"Breaking the hops"???

Ok, so I was talking to one of the women I work with, who is also my supplier of empty wine bottles for the mead I've been making lately, and we were discussing beer(she snagged a bottle of Surly darkness and won't share with me ). Now when it comes to good food and wine, she is the ultimate wine/food geek, and she usually seems to know what she's talking about when it comes to beer, however she isn't much of a hop head and likes the maltier beers, but claims someone showed her how to "break the hops" when pouring hoppier beers to reduce the hop flavors. It basically sounds like she just pours straight down the middle of the glass and gets a ton of head, which I would assume would just release more hop aroma. Thinking this was odd I was talking to another co-worker later and he said that he'd heard of it and couldn't believe that a homebrewer has never heard of "breaking the hops".

My gut says this is a bunch of BS someone started and it has been spreading around, but has anyone else ever hear of "breaking the hops" to reduce hop flavors in beer?

never heard that before

Maybe they are confusing the bitter taste of the hops with the bitter taste of carbonic acid in the beer which results from dissolved co2 gas in the liquid. So pouring right into the middle of the glass would get rid of the carbonic acid but not the hops bitterness.

Yes, it only works with beers that are triple hopped though.

northernlad said:

Yes, it only works with beers that are triple hopped though.

Click to expand...

Maybe the vortex was introduced to break the hops for them so that the triple hops don't over power the normal Miller drinker

I've never heard anyone use that term either. The only thing it would do to flavor is reduce carbonation, taking a bit of "bite" out of the beer. I don't think it's possible for an aggressive pour to reduce bitterness.

edit: I guess nm999 covered this before I hit send

Should be pretty easy for a blind taste test. 3 bottles of SNPA, pour one or 2 normally and "hop break" the remaining 1 or 2. Allow foam to die down on both, taste test. If the tester picks the odd one out, "hop break" might be real.

After you "break the hops" you may want to add a sprinkle of salt to try and get some of the CO2 that is left in solution to release in your mouth...unless you like flat beer...

Wait, I'm confused... Why would you want to reduce hop flavor? Ever.