Tired of Hops

I’ve complained about this before, but I have to say, I’m getting really tired of hops.

Ok, so I’m not actually getting tired of hops per se, but I am quite tired of the idea that every beer, of every style, must be hopped to the hilt in order to be of any worth. In fact, I have to admit that I was almost thankful for the hop shortage, hoping it would lead to a somewhat more discriminate use by brewers. As far as I can tell, it hasn’t. In fact, the other day I picked up a variety pack of Flying Fish, a fine local brewery, only to find that they too have jumped on the Hop head bandwagon, replacing one of the four beers with HopFish. As you can guess, it’s a hoppy IPA.

Nothing against HopFish, which is a good beer, but it seems to me that hoppy IPAs are going the way of heavily-oaked Chardonnays. Too much of a good thing can be, well, simply too much.