I wonder if there is a growing influence from the American craft brew scene back onto Europe. Last time I was in Italy I went to a place that made their own "American IPA".
I'm not a beer historian but I think the American craft beer scene is a 'thing' because home brewing was legalized in 1978 and it took this long for a fabric of breweries in the US to develop to mirror what already existed in Europe or any other country.
I think the influence of American IPA is quite limited and only adding to the selection rather than altering how others do anything ("influence"). That said, Duvel has a triple hop beer which tastes awful, so maybe I'm wrong and the hop fetishism is contagious.
Duvel triple hop is, indeed, vile, but there are other Belgian breweries that are taking on the IPA and doing an outstanding job of it; Brussels Beer project comes to mind immediately, but I'm sure that there are others. I'd take a BBP Delta IPA or Dark Sister over nearly any American IPA.
That said, the IPA style was originally British; it's called an "India" pale ale because they added a ton of extra hops to preserve the beer well enough to make the trip to India. It then got brought to the US, who picked a metric (IBU) and optimized it beyond repair, and the American take on IPA has certainly made it back to the UK (e.g., a good half of Brewdog's repertoire)
Austria has good beer, but here in Oregon there is a far larger variety. 40 years ago, Austrian beer was probably as good as it is now, but American beer was probably worse (I wasn't exactly of drinking age then), and there was far less variety.
Those are just from London breweries! American-style beers are so big in the UK now that CAMRA, the national beer association (think the NRA but for beer?) have had to change their definition of what real beer is, after many years of fighting against the invaders.
Definitely. Walk the beer mile in London and you'll find a bunch of places that don't even feel especially British and would be perfectly confusible with an American microbrewery. No cask ale, no bitter. A lot of NEIPA, kettle sours with fruit, etc.
