As our palates change, we sometimes mis-remember the past. We recall beers that impressed us with their aggressive flavors and wonder what happened to them. Poor Full Sail has weathered accusations of dumbing-down Amber for years. Of course they haven't; rather, after ten or fifteen imperial IPAs, it is the tasters' palates that change. But that's in the realm of the micro.
With the macros, it's a totally different ball game. Here's a clip I meant to post where Ken Grossman describes what happened.
If you remember a more flavorful Coors, your memory doesn't deceive. Twenty years ago, it was more flavorful. By the way, the flavor threshold for hops is somewhere in the range of 8 IBUs (it depends on the beer, obviously), which means that you can't taste any of the three hops used to brew "triple hops brewed" beer. At this point, hops are solely there to keep the beer from being too sweet--they add zero flavor.
The 08 IBU hops threshold of detectability is interesting/useful.
ReplyDeleteDo you support the ratio of IBU value divided by the parts-per-thousand of the Original Gravity [IBU/GU_ppm] as a valid metric of the maltiness or hoppiness of a beer? See
http://www.brewsupplies.com/_borders/hopsgraph.jpg
Interesting about how our perceived tastes change.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I had an Arrogant Bastard, I loved it! But was very strong. A sippable beer, not a gulper.
I had one last week for the first time in over a couple years and it tasted like just another ale. Still very good mind you, but not the strong short sipping ale I remember.