I’ve been lazy with my Hop Press blog recently but I’m back on it this week. Essentially it’s a re-hashing of a blog which I wrote early last year (an important post which made me realise that beer was more than just a taste experience) with a few tweaks. It’s about how bitterness is innately a warning of poison and how this increases the enjoyment of hoppy beers.
What do you think? Am I a bit crazy here or is there something addictive about big hops that keeps you going back for more? That smack of bitterness which craves sweetness - the unending cycle of drinking for pleasure and ‘pain’ that makes a great IPA.
I have to admit I disagree about big hoppy beers being addictive, I think they are more of a phase that we all go through as we discover exactly what beer can be, but then we find a few styles that we really like and pretty much make those our go to beers, mine for example are stout, best bitter and bohemian pilsners.
ReplyDeleteI think it's more to do with the first time you taste one of those big hoppy beers. After my first trip to the West Coast of the US, for months afterwards I'd wake up tasting C-hops. Up to that trip, I'd never experienced them, and I was dreaming them.
ReplyDeleteAfter a while the effect wore off, until somebody bought me a bottle of Great Divide Titan, which started me off all over again...
I tend to agree with the guys above. My affair with hops waxes and wanes. Before I left Ireland I reckon I was a definite hop head, but moving to Germany meant the only really hop driven beers I could get were the ones I made myself. I felt that my tastes became more... refined? Wrong word maybe, but I was certainly appreciating more subtle flavours, as that's what many German beers are made of. But a bit like Sid, whenever I make a trip to the California, or stumble across some hop bomb on a trip to Brussels, it gives me a craving all over again, and then I start brewing IPAs :D
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