I don't get the over hopped beer thing. I never understood the I gotta have a few slugs so my throat will be numb so I can taste the beer process. Like any other fashion, someone is always upping the ante to make it a little more of whatever it is and there's always some fool fawning over the new "thing". Sours, wheats, fruits, over hopped, it's beer. Let it taste like beer.
It's the X-TREME!!!!! mentality. Our wines have high alcohol content. People eat Ghost Peppers and other hot shit that reaches absurdity in some kind of misguided macho deal. People pile jalapeños on top of burgers till they puke. People insist on drinking whisky straight even though water has been used with it forever as part of the experience of enjoying it. Everybody wants things XTREME!
When my son was still in the states, he worked at a wine bar down in New Orleans. His boss had this thing about insisting that, relative to French, California wines were just too strong. Interesting but too strong.
The IPA craze has been mildly interesting to watch but extreme in the sense of crowding out other types at your average supermarket liquor frig. India, Single, Double, TRIPLE! WHEW! I thot Maximus kinda said it all. Strong shit for beer (I know, ale)..
It has blown over thankfully as people try the sours and other stuff. But still, now sour kind or replaced hoppy in terms of EXTREME!
For me, I have gone some weird kind of full circle back to really like actual German and Czech beers. There are some really interesting dunkels, doppelbocks and weissbiers and stuff. I wish they weren't so expensive. If you ever get a chance to taste Lev beers from Czech Republic, they are delicious.
The best ale I ever had was from Andechs, one of those monastery beers. It was at a restaurant in Berlin and was a limited draft only run and I can't even remember but it was somehow a a normally dark beer (I wanna say doppelbock) but pale or white or what-have-you. Goddam it was good.
I want a flavor range, not an extreme single aspect. Not that fond of Belgian beers because they taste like dried flowers or scorched honey or something. Way over the straight hops thing but I still will drink Racer whatever or even good ol Lagunitas for just normal. Germans like sour beer, but they mix it with an herb-ade or lemonade in the summer. Berliner-Weisse. I actually had a bottle of the syrup at home, it's made out of some forest herb but it may have gotten chucked because I bought it five years ago. I remember trying to buy a sour beer to go with it, but everything here was damned expensive, like that sour beer place in Berkeley. Whole Foods had a bottle of sour beer, it was SIX bucks a bottle, something like 1814 or 1826 referring to some notable year.