Vermont has phenomenal beers if you like hoppy IPAs. Besides being a very fun city, most bars in Burlington, VT carry beers from the local breweries around there: Lawson's (Sip of Sunshine), the Alchemist (Heady Topper), Fourteenth Star (Tribute), Zero Gravity, Hill Farmstead, and more.
If you ever end up in MA, Tree House is worth checking out and has 4 of the top 20 beers on Untappd right now. Vitamin Sea in Weymouth, MA is also very good if you're closer to the coast.
They do in a town with a decent craft scene. It's just the new places don't always have their cleanliness protocols on lock after scaling up from their garage and a super hoppy IPA can hide a lot of off notes. Run far away fom a new place that opens with only six IPAs and no other styles; they're hiding some grossness.
In Denver off the top of my head, Hogshead specializes in cask, Prost brews most of their beers according to Reinheitsgebot, Crooked Stave specializes in wild yeast sours. There's a bunch of others too.
Nowadays my go-to beers are either my local places with no/limited distribution or grabbing a pint or two at some random place while out of town, so it's kinda hard to give specific, actionable, recommendations.
"New England" IPAs aren't overly hopped, have more of a citrus character, and are not as astringent as classic IPAs. I don't like super-hopped beers, but I like NEIPAs. But they're definitely "trendy" at the moment.
New England is much more heavily influenced by Ireland and the UK, and I think that's why we don't get many good examples of continental styles around here. I also suspect that a lot of people who move from a brewing hobby to a brewing business have a lot more experience with ales, and less experience with lagers.
I've never had an excellent hefeweizen made outside of Germany.
NEIPAs are by definition excessively hopped, it's just mostly (if not all) dry hops that impart the aromas you described instead of bitterness that's associated with classic IPAs.
If you ever end up in MA, Tree House is worth checking out and has 4 of the top 20 beers on Untappd right now. Vitamin Sea in Weymouth, MA is also very good if you're closer to the coast.