We Asked 16 Beer Professionals: What’s the Most Overrated Beer Style? (2025)
As the beer industry continues to evolve to meet the needs of an ever-changing market, it’s important to reflect on the elements of beer that remain consistent. A well-made beer is still delicious. Drinking a cold one on a hot day remains uniquely refreshing. Knocking back a couple brews with friends will always be an excellent way to strengthen bonds and build new memories. These touchstones will exist as long as brewers continue to pump out cans and bottles, and they act as calm amid marketplace chaos.
Beer is also fertile ground for spirited debate — another tenet that’s theoretically as eternal as drinking itself. One of the more prominent starting points for such banter involves the myriad options in the marketplace. While a specific style may be highly popular among some beer enthusiasts, there will always be detractors proclaiming it overrated and lamenting that its popularity comes at the expense of the beer styles they prefer.
Determining what’s considered overrated can be somewhat tricky. After all, the interests that tend to drive market trends come and go, so what’s overrated now may not have been considered such a year ago. With that in mind, we asked 16 beer professionals to name their most overrated beer styles for 2025. Their answers don’t mean the style they choose is bad. Rather, the style — and potential hype surrounding it — is simply not for them.
The most overrated beer styles for 2025, according to brewers:
NA Beer
Lagers made with imported malts
Celebrity light lagers
Wild and sour ales
Triple IPAs
Hazy IPAs
Over-hopped IPAs
“Czech” lagers
Lagers
Over-viscous sours and IPAs
Beers overusing ingredients
“The most overrated beer style for 2025 is NA beer, and the reason why has nothing to do with health. Most NA beers on the market are poor representatives of craft beer. They’re simply not good. If the drinking public becomes satisfied drinking NA beers because it is the trendy thing to do, then the craft beer industry will be judged by this criteria instead of being judged on pushing the boundaries of creativity and quality. This hurts all of us committed to top-quality beer.” —Gary Rogers, founder/chief of business operations, True North Ale Company, Ipswich, Mass.
“Lagers made with imported malts, period. We’ve seen so many incredible craft maltsters in this country put out incredible barley malt and adjuncts in the last decade, and that has allowed us to help revive the beauty and mystery of terroir in beer here in the states. Our hope is more breweries will embrace the distinction these ingredients can provide while still paying homage to the international styles that we aspire to create.” —Jonny Ifergan, co-founder/lead brewer, Niteglow Beer Company, Brooklyn
“Celebrity light lagers. It’s a cash grab situation — one where I think most celebrities will be disappointed in the lack of cash [they’ll receive]. These kinds of products lack substance and clog up shelf space. I guess I’m mostly jealous that nobody wants a cardboard cut-out of me in their store.” —Chase Healey, brewer/co-owner, American Solera, Tulsa, Okla.
“I’d say that the most overrated one is the one that you’re drinking at your house, by yourself, while you’re doomscrolling and zoning out on Netflix. So lame. Beer is social. Beer has a long history. Go to a brewery taproom, order a beer style you’ve never heard of, talk to a stranger, and ask the bartender beer questions when they’re not busy. They probably know more than you and are happy to pass along nuggets of beer wisdom. And have a draft beer! It’s delicious, beautiful art, and you probably don’t have a draft system at your house, right? Extra credit: Find a spot with a Lukr faucet and get a Mlíko pour. You won’t regret it.” —Heather McReynolds, Northeast craft sales, Hopsteiner, NYC
“I would have to say wild and sour ales are overrated. First, they take way too much time to make — imagine how much good beer could have been made in the interim? Second, they’re kind of gross. Who really wants to drink something that smells like a goat barn? And third, they cost way too much. Think of all the good beer you could have bought with that $20 you spent on one bottle.” —Jeffrey Stuffings, co-founder, Jester King Brewery, Austin
“In my experience, the majority of triple IPAs suffer from issues such as off-flavors caused by over-stressed yeast, intense hop burn from excessive dry hopping, and astringency from over-extraction. While it’s fine to appreciate a style that is inherently unbalanced, the fact that these flaws are being regularly overlooked within the style shows that triple IPA remains one of the most overrated beer styles out there, even in 2025.” —Daniel Gadala-Maria, head brewer, Finback Brewery, Glendale, N.Y.
“Hazy IPA is one of two most overrated beer styles in my opinion (the second being fruited blonde ales). Yes, hazies are a great way to showcase hops but honestly there is zero skill needed to brew this beer and most of them taste the same. If you want to truly know how great of a brewer you are or the cleanliness of the brewery you’re drinking at, try making a crystal clear lager that isn’t overflowing with off-flavors.” —Erica Sorenseon, head brewer, Wandering Leaf Brewing Co., St. Paul, Minn.
“The most overrated beer style for me this year was over-hopped IPAs. Once you get more than four hop varieties [in a beer], everything just gets kind of murky and I’m just tasting general hop flavor rather than specific hop characteristics. As a brewer, it’s super exciting to consider the amount of ingredients we have at our disposal today. However, I think editing yourself to find that balance between simplicity and pushing the envelope is really important.” —Mike Bracco, brewer, FlyteCo Brewing, Denver
“‘Czech’ lagers. I enjoy Czech lagers, and although there are many brewers brewing them with respect to the Czech tradition, there are many others simply jumping on the bandwagon. Many bad iterations of Czech styles have come from brewers looking at what others are making and simply throwing together their own version without doing any research into what differentiates it from other lagers. To truly honor these Czech beer styles, brewers making these types of beers should utilize Czech brewing methods and Czech ingredients, not simply pouring a beer through a specific faucet.” —Kyle Wolak, co-owner/brewer, Carbon Copy, Philadelphia
“When it comes to overrated beer, it’s not just a style — it’s how we choose beer. The real overrated move is basing every purchase and opinion on Untappd scores. That 4.4 beer you hunted down — do you even like it, or just the number next to it? Let’s swap some labels, do blind tastings, and see what happens. You might surprise yourself.” —Emily Brown, beverage director, Andy’s Pizza, Washington, D.C.
“Modern ‘sour ales.’ I can make a case for liking something about any type of fermented malt beverage, except non-traditionally soured beer. Perhaps my biggest complaint about the style is simply that it derailed the success of traditional wild ales, which, when fermented with mixed cultures and aged appropriately in wood, are among the most gorgeous beers ever to be made. Sadly, they come with risk, cost, and storage needs. And thus bloomed these easy-button options, and with them, the death of the hard way. Customers no longer wanted to pay for [wild ales] when ‘sour beer’ was so accessible otherwise. RIP.” —Doug Reiser, founder and COO, Burial Beer Co., Asheville, N.C.
“I was tempted to list double IPA’s as the most overrated beer style for 2025, but there are some truly outstanding examples that show finesse and balance between hop bitterness, alcohol, and overall flavor. That said, I’m hard pressed to think of many triple IPA’s that can maintain that balance when clocking in at 10 percent-plus ABV. Further, though some of them hold big scores on the rating sites, this style seems to have fallen out of favor with the greater beer-drinking public as they don’t provide what I consider as one of the most fundamental parts of a beer — refreshment!” —David Hitchner, owner, ABC Beer Co., NYC
“At the risk of impacting sales at the very brewery I represent, I have to go with lagers. Look, I love lagers. And yeah, it’s a category and not a specific style. We also happen to make a lot of them. But their emergence has led to many lifeless interpretations, i.e. macro riffs with none of the cultural weight or iconicism that inform their inspiration. Making lagers — like hazy IPA, huge stouts, and American wild ales before them — has become shorthand for ‘hey, we’re cool,’ which as an animating force undermines the whole idea of craft.” —Jake Guidry, brand director, Hopewell Brewing Co., Chicago
“The most overrated style in my opinion is the gloopy, under-attenuated slushy sour or milkshake IPA. Bonus points if they’re packaged in a can that explodes when it’s not refrigerated. It seems as though cloyingly sweet, chunky beers have been fading away in recent years, so I’m not sure how popular they’ll be in 2025. All I know is they’re still out there and I’m not a fan of the style or standard for quality control.” —Tyler March, co-founder/head of operations, Wild East Brewing, Brooklyn
“The overuse of ingredients is overrated for me. There are really good and really boring versions of every style of beer out there, but what bothers me most about the overly dry-hopped IPAs is the same thing that bothers me about a lot of pastry stouts or even some fruited sours: the conspicuous consumption and kind of lazy use of ingredients.” —Sarah Real, owner/head brewer, Hot Plate Brewing Co., Pittsfield, Mass.
“For the first time in 20 years, there have been more craft breweries closing their doors than opening. With that in mind, I don’t think there are really any ‘overrated’ beer styles out there at this point in the craft beer scene because a lot of breweries are just brewing beers they’ve had success with to keep their heads above water. If you went back to 2015 when the craft beer industry was booming and there were a lot of breweries making ‘hype’ beers and trying to stand out from the crowd, you could argue that styles like pastry stouts, 10-pounds-per-barrel dry-hopped double hazy IPAs, or kettle sours would be ‘overrated.’ Nowadays, the fact that people are even buying craft beer is a good thing regardless of the beer style.” —Trevor Walls, chief brewing officer, Brewery X, Anaheim, Calif.
*Image retrieved from เลิศลักษณ์ ทิพชัย via stock.adobe.com
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