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beer thats not hoppy

roland_7707roland_7707 Posts: 2,833 ✭✭✭
This may be a silly topic, but is there a beer that does not taste like hopps? Like cigars, I'm still new at this too and the few that I'v had, had an overwhelming flavor of hopps. One was Sam Adams Octoberfest and the other was a Corona. Trying to branch out, but not sure which direction to go. Thanks for your help.
One God, One Truth

Comments

  • docbp87docbp87 Posts: 3,521
    Corona has very little hoppiness to it... To really tell the difference between a hoppy and a malty flavor, drink a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and a Guinness. Guinness has a VERY heavy roasty malt flavor, where the SN PA is basically nothing but bitter hoppiness. If you're just getting into beer, like, never had beer before, I will tell you, for most people it is an acquired taste. Don't give up. Even I didn't care for beer when i first started drinking, but boy I basically NEED the stuff these days.
  • bigharpoonbigharpoon Posts: 2,963 ✭✭✭
    Pale ales, IPAs, ESBs, etc. will have a strong hop flavor. Darker, richer beers will still have hops but the sweetness of the malt will be the dominant flavor. Porters and stouts have a very dark, chocolatey sometimes bitter sweet flavor. Ambers and reds have mostly a sweet flavor and a medium body. Experimentation is a wonderful journey so enjoy it. Coronas, Bud, Coors, etc. are all light lager and in a category to themselves. Octoberfests, Marzens and most winter ales are also lagers but actually taste good. Ales are where my heart lies and most micro-brews are ales.
  • skweekzskweekz Posts: 2,279 ✭✭✭
    docbp87:
    I basically NEED the stuff these days.


    +1....big time
  • 415415 Posts: 951
    Try a Belgian Ale.
  • wwhwangwwhwang Posts: 2,878 ✭✭✭
    Beer is usually an acquired taste. Once you get past the slight bitterness of the hops, you start to notice the real flavors. But ****, I love hops.
  • denniskingdennisking Posts: 3,703 ✭✭✭
    I didn't like hoppy beers until I moved outside of Portland where they grow hops and every beer seems to have quite a bit of hops. Once you find some white ales and hefeweizen beers that you like, try some red ales and then move to some pale ales. after that, you need to move to IPA's and before you know it, you'll be drinking Ninkasi Tricerahops like me. triple hopped for your pleasure
  • JCizzleJCizzle Posts: 1,913 ✭✭✭
    Delerium Tremens, Tripel Karmeliet, Chimay Cinq Cent, any of those.
    Light 'em up.
  • 415415 Posts: 951
    JCizzle:
    Delerium Tremens, Tripel Karmeliet, Chimay Cinq Cent, any of those.
    Delerium Tremens great (gotta love a beer with a name that means "trembling madness" in latin)
    Delerium Nocturnum is my favorite. Strong, complex, and gets better with age.
  • JCizzleJCizzle Posts: 1,913 ✭✭✭
    415:
    JCizzle:
    Delerium Tremens, Tripel Karmeliet, Chimay Cinq Cent, any of those.
    Delerium Tremens great (gotta love a beer with a name that means "trembling madness" in latin)
    Delerium Nocturnum is my favorite. Strong, complex, and gets better with age.
    Yep, they named it "Tremens" in reference to the shakes from alcohol withdrawls. :D

    Nocturnum is pretty much amazing, one bottle of that and I'm flying high.

    Another amazing beer that isn't too hoppy is Anderson Valley Boont Amber. Or if you want a nice, sweet beer to go with a maduro, Rogue Hazelnut Brown.
    Light 'em up.
  • zoom6zoomzoom6zoom Posts: 1,214
    I don't go for the heavily hopped brews as much any more, maybe once in a while. Too many of the brewers just got a little too crazy with the hop bombs. A great example of a brew leaning to the malt side is Three Floyd's Robert the Bruce, one of my favorites.
  • Rob1110Rob1110 Posts: 1,577 ✭✭✭
    I'm not a fan of hops either. If you can find an aged beer, those are usually less hoppy and sometimes slightly sweet. In general, even bottle aging a very hoppy beer, such as an IPA will reduce the bitter hops notes. Barrel aging will do this trick a bit more quickly. I was told "if you try a beer and it's too hoppy for you, buy another one and let it sit for a few years, you'll like it much more."
  • Jetmech_63Jetmech_63 Posts: 3,451 ✭✭✭
    What a great thread! I used to love hop grenades but now I'm big time into malty beers like stouts, porters, imperial stouts, Belgian ales and ambers. Some of my favorites that are low in hops and high on tasty sweet malt flavor...
    Lost Coast: 8 Ball stout and Downtown Brown
    North Coast: Old Rasputin imperial stout
    Rouge: Hazelnut Brown
    Samuel Smiths: Nut Brown, imperial stout Avery: The Reverend Belgian ale
    Firestone: Velvet Merlin
    Anderson Valley: Oatmeal Stout
    Oskar Blues: Ten Fidy 21st Amendment: Monks Blood
  • JCizzleJCizzle Posts: 1,913 ✭✭✭
    Jetmech_63:
    What a great thread! I used to love hop grenades but now I'm big time into malty beers like stouts, porters, imperial stouts, Belgian ales and ambers. Some of my favorites that are low in hops and high on tasty sweet malt flavor...
    Lost Coast: 8 Ball stout and Downtown Brown
    North Coast: Old Rasputin imperial stout
    Rouge: Hazelnut Brown
    Samuel Smiths: Nut Brown, imperial stout Avery: The Reverend Belgian ale
    Firestone: Velvet Merlin
    Anderson Valley: Oatmeal Stout
    Oskar Blues: Ten Fidy 21st Amendment: Monks Blood
    All great choices, you have good taste in beer! Another good one is Great Divide Yeti and Oaked Yeti.
    Light 'em up.
  • HaysHays Posts: 2,337 ✭✭✭
    Jetmech_63:
    What a great thread! I used to love hop grenades but now I'm big time into malty beers like stouts, porters, imperial stouts, Belgian ales and ambers. Some of my favorites that are low in hops and high on tasty sweet malt flavor...
    Lost Coast: 8 Ball stout and Downtown Brown
    North Coast: Old Rasputin imperial stout
    Rouge: Hazelnut Brown
    Samuel Smiths: Nut Brown, imperial stout Avery: The Reverend Belgian ale
    Firestone: Velvet Merlin
    Anderson Valley: Oatmeal Stout
    Oskar Blues: Ten Fidy 21st Amendment: Monks Blood
    1st of all, I'm solidly on board with Vinny here - love all of these that I've tried. And Vinny, jus so you know.. my lounge did tastings from: Lost Coast, North Coast, and Anderson Valley this past week... yayyyuhhhhh.
    ¨The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea¨ - Isak Dinesen

    ¨Only two people walk around in this world beardless - boys and women - and I am neither one.¨
  • HeavyHeavy Posts: 1,591 ✭✭✭
    I haven't had a lot of these, but I would also throw out Newcastle for something that's easier to find. Definitely not a hoppy.

    And if beer is an acquired taste, I certainly don't remember having to go through a testing phase where I didn't like it! lol
  • roland_7707roland_7707 Posts: 2,833 ✭✭✭
    Thanks for all of the replies fellas. I definatly need to make a list. I do like other stuff, rum, vodka, burbon, but I am now trying out beer and my experiences has been less that tasty. thanks for the suggestions. I have been wanting to try Guinness for a while, just havent had the chance yet.
    One God, One Truth
  • xmacroxmacro Posts: 3,402
    Guinness is my all-time favorite beer, but be aware that it's an acquired taste all it's own, totally separate from the acquired taste of beer. I loved beer for years before coming to Guinness, and first time I drank it, I hated it - had to get used to it before I really started enjoying it
  • ejenne87ejenne87 Posts: 1,925 ✭✭
    Before you try Guinness, try some of the darker beers from Samuel Smiths. All of the ones Jetmech mentioned are really great beers. Like marco said, Guinness is different than just about anything else and may take some getting used to. The Oatmeal Stout from Samuel Smiths though is just plain tastey! You'l hardly know its a beer :-)
  • Sandman1amSandman1am Posts: 2,567
    ejenne87:
    Before you try Guinness, try some of the darker beers from Samuel Smiths. All of the ones Jetmech mentioned are really great beers. Like marco said, Guinness is different than just about anything else and may take some getting used to. The Oatmeal Stout from Samuel Smiths though is just plain tastey! You'l hardly know its a beer :-)
    I've been meaning to get around to trying the Oatmeal Stout it sounds so good. I agree with Evan and marco I hated Guinness when I first tried it so many years ago. Now I really enjoy it. I don't know if my palate changed or if I have started to actually taste beer instead of chuggin it. LOL
  • Ken_LightKen_Light Posts: 3,537 ✭✭✭
    First, hops is a preservative and required in all beer sold in America. So you won't find a beer without any hops at all. The fermentable sugars in beer come primarily from malted barley, though, so the dominant flavor in most beers should be from the malt. Hops was more traditionally used to balance out malty sweetness, but then people got a little crazy with hops and now its everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I like hops, but its a really similar story to the cigar trend of power for power's sake right now. I get it, but you lose balance eventually, which is really where the true art of brewing/blending lies.

    From the beers you mentioned, I'm honestly not even sure what you're tasting and disliking is hops. Corona has very little hop flavor, and Sam Octoberfest is a very malty brew. That being said, Corona tastes horrible and Octoberfest was pretty bad this year as well, I got a distinct charred taste and I think maybe they over-roasted some malted barley or something. So I think what you're tasting is just bad beer. Hops IS bitter, but its bitter in a very specific way: it smells floral and sometimes citrus and sometimes like weed, and it tastes the same. Most people say it tastes very strongly like grapefruit and I know multiple people that came to appreciate the flavor a lot more once they made that association.

    There have been some great brews mentioned already on this thread, but I think you might want to start a little slower. Some good simpler and less hoppy beers are Yuengling, Blue Moon, Boddingtons, Beamish Stout, and previously mentioned Sam Smith's Nut Brown and Rogue Hazelnut (that one has some hops, but the nuttiness more than balances it out). Also there's a lot of stuff by Dogfish Head that has hardly any hops (of course, not the ____-minute IPA series, but plenty of others). Then you could find beers that balance hop flavor with malt flavor well like a lot of Sam Adams and Stone beers (when they're not trying to be hoppy as hell) and the list continues on and on. Then, if find you've acquired a taste for hops, crack open a Sierra Navada Pale Ale and see what happens.

    Of course, there is another way. You could alwayas just blow your palette out and break it like a wild horse on some crazy hoppy beers, that's what I did. One six-pack of Sierra Navada Bigfoot and I could drink anything from then on out. Until I got to Stone Ruination IPA and Dale's Pale Ale and had to do it all over again. . .
    ^Troll: DO NOT FEED.
  • Sol1821Sol1821 Posts: 707 ✭✭
    i like beer i duz :D

    the welsh have always drank beer, usually to slate the thirst after a hard days graft. i like to keep the tradition alive by skipping the hard work and just getting straight onto the beer :D literally drink hundreds of pint a year lol.

    not to knock your tastes, as i know beer is the same as cigars and everyone likes differnt things but boddingtons is awfull stuff, its like the swishers of the beer world. there are so many much nicer beers over here.

    if any one's ever over wales shoot me a pm and ill buy you a pint in my local. Brains SA, affectionately known as skull attack. Ill leave you to work out why :P
  • Ken_LightKen_Light Posts: 3,537 ✭✭✭
    I don't actually like boddingtons either, but I know a lot of people who do, and they tend to like more mellow brews, so I thought I'd put it out there.

    I once had a scotch ale with a similar name, Skull Splitter. I found out why real quick. And I can no longer drink scotch ale, lol
    ^Troll: DO NOT FEED.
  • bigharpoonbigharpoon Posts: 2,963 ✭✭✭
    I think it's more important for you to pay attention to the STYLE of beer you are trying as opposed to the exact specific brand and style. For example, try a few ambers or try a few stouts instead of trying to keep a bunch of specific beers on your 'to try' list. One company's offering of a style will be vastly different from another company's offering of the very same style.

    Even among beer drinkers there are avenues that are acquired tastes even beyond normal, quality beer. These types, like wheat ale (hefeweizen, white, etc.) or certain belgian ales (chimay, abbey, etc.) are very unique tasting and your like or dislike of beer shouldn't be based on these specialty brews.

    Corona, Michelob, etc. have a tremendous amount of non-barley (like rice) sugar in the wort and really shouldn't be allowed to be called beer. The only way these are at all palatable is if they are so freezing cold your taste buds are numbed and can't actually taste them. When you have a room temperature beer that tastes awesome that's when you know you are having a quality brew.
  • JCizzleJCizzle Posts: 1,913 ✭✭✭
    Boddingtons is good for slamming. Because of the Nitrogen/CO2 blend, it goes down quickly. :D
    Light 'em up.
  • Sandman1amSandman1am Posts: 2,567
    JCizzle:
    Boddingtons is good for slamming. Because of the Nitrogen/CO2 blend, it goes down quickly. :D
    Many beers are only good for slamming!
  • LukoLuko Posts: 2,003 ✭✭
    Sandman1am:
    JCizzle:
    Boddingtons is good for slamming. Because of the Nitrogen/CO2 blend, it goes down quickly. :D
    Many beers are only good for slamming!
    Good point, I can suck down 10-12 yuenglings no problem, but I wouldn't do that with a dales pale ale or something else really hoppy, or really malty.
  • JCizzleJCizzle Posts: 1,913 ✭✭✭
    One that I'm not too fond of is Fullers London Pride.
    Light 'em up.
  • Sol1821Sol1821 Posts: 707 ✭✭
    JCizzle:
    One that I'm not too fond of is Fullers London Pride.
    wheres the shocked face smilly :o
    London pride is awsome imo. Ofcource how it tastes over here is going to be vastly differnt from. Hhow it tastes over there.
  • zoom6zoomzoom6zoom Posts: 1,214
    So you won't find a beer without any hops at all.
    [python]Sausage, eggs, bacon and Budweiser. That's not got much hops in it...[/python]
  • JCizzleJCizzle Posts: 1,913 ✭✭✭
    sol1821:
    JCizzle:
    One that I'm not too fond of is Fullers London Pride.
    wheres the shocked face smilly :o
    London pride is awsome imo. Ofcource how it tastes over here is going to be vastly differnt from. Hhow it tastes over there.
    I've had it both ways and I still didn't care for it. Old Speckled Hen, I can get down with that. Or even better, Old Peculiar, now that's a beer!
    Light 'em up.
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