I love me some IPAs the bitter the better love that hoppy taste, but lately I'm wondering if my pallet has been wrecked? All the alcohol and the bitterness everything In General I'm wondering if that has anything to do with trying some "top tier IPAs" and thinking this isint that great.. Can anyone relate?
It's all part of the process, and I know it's been discussed before. Try laying off the hops for a bit and see if your palate does a market correction.
Its called Lupulin Threshold Shift (LTS) and results from repeatedly pounding away at your taste buds with lots of hop bitterness, etc. As already mentioned, take a week off from IPAs, and then cut way back on your frequency of having highly hopped beers and it should stop being a problem.
Whenever I'm feeling burned out on beer, I hit up its darker evil alcohol cousin bourbon for a few weeks. Then I hit rehab. Then I wander back to beer. It's all good.
See this article in Popular Science regarding the dreaded "Lupulin Threshold Shift" And just so you know, a pallet is a structure, usually made of wood, used to facilitate the lifting of large loads (boxes of hops, perhaps?)
I took a break from ipa lately, the last week and a half probably. Anyway, my two cents is this.. I had a captains daughter tonight and it tasted like a fruit smoothie...like mango, strawberries, hops, and cream. Now I'm drooling. So I'm saying take a little time off like others said, then pick one of your favorites and drink that bad boy, it'll taste even better than you remember!
