The Lupulin Shift

no it's just the beer isn't as good this year

 

Absolutely! I hated IPA's when I first got into beers. As this shift occurred, I gained that tolerance and palate maturity and actually started enjoying the flavors. Now, almost all of the beers I drink have a nice hit of bitterness.

I think its a combination of palate maturation and an overall increase in tolerance. In terms of maturation, I now can pick out specific hop varietals and flavors that I find appealing. When I first started, all I could taste was bitterness. This speaks to the maturation over simply a tolerance. However, in terms of tolerance, beers that I once found bitter aren't anymore. One of my first "bitter" beers was SNPA. Today, I don't get really any bitterness in this beer, and I think it is actually very malt-forward. This speaks to the tolerance aspect.

 

I dunno if I understand Maturing palate... because if i stay away from IPAs for a long time, the bitterniss bite comes back. what would that be? an immaturing palate? makes no sense

 

Totally. I feel like you see the same thing in wine and coffee. A dry wine is offensive at first and reminiscent of whatever cheap swill they offered up at communion when you were 8, but as you drink more and more off it, you can move into semi dry and full-on tongue grabbing dry.

I'm sure there are diminishing returns and that at some point, adding more hops provides at best a barely noticeable gain, and maybe the notes will become disjointed and too "busy" like a homebrew with 15 different hops added at various late and post additions. I think it's kind of a tricky conversation though because for so long hops have been equated with bitterness and we're starting to really figure out how many great things we get from late/post boil additions. It's more exciting to think of all the beautiful hop combinations we aren't exploring yet along with all of the future hops we'll breed/discover! Next week I'm going to try to brew something hoppy with various additions of El Dorado, Azacca, and Mandarina Bavaria!

I used to drink almost exclusively amber and brown ales, regarding IPAs as this bitter, narrowly focused, unfinished beer, and now I'm standing in long lines for fresh cans and snobby about how old the IPA I'll drink can be.

 

Lupulin Shift sounds like the name of a Big Bang Theory episode

 

I have received the shift for hops.

Also spicy food.

If you take a long break I feel like you can reset it.

 

Lupulin Shift sounds way funnier

 

yeah it was a joke, but "maturing palate" doesnt make sense to me either, kinda like you get old but you dont get young. i do like the gym analogy!

 

My understanding of Vinnie's "theory" is that it relates to hop bitterness. With more brewers exploring ways to decouple hop flavors from bitterness, it's been my experience that I enjoy many hoppy beers without any reduction in sensitivity to their flavor. Or maybe I'm "shifted" so far that I just don't notice...

 

I don't know. There's no doubt that if you were to give me a Hop Devil in the days when I were drinking a shit load of Rolling Rock, I would have thought it too bitter to enjoy. If you give it to me now, I don't think it's too bitter to enjoy at all. So am I less sensitive to bitterness or am I just as sensitive only I have learned to enjoy it? These are complicated questions for a man with no understanding of such matters.

 

Well since there are other sensory thresholds where repeatedly beating up the senses creates a "numbing" of the ability and adding more does not create an increase in what is being perceived there is absolutely one for lupulin. No reason for there not to be.

Haven't experienced it myself since I generally mix up which style beers I drink.

But the idea that it's a maturing of the palate isn't what's happening, nor is it a long term change in the senses of smell and taste. If only because its possible to to get rid of the affect by simply not beating up the tastebuds, etc. over and over again and giving them time to recuperate.

 

When I first started seeking out craft beer, I hated hop forward beers. Couldn't understand how so much bitterness could be desirable. It was the only style I ever avoided at all costs. But over the course of a year or so I remember asking for sips of a friends hop forward beer just to see. Then one day I had a serious, gotta have it now hop craving. It's almost all I look for now.

 

The first beer I can remember drinking was a Magic Hat #9. I found it almost unbearably bitter.

Even these days, it's pretty variable. I've been on more of a saison kick lately and when I go back to some of my old hoppy favorites, it's surprising how much more bitterness I get.

 

I'm a bit puzzled by whatever is going on with my taste buds in regards to hoppy/bitter beers (IPAs especially.) Sometimes I'll have one and the bitterness isn't as noticeable and the flavors stand out more and it's really good... and then I'll have the exact same beer again within a week or so and it comes across as more bitter and less flavorful than the last (sometimes just "this is good, but wow, I don't remember it being that bitter the last time"... other times to the point where it's barely recognizable as the same beer.) Other times it happens in reverse, a beer seems too bitter on the first bottle but a few days or a week later when I'm on bottle #2 or #3 or #6, the flavors start to come out more and the bitterness doesn't stand out as much. There's no way a few days or a week in the fridge is going to change the beer that much, so I can only guess that it's my taste buds that are changing instead.

It's not just super high IBU things, either; I've noticed this with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale once -- and that one didn't really seem bitter to me at all when I first tried it. Or when I drank my way through a whole six-pack of it later. Or when I had the first two bottles from a variety pack... but randomly, the third bottle from the variety pack came across as way more bitter than I was expecting it to be.

It seems like my taste buds are just incredibly inconsistent when it comes to bitterness in beer -- sometimes I'll be in a "hoppy beer" mood and be able to drink my way through a whole six-pack (or even a whole variety 12-pack!) of IPAs and similar, having hoppy beers just about every time I have a beer or a week or two or three, without having any problem at all with the bitterness levels... and other times I'll go for an IPA that I really liked the last time I had it and find that it's almost unpleasantly bitter this time around. It doesn't seem like there's a consistent "building tolerance" pattern here at all, or even "building and then losing tolerance." More like my taste buds flip a coin: heads the bitter beer I'm drinking barely comes across as bitter at all, tails the bitterness stands out as much as (or more than) it did the first time I ever tried a hoppy beer and makes drinking it much less enjoyable.

 

yes?

 

Sometimes it depends on what you ate that day. Saltier foods will mask bitterness on you palate. If you ate a salad then drink a Racer 5 that 70+ IBUs will be detected.

 

The Lupulin shift happens quite frequently to me. I just use Bourbon, Malt Liquors and Beer Abstinence to palate Reset.

 

I don't think I've hit the Lupulin Shift, I've only been drinking IPAs for about 3 years.