---
title: "Can’t Stand IPAs? The Answer Could Be in Your Genes"
description: "India Pale Ale (IPA) is one of the most popular craft beer styles, but if you can't handle hop-heavy beers, it could be because you perceive bitterness with greater intensity than others."
url: https://www.thebeertimes.com/en/cant-stand-ipas-the-answer-could-be-in-your-genes/
date: 2021-02-07
modified: 2026-06-28
author: "Carlos Uhart M."
image: https://www.thebeertimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IPA_Day-1.jpg
categories: ["Culture"]
tags: ["Culture"]
type: post
lang: en
---

# Can’t Stand IPAs? The Answer Could Be in Your Genes

By **[First We Feast](http://firstwefeast.com/drink/if-you-hate-ipa-it-could-be-genetic/)**

India Pale Ale (IPA) is one of the most popular craft beer styles, but if you’re someone who can’t stand hop-heavy beers, it could be because you perceive bitterness with greater intensity than others.

![IPA beer](https://www.thebeertimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IPA_Day-1.jpg)*IPA beer*

Some people carry a taste receptor gene that makes them more sensitive to bitter flavors, and a new study now sheds fresh light on the relationship with the “bitterness gene.”

“What we’re seeing is that people differ in how they perceive the intensity of bitterness,” says researcher John Hayes, a food scientist at Penn State.

## The TAS2R38 gene

Several years earlier, Hayes and fellow researcher Valerie Duffy already knew that some people — around one quarter of the population — carry a version of a single-flavor taste receptor gene known as TAS2R38 that makes them more sensitive to the perception of bitterness.

“The idea of how you perceive bitter taste is tied to how strongly these bitter compounds bind to the receptor,” explains Duffy. She herself may lack this version of the gene, so when she eats bitter vegetables or Brussels sprouts she perceives them as sweet. “For me, they’re naturally sweet,” she says.

## A hunch

Duffy’s hunch was that this sensitivity could lead people to avoid vegetables. So she decided to put the theory to the test. “We recruited a group of volunteers and brought them into the lab to do taste tests and evaluate their sensitivities. Genetic tests were also conducted, they filled out questionnaires and kept food diaries to document what they were eating.”

“We found that people who are less sensitive to these bitter compounds consume significantly more vegetables” — so much so that over the course of a year the difference amounted to more than 200 vegetable servings.

While previous studies had already demonstrated this association, what was surprising about their findings is that people who were sensitive to bitterness ate fewer vegetables of all kinds, not just bitter ones.

“What we believe is that if someone finds some vegetables too bitter, they will tend to generalize this to all green vegetables,” explains Duffy.

## Biological and environmental factors

Duffy suggests that multiple factors — both biological and environmental — influence our food and drink choices, including how our parents raise us.

In conclusion, despite the current popularity of IPAs, 20 years ago very few people drank them, and beers that were considered extreme at the time — like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale — are today regarded as quite “normal” for a consumer palate that [has increasingly adapted to bitter flavors](https://www.thebeertimes.com/en/what-is-bitter-flavor-origins-types-bitterness/).

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