So you have three trends there:Our brewing focus is on the modern beer styles we love to drink, share and seek out. Top of the list are hazy and juicy hop-forward IPAs--big on flavour and low on bitterness. We also love brewing and drinking big pastry stouts that feature dessert-like flavours such as coffee, chocolate, coconut and maple syrup. We round out our lineup with fun and exploratory sour beers where we experiment with different flavour combinations through large fruit additions and other complimentary ingredients.
1. IPAs without the bitter
2. Sweet stouts with adjunct
3. Sours with lots of adjunct
Hazy IPAs have always struck me as things that appeal to people who like sweetness. No bitter, lots of citrusy notes, pushed to the extreme it honestly tastes more like orange juice than it does beer to me.
Pastry stouts are obviously all about sweetness. I find they generally leave behind a lot of the heat that an imperial Stout would bring to the party.
Heavily fruited sours are often more sweet than sour. Like if your beer is 50% fruit juice, is it still beer? Much like the hazy IPAs I feel like these often don't really have a beer flavour any more.
So the general trend, to me, is sweet beers that don't taste a whole lot like beer. By now you can probably tell from my tone that I'm not a fan. I liked the bitter note of a West coast IPA, the heat of an IS and the tartness of a traditional sour.
I know there's also a trend going towards lagers. I'm half expecting that to expand to traditional ale styles in the next few years. British and Belgian styles are due for a comeback.