Sorry, hop haters, but IPA rules. Period.
Every year, during November, Beveridge Place Pub conducts a tournament-style people’s choice competition to determine which IPA will serve as the house IPA for the upcoming year. During the preliminary round, which just concluded, the pub’s patrons tasted their way through dozens of Washington-brewed IPAs, with several of them on tap each day. A rotating selection. Each person can cast one ballot per day for their favorite. Now, the prelims are done, the votes have been counted and it’s tournament time.
Beveridge Place Pub just announced the elite eight. Visit the pub, get a taster tray, sample each beer and vote for your favorite. One of these eight beers will serve as the always-on-tap IPA at the pub for 2026. It’s an honor and it’s quite a lot of guaranteed keg sales. The final eight contestants are listed below, by brewery name.
- Bale Breaker Brewing
- Flying Lion Brewing
- Future Primitive Brewing
- Georgetown Brewing
- The Good Society Brewery
- Reuben’s Brews
- Rooftop Brewing Company
- Trap Door Brewing
Voting continues through the end of the month. The pub will announce the winner at the annual IPA Cask-O-Rama event on Friday, December 5th. The event features nine casks of Washington-brewed IPAs lined up on the bar. At 7:00, they’ll announce the Hopvemberfest winner.
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The enduring importance of IPA
I don’t say this because I’m an IPA lover myself. I say this because it’s true. Hop-hating contrarians who despise IPA might cry into their saisons and imperial stouts when I say it, but IPA is still hugely popular and hugely important in the craft beer industry. Yes, pilsner and other styles of light lagers have made significant headway lately, but IPA still dominates. For most craft breweries, IPA is what puts supper on the table.
Don’t believe me? In 2024, IPA remained the top style by a long shot. IPA accounted for about half of craft beer retail sales. According to Circana, which tracks this kind of stuff, IPA enjoyed a 49.41% share of craft beer sales (dollars) at off-premise retailers. That’s a remarkable number given the broad selection of styles available to craft beer shoppers these days.
Although that number (49.41%) is based on retail sales, ask a bartender at your local beer-focused bar or brewery taproom, like Beveridge Place Pub, and they’ll confirm that IPA still dominates. So yeah, get over it. IPA still rules. It is the style that built the industry we know today and it continues to dominate.
Fuel for growth and success
Between 2008 and 2018, the number of breweries in Washington state grew from about 100 to over 400. At the same time, growth across the nation outpaced even those remarkable numbers, from about 1,500 breweries in 2008 to about 6,700 breweries in 2018. Today, nationwide, we have about 9,000 breweries. We now seem to have plateaued, but over that period of remarkable growth, IPA skyrocketed in popularity.
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If you were there, you saw it with your own eyes. In 2005, we were drinking porters, ambers, pale ales, and IPAs. By 2015, we were awash in a sea of IPA and all those other styles had taken a back seat, not because breweries forced IPA down our throats, but because it emerged as the people’s choice.
It could be argued that the rising popularity of IPA fueled the industry’s growth. It could be argued that the rising popularity of craft beer drove the popularity of IPA. It’s a chicken-or-egg thing. Doesn’t matter. It happened.
It’s something to think about as you sip your next IPA. Head to the Beveridge Place Pub before the month ends, enjoy some of Washington’s best brews, cast your ballot, and embrace the goodness that is IPA.
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