Cafeoutdoors.com: What is considered a "Hoppy" Beer?

Hops produce the bitterness in beer, and malt produces the body and sweetness. Since the basic recipe is water + malt + hops, all beers strike some kind of balance between malt and hops. That balance is different for each beer style.

Mainstream American Lager doesn't have much of either ingredient, but the balance is just a little on the hoppy side.

Myself, I like malty beers like Oktoberfest and Bock a lot - and those are more on the sweet, full-bodied side of the balance with less hop bitterness.

British Pale Ale, also called English Bitter, along with its relatives Porter and Stout, has always been the traditional "hoppy" beer style - but it's been surpassed in the last 30 years or so by a new style, American Pale Ale.

American Pale Ale is the creation of U.S. microbrewers, coke-bottle lensed college geeks competing to see who can shovel the most hops into a vat. It's 'way more hoppy, or bitter, than other styles. Examples would be Boulder, Anchor, Sierra Nevada, and lots of others. That Torpedo Ale favored by griffin and them is about as "hoppy" as beer gets.

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