes as follows. I like fruity but I don't really care for sweet and increasingly the line between the two grows very thin. Also, any pale beer that advertises itself as ice cream, milkshake, vanilla etc, is pretty much guaranteed to be sweet. It probably started off as fruity anyway so the uber- sweet