So is Hoppy Beer Driving Away Craft Beer Drinkers?

[alfreda89]

Maybe.

I'm a Vienna Lager style drinker by preference -- give me a Negra Modelo, or even better, the perfection of an Augustiner Brau Dunkel (dark) beer. I like smooth, odd beers like Old Peculiar or Young's Winter Warmer. But I had an Englishman turn up his nose at my 500+ year old German beer style, uninterested in it. He was seriously a hops man.

When I would look at menus, except for Negra Modelo, there would be no Vienna Lagers. You couldn't even buy my favorite beer in Texas, the last time I looked. I was going to be forced to give up gluten, and I wanted one last beer. Couldn't find one. I almost had a Newcastle Brown or a Voodoo, but I really wanted that German beer.

Or fresh Shiner Bock. None of that available, either.

Alfreda's mother brews beer. The heroine of a mystery I did is a bootlegger's great-granddaughter, finding the family hop in the back forty! I will slip the drink of the gods in whenever possible.

Because -- Beer!

Comments

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Oh, is this more general?

Seattle (well, the PNW generally) has had a major craft brew thing going for decades now, and it tends towards the hoppy. Not exclusively, but still, seriously hoppy. But then, WA is the world's largest producer of hops, so I figured that was the thing.

I'm not a fan of hops. Probably partly the super taster thing, but... I planted some near the covered walk going up to the entranceway at the Woodinville house (and some grapes, trained up to a cable running along it) and it turns out I really don't like the smell, either. And, of course, this being in WA they grew beautifully and did not want to leave.

A few of my friends who brew have made me spiced beers. Mostly, though, if I'm drinking at all (and, well, it's not exactly that I never drink, but it was like four years ago last) it's cider or mead if we're doing the pub thing. Or wine with dinner. Or perhaps some nigori sake. (Or a martini with bombay sapphire. Heh. Okay, I might not drink, but it's not that I don't find the culinary aspects of alcoholic beverages fascinating.)

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's definitely an American craft thing, and even worldwide in some cases. I still like an occasional drink of sake or cider or wine, or a good GF beer. But I don't drink alone, I don't drink when I have to drive myself home, and that covers most occasions to drink.

So I put interesting things in books instead!

Hops are used as sedatives by herbalists. I wonder if it's the super-scent thing for you, or if your body fights the soporific affects?

[tylik.livejournal.com]

I'll admit the living in a zendo bit cut down on my drinking even further... well, okay, it'd been about two years when we moved in, so maybe not so much? I sometimes like the taste of alcoholic drinks. In the right social setting, a single drink can be rather fun... but I find the effects irritating, especially if I'm going to be doing any training, which is at least daily for me. In my old lab, a lot of the lab culture was very pub centric, so I made a point of going out with them, but at that point I was training pretty much every evening, and it's not so much that I can't train with alcohol in my system as that I really don't like to. And spinning flying jump kicks... ugh. (But I don't even like teaching a beginning Chen class with alcohol in my system, though that was one of Darwin's extra special strong mint juleps.) Also, I don't sleep as well.

You may be on target with the hops. I tend to be pretty picky about smells anyway (if I had my druthers we would never burn incense in the zendo, but I concede the tradition) but hops had this heavy sweet-bitter smothering drowsiness about them. It was really too bad, because they grew much more readily than the grapes, and they looked lovely.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I've heard that alcohol will put you to sleep, but then you wake up an hour or two later. So it may affect your sleep - it does that to others.