I’m not a fan of pale ales in general, and the IPA craze baffles me entirely. Why the fuck would I ever want to drink something that’s as horribly bitter as the twisted and decayed remnants of my soul? Give me a good stout or porter any day.
OK, so hear me out.
I think this might be a very weird case of toxic masculinity.
Let me elaborate.
While a beer connoisseur will be aware that beers come in all shapes and sizes, and their flavours can be extremely different from each other, from dark and heavy taste that's basically like someone dropped a granite slab on your tongue all the way to something that tastes almost like fruit juice - the average beer drinker associates beer taste with a, well, typical beer. A little bitter, a little hoppy.
Not everyone enjoys this kind of taste. And there's a LOT of stereotypes about what drinks people enjoy. Y'know, anything that doesn't taste strongly of alcohol or has any colour, and any mixed drink that will not instantly knock you out is a "girly" drink.
And there's social stigma against alcohol-drinking men who don't enjoy beer (let's ignore stigma against teetotallers, because that's its own case of worms). For precisely the same stereotypical reasons. A lot of women don't like typical bitter-ish beer, but I think that's only half-true. I think a lot of women don't like beer AND ARE NOT AFRAID TO ADMIT IT. Meanwhile, many men either won't admit they don't like the taste, or they'll Stockholm Syndrome themselves into drinking it, because they're "supposed" to like it and it's an "acquired taste". Which it is. But there's no requirement TO acquire it.
Same happens with coffee, BTW. Black coffee is "supposed" to be enjoyed by people who know their coffee. When surveyed, people (and especially men) will express a preference for a coffee with no additional stuff (other than maybe some sugar), strongly brewed from a rich, dark roast. Actual people, as sales figures show, usually drink their coffee with a lot of milk and sugar. The difference between surveys and actual consumption habits is quite large, and not an accident.
But anyway. Toxic masculinity is one Hell of a drug, but some men are still not comfortable engaging with implicitly misogynist and homophobic narratives. But a man who happens to be a beer snob (and stereotypical beer snobs are men, because again - cultural expectations) will still need to assert his masculinity.
So what beer will people who are obnoxious about beer say they like? The beer that's the most beer-like EVER. And that means a lot of bitter and hoppy tastes.
Since most people don't know that much about beer, don't distinguish subtle changes and don't have an actual preference for high-quality beers, a person who doesn't know their beers but really wants others to think they have a Refined Taste will go for the most beer that ever beered. And without any nuance, that means more bitterness and more hoppiness. And that led to a sort of a arms race among beer hipsters.
There are people who legitimately enjoy bitter, hoppy beer. But they don't tend to like this taken all the way to absurdity. But a person who just wants to be the Most Correct beer enjoyer is more concerned with image than with personal enjoyment, so they'll overcorrect into "enjoying" very hoppy and very bitter beer.
Again, this is not dissimilar to other toxic masculine behaviour around food. There are people who like spicy food. But everyone knows that one dude (and that's nearly always a dude) who eats things so spicy, they can't possibly enjoy, or even register, the taste of the food. They associate eating super-spicy stuff with being a manly man that mans more than any other man has ever manned.
That's my take on super-hyper-OMG-hoppy and bitter beers.
And I enjoy beer that's both bitter and hoppy on occasion, so it's not like I mind more hoppy IPAs. But I do think past some point, people going for the extreme stuff are not beer enjoyers, they're enjoyers of the idea of being beer enjoyers. None of my friends who are really into beers to the point they know a lot about them are so single-minded about taste and flavour.
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Topic: What's the most baffling thing about neurotypical people? (Read 65127 times)