BeerSci: Are Hops Addictive?
Beersci Logo Todd DetwilerIt certainly looks that way if you hang around beer people. Modern-day hopheads--the beer drinkers who gleefully, obsessively seek out hoppier and hoppier brews--don't usually start out that way. Most people have a natural aversion to bitter compounds--useful for avoiding eating lethal doses of poisons in the wild. No, one must work one's way up to hops: Start off drinking beers with lower IBUs (International Bitterness Units, one measure of how bitter a beer is), be them ambers, lagers, brown ales, or stouts. Next, try a pale ale. Then try many pale ales. Then discover the IPA -- and with it, become obsessed with hop varietals such as Simcoe (piney aroma) and Amarillo (fruity aroma). Be happy with that for a while. Maybe try a double IPA (twice the malt, twice the hops as a regular IPA), which may or may not be successful, depending on whose...