This month I am encouraging everyone to join me in 30 days of IPA-free drinking. Let all those who see my words heed the call and take part in the first annual NoIPApril. Want to participate? It’s easy. Simply drink other styles of beer for the entirety of April.*

Why? IPAs have simply become too easy. They’re easy to find, they’re easy to drink, they’re easy to select. Walk into any bar, brewery, or taproom and you are sure to find one; more often than not you’l have several iterations to choose from. For general purposes I take no issue with this. They’re big and tasty and can encompass a wide range of flavor profiles. But they have also become the de facto choice for craft beer enthusiast across the country. While I celebrate the search for a beer containing enough hops to pull the teeth out of your head, a month off will be a marvelous thing.

Moreover, it will reaffirm why you started drinking craft beer in the first place: the choices. After cutting your teeth on fizzy yellow lawnmower beers, the craft beer movement showed that you can get a buzz on and discover something completely new. Realizing beer could taste like something other than Budweiser was profound and it drove the hunt for evermore new taste sensations. So this month, rather than scanning menus and boards for the IPA with the highest ABV or a clever name, eschew them altogether. Pick a style you normally wouldn’t. Branch the fuck out. Give your overwhelmed palate a break and use this opportunity to embrace subtlety and nuance. Seek out some Old World Styles. Try that blonde you’ve been ignoring. Delve into different yeast strains and get into Belgians, Bretts or some kind of mixed fermentation brews. There is so much beer out there that isn’t loaded with lupulin, and every bit as delicious. You just have to open yourself up to it.

Times might get tough during NoIPApril and you’ll likely find yourself needing a piney, resinous hit of the good stuff. Fear not! This doesn’t require you to forsake hops altogether, merely one particular vehicle for them. Need to feed that IBU addicted monkey on your back? Get a hop-forward pale ale. A hoppy wheat. A hoppy red, a hoppy amber, and so on. Hops are plentiful in enough other styles of beer that even in IPA’s absence you can get your fix.

Think you like IPAs now? Wait until you’ve given them up for thirty days. Come May 1 you’ll find yourself embraced in their loving, bitter arms once again, and your relationship will be that much stronger as a result. That time you bought a shelf-turd with faded, muddied flavors? All in the past! Remember when you opened that ill-advised 11% triple IPA bomber at the end of the night and woke up wanting to die? Forgotten! The two of you now have the rest of the year to become reacquainted and grow to love each other even more. If you love something, let it go they say, despite the uncertainty of its return. No worries here. You know exactly when IPAs will be back.

We all love IPAs. It is the craft beer style of choice and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. And I’m not here to encourage such a thing. But the other shoe is always waiting to drop. Tastes will change, styles will come in and out of favor. Sooner or later brewers will move on and something else will occupy 8 out of 12 taps you have to choose from. Start preparing now. Open your heart and mouth to something new. The possibilities are endless, but to experience them you might need to close the door on something else, if only for a month.

So join me, friends, and say no to IPAs. The sacrifice will be great and so to will the rewards.

*As with any rule, there are exceptions. If you need to taste IPAs for work, go right ahead. If you are at a festival, indulge. Come across something rare? Don’t pass on the opportunity to try it. If someone who doesn’t know about NoIPApril buys you a nice hoppy DIPA, drink it; good brewdiligence doesn’t mean you have be to rude. Beyond those circumstances, however, once you’ve read this you are bound by blood to comply with the month’s restrictions. Harsh penalties will be levied on anyone found in violation of the rules.