So last weekend I had a couple bottles of Singlecut softly spoken magic spell. It was great! I compared it to Tree House IPAs. I bought a case. After the 4th one it started to lose that beer-mimosa quality that I loved. I thought buy a case may have been a mistake. Today I had a not-great DIPA a friend recommended. It really was not good. Afterwards I cracked a Singlecut and, you guessed it, it was great again! Does drinking a lot of great beer "spoil" your palate? I had a couple Maine beers and some Surly over the last few days but that bad beer REALLY brought the Singlecut to life again. Thoughts?
If you pound your taste buds and sense of smell a lot and hard they lose their ability to respond. So the flavors fade and the beer becomes less "great." For a reboot a "bad" beer isn't necessary, but a change can help. Next time try having water and unsalted crackers between each of the 4 bottles and see what happens.
I don't know enough about beer to say why, but some very tasty brews seem best in ones and twos and others become better with each successive one.
I think anybody gets fatigued after their fourth of the same beer. You don't have to drink something gross to cleanse your palate, just either go really slow or drink something else in between to give your sensory organs a chance to chill. Probably your good beer would have tasted just as fine the next day without suffering through a nasty beer.
There's a question mark so that's not an assertion but from experience, yes definitely. Just like for wine or food, when you're accustomed or used to quality stuffs, it feels awkward to go back to McDonald's and Heineken.
I like going back to "average" beers like Fat Tire and Odell 90 Shilling every once in a while to re-orient my taste buds and prevent hop fatigue. Plus, there's nothing wrong with a 90 Shilling.
I've found that a day of riding, and consequently, a day of eating sugary gels, sports drinks and other energy foods makes hoppy beers significantly more bitter for a few days. Sometimes to the point that even one of something like Troegs Perpetual is more than enough.
First read this as palate robot and got kind of excited. Would be great to have an objective machine reviewing beers. A lot of the hot IPA makers would hate it though.
