Can your taste for beer change over time?

July 17, 3:20 PMNorthern Colorado Beer Examiner'Chipper' Dave Butler

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Tasting and reviewing craft beer is a fun pastime and hobby. It's been just over a few years since I started really getting into the exploration of craft beers. Looking back, my tastes in craft beers were initially very narrowly focused. I used to limit myself to just a couple of favorites, like an amber ale, perhaps a honey brown, or the occasional dark stout. There were some styles that I just didn't appreciate yet and lacked a taste for. India Pale Ales (IPAs) and sour ales were some of them. I really wanted to understand why so many craft beer drinkers loved such wild and bitter brew styles.

Several Internet friends on the Aleuminati social beer site wrote that you just have to keep trying certain styles a lot before you come to love them. You can’t expect to like everything the first time you tried it.  You need to experiment a bit. 

So that's exactly what I set out to do. I started sampling as many different beers from as many different styles as possible over the course of many months. It wasn't until then that I started to notice and appreciate what wide range of tastes, aromas and styles there were out there. Bitterness was something I use to avoid in a beer, but after sampling a wide range of hoppy beer styles I finally came to enjoy the taste and aroma of a good bitter beer.

A year ago or so, I remember picking up a local brewery’s sampler 12-pack. I wanted to try several different styles from this brewer. Most of those beer styles I had never tasted before. After I tried each of the beers, surprisingly, I didn't enjoy some of them. I ended up giving some of them a rather poor rating. I failed to realize that the time that you can't really judge a how good a style of beer is until you've tried many of them in same style, as well as several other styles. My taste buds were simply not trained yet. It took me several months to realize my mistake.

For example, a while ago I picked up a Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter and reviewed it for the first time. I was initially put off by the intense hop sensation and aromas that came with it but later felt that perhaps I was judging it too quickly. The thought occurred to me to stick some of this beer in the cellar and revisit it again at a later time.

A few months later, I pulled out another Gonzo and tried it once again. Wow, what a difference. Was this the same beer? This tasted a lot better than what I remembered. Gone was the dislike for the aroma and the bitterness. It had either mellowed a bit after a time or my taste buds had adjusted slightly. This beer seemed a whole lot better now.

So I wondered. What was the difference between the Gonzo I tried initially versus the Gonzo I tried months later? Was it the temperature of the beer? Probably not. Had the hops been neutralized a bit after two months? Possibly. Had my tastes changed? Perhaps.

My taste in beer could have been altered over the course of a few months. I felt that I had finally made a small epiphany in savoring beer. Sampling many different beers over the span of a few months did make a difference. I soon started enjoying IPAs after that. So perhaps my palate had gotten used to the more intense hops and flavors.

I later went back and updated my blog review on the Gonzo beer and gave it a much more respectable rating after trying it again. Perhaps now some of my old favorites will seem a bit different to me as well.  I honestly believe that only through continual exploration of many different styles of beer can you come to appreciate the variety of styles that are available today.  Why just stick to one or two common beers when there are literally thousands of different beers out there?

Anyone else ever have a change of heart on a beer that you've previously dismissed? If so, what made you come back to that beer?  What were the circumstances in your mind that changed your opinion? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.