Heady Topper gone bad?

Come on people, your smell is tied in to taste. Your brain connects the two (not to mention the necessity of breathing through your nose to taste...), so yes, you can actually "taste" smells and "Smell" tastes... Nothing new.

Anywho, I'm finishing off my last can of Heady from my VT run 2 weeks ago ( ) and it's still as sublime as ever.

 

I don't, to me they are two different tastes. Piney is like pine resin smells, grassy is more like a new mowed lawn. The first time I had Heady in a can, it tasted grassy. I like a grassy note in wet hop and fresh hop IPAs, to me it is a sign that they did indeed use wet or fresh hops, but this was the strongest grassy note I have ever tasted in any beer. Since my personal reaction was that it was too strong to be strictly pleasant (I'd rather it was piney or even better, citrusy), I have only given Heady a 4.39 when the BA average is 4.71. I didn't notice enough of a difference from the two fourpacks I bought in Waterbury April 19th to agree that Heady has changed. But I still have some left and will keep this thread in mind.

 

Another thing to consider is that Heady itself really pounds your palate and will diminish your sensitivity to hops if you drink it very often; this means other flavor notes will pop up more easily, including lots of 'green beer' flavor if it's very fresh.

I'm a BJCP judge and I won't drink any Heady for about a week before judging because it destroys my ability to pick out more subtle hop flavor and aroma.

 

I see where you're coming from, and I actually thought that might be the case, but then i did a side by side with an older can. The older can still had some of the characteristics that were missing from the brand new can. I was really amazed by how well the old can held up and how it confirmed my impression of the new can. Either way, Heady is still freaking good, just missing, at least to me, that taste/smell component that set it way apart from everything else. Hopefully it is just something unique to the current batch.

 

apparently some one doesn't like my anti-HT comments. lol

 

I shared a fresh 4-pack of HT with friends about a week ago and we noticed a softer profile and maybe slightly less hop aroma. I wonder if the water has changed, either due to seasonal fluctuation, or by changing their adjustments. I believe they use a lot of gypsum. A softer profile could be due to a higher chloride to sulfate ratio.

 

I could have sworn I posted about liking the same age Gandhi much better than heady of recent batches. Guess it wasn't that I didn't post it, must have been deleted. Dafuq???

 

Well I guess I'll wade in. Went to the brewery in November just before they closed, a buddy and I each got a case and it was hop heaven. My buddy not a craft beer guy until that point fell in love with DIPA's. Drove up to Barre in maybe February and got cases there- he takes a sip of his HT and says "this is not the same beer." I found it be not as startlingly good as the last time, but still great. I will reevaluate in two weeks when I return.

 

I've had some recent purchases go bad very quickly. The hop aroma and flavor diminish and it gets quite malty and skunky. The skunky flavor tastes very similar to the after taste in their recent focal banger. Since the brewery closed and other beers are being produced, Heady has definitely changed.

I tried inquiring very kindly on their Facebook page, but they just delete my posts. That just pisses me off because I love heady.....

Can't say I have ever had a bad Lawson's or hill farmstead

 

I don't think they actually closed the brewery, it's just closed to the public. IMHO Lawson's is the finest brewery in The States.

 

I would like to take this opportunity to respond to some BAs' recent perception of Heady Topper. First, I can say, in no way whatsoever, have we changed our recipe, the brewing process or our water. In fact, John and our brew staff have worked very hard to get our dissolved oxygen levels as low as possible. At this point, there is barely any dissolved oxygen in a can of Heady Topper- much lower than you will find in other packaged beers. With this said, it will hold up with time better than ever before. If it is kept cold, it will not go 'bad'.
We understand that people's tastes change over time. We drink Heady from every single canning run and have never had a bad one. Of course, it is alive and unfiltered and will change over time. Also, because it is unfiltered, as with any fresh IPA, it will vary slightly due to different batches of hops and barley and the generation of the yeast (we start with fresh yeast every 10 generations).
Crowthern- Yes- I did delete your post from our Facebook page. The reason I did this was because you made a post asking if anyone else had 'bad' cans of Heady Topper. This is our Facebook page- we use it much like our website. It isn't a forum for people to complain about our beer. If you had messaged us through Facebook we would have gladly responded to you. You can also always e-mail or call us as well with any concerns. If we still had a restaurant and someone complained about our food, we certainly wouldn't put it on our website or Facebook page. I think this forum makes evident of the fact that are plenty of places for people to complain about breweries and beer publicly.
We stand by Heady Topper 100% and if anyone ever has feedback, negative or otherwise, we are very approachable- please message or e-mail us.
Thanks to everyone for all of the feedback- this is a great resource for breweries.

 

I think the concept of "bad" is wrong here. I would not call more recent batchs "bad" at all. Still a world class IPA that I would put over most IPA's on the market. I think most people here are saying it tastes different than some previous batches. Some of the flavor's I liked personally seemed a little more muted while others seemed more pronounced. I think most people on here realize the myriad of factors that play into how you taste something. Not every batch of hops is the same, allergies can contribute, palate shift, hormones, slight changes in water chemistry, solar flares, earths proximity to mars, and the argument as to whether or not the voyager probe has exited our solar system.
Jen and John thanks for all the world class beer you create for the world.

 

had a can last week that was spot and tasted just like I remember.

 

I’ve had a similar experience with Heady that some of the people are posting. I was able to get my hands on a case that was purchased on March 13th by a friend that happened to be in VT at the time. I live in CT so I got it on the 15th. It was cold when I got it from her and I keep it in a beer fridge that is opened more often than it should be due to consumption. I opened a can, took a sip and noticed that the backbone was still there but the wave after wave of hoppy goodness was not as affluent as it was in past cans. By backbone I mean the barley and yeast characteristics seemed to be the same. I agree with the comments that many factors can attribute to differences. However, I was a chef in Manhattan for over 12 years and worked for some of the best chefs in the world (Jean Georges and Alain Ducasse to be specific). That being said, I wouldn’t say I have the most sophisticated palate but I am pretty good with flavor consistencies and the cans purchased in March were different than ones I have had previously. In April I made a trip myself up to VT. While there I ordered a Heady on draft from a restaurant in Waterbury and it too was similar to the beer I got back in March. I decided that it was not worth the trouble of searching around for a case. My problem was all the previous times I’ve had Heady had been so amazing I couldn’t give up on it. I decided to go to one of the smaller stores that sells it and got a four pack. When I got home I had put off drinking one for almost a week. When I opened it I had been drinking some other hoppy beers before the Heady so I was expecting my palate to be overwhelmed. When I cracked opened the can I got the rush of hops essence I’d remembered previously. I thought to myself this is going to be a good night! Took a sip and realized my old friend was back. In order to verify my conclusion I was able to do a side by side with a can from September and one from April. To me there were small differences but they were both very similar and definitely not enough to say it was bad. When I did the side by side a friend of mine who was with me was able to tell the difference between the two doing a blind taste test. I thought it was due to the age of the beer not the brewing differences. That being said, something was up with the case I got in March but by April it seemed to have worked itself out.

 

Allow me to preface this by saying that Heady Topper is a fantastic beer. It is THE best DIPA I've ever had: huge aroma, tons of hop complexity, clean fermentation profile, and great drinkability. Whenever I'm around Burlington, I try to get some.

The problem with packaging (canning/bottling/kegging) is that there is nothing you can do that will make the beer "better" at this point in the brewing process. Excluding bottle-conditioned beer, fresh beer flavor can really only get worse from here on out. The dissolved oxygen level can be incredibly low in a beer tank, but when you move the beer through to a package, there are many vectors for oxygen ingress. It sounds like the people at HT do a great job limiting these points of ingress, but no brewery is perfect, especially smaller craft brewers. A bad seal here/a leaky gasket there/a low-fill or two there, and all of a sudden you've got a bunch of beer that is not going to be as shelf-stable as it could be. And if you're not measuring the D.O. or headspace airs in the package, then you really have no idea what your beer is going to be like out on the market. Oxidation is inevitable, and, unfortunately, it's especially unpleasant in hoppy beers, most likely due to the metal ions in the hops.

 

Just a crazy thought that is most likely totally unfounded: what if some of the March truck sale 4 packs froze and subsequently thawed out? The freezing itself wouldn't hurt the beer that much but the thaw could, depending on how it happened. Probably not what happened, if anything, but there's another rumor to spread.

I didn't personally taste any beer from this batch so take what I say with a grain of salt (as you always should anyway...).

 

Funny how none of these comments are from people who drink a HT everyday...

 

Is it funny? I find if you have or see something every day, you may not notice changes that may develop over time. Think about the spouse or friend that gains a couple of pounds per month over a course of a year... you never really notice till you see a picture of them from 12 months ago... then the extra weight is pretty apparent. Would have to imagine the same is true with taste. Assuming the taste has been changing a little here and a little there, then the daily drinkers might never notice it. Where I had gone 5 months or so between batches, the taste change was very noticeable... as i said before, i had a can from 5 months ago to compare to it and the 5 month old can tasted better and exactly how i remembered heady tasting.

 

10:1 what people are tasting is older generations of yeast. I don't believe they are oxidized at all.

Believe it or not, the 'juiciness' in HT comes largely from Conan and not from the hops.
As the generations of yeast used get older, the play between the hops and the yeast produces a beer that lacks much of the aroma and flavor punch you are used to.

That is my conclusion based on drinking >100 4pk's from various batches over the past 2+ years.

 

I'ld buy that... I never thought it was oxidized, just tasted different. Good to know it is that, rather than an unfavorable tweak in the recipe.