Breweries that have lost their way/identity

F. X. Matt (the brewer of the Saranac line) was brewing IPA's and other ales before the owners of most of the current US breweries have been alive. Here's their portfolio in 1938, when the brewery was still known as the West End Brewing Co., and their flagship brand was Utica Club.

 

Hopefully some of these places can right their ships. For a while I was convinced that both Great Divide and New Belgium had gone off the rails and were doomed...but they turned things around. At least partially.
Great Divide went back to the beers that got them where they are. Beers like Samurai, Rumble, Hibernation, Yeti, along with new seasonals that follow current trends. Now their cans are actually selling again and their tasting rooms are full.
New Belgium stopped focusing on Belgian-inspired beers and went all-in with IPA's that are now considered pretty uncool. Now they've revamped their IPA line-up to change with the times and are cranking out Belgian-inspired beers like never before. Their IPA's are selling and their Foeder program has been cranking out stuff that both the geeks and neophytes are interested in.
There is hope for both now.

 

Apparently it's slightly tweaked not quite reformulated:

 

Toppling Goliath turned to complete shit IMO when they started pushing to expand and changed all of their beers into trend-chasing haze clones. To me they used to make the most absolutely top shelf hoppy beers that were all easy drinking and loaded with tons of aroma and flavor. They were the only IPAs I've ever chased after because that's what it took to lock down stuff like Sosus or King Sue back then. Once the new brewery opened and they started pushing into new distro territory all their hops suddenly turned into hazey mediocre ghosts of what they used to be. The aromas are gone, the hoppy bite is subdued, and the mouthfeel went from crushable to sludge. I see tons of people on UnTappd get excited about TG finally showing up in their stores and it's too bad they'll never taste the same IPAs that made TG so famous in the beginning. Add labor disputes, bad PR, an owner with a rep for being a dick on top of the quality and consistency issues and that seems like a textbook definition of a business losing its way

 

What's happening with Anchor? They seem to be plodding along as ever

 

I think there will be enough entries about fallen merit. I would rather approach this from a positive perspective..Highland Brewing in Asheville has done a great job of re-making the branding, with some new beers and keeping some standards.. Back in the early 90s I remember Oscar Wong peddling kegs on Walker Ave in Greensboro and learned to like him right away..

 

Pretty much nothing since their Sapporo acquisition except workers being unhappy and formally unionizing. Lineup is a bit dated and I haven't like any of their new beers. I don't see where the acquisition has helped them any. Could say the same things for Ballast Point.

 

Essentially any brewery that i've seen, who was killing it around 2015 seems to have lost their way or cant keep up with the ever amorphous zeitgeist. We pine for some of these breweries to make the great beer we remember them for, but its hard for some of them to stick to their guns waiting for us to remember them when they start to see sales tank because they aren't brewing whats hip, "relevant", or new. I think some will thrive by going back to the way they used to be, others by only moving forward into whatever is in at the moment.

 

re: Anchor: There is a difference between "losing your way" and "not going my way."

re: TG. Their beer was always hazy and inconsistent, even in the cult-status good ol' days.

 

I counted maybe 4, with a total on-screen time of less than 2 seconds.

 

In this thread, not really. Just look at all the Stone mentions.

 

Fair enough. Can you blame them for not wanting to remain stagnant in the market? The fruited beers and endless IPAs don't appeal to me either but they sell. As long as the "trendy" new beers don't come at the expense of their core beers or decrease overall variety too much (see Stone Brewing), I'm okay with it.

I wouldn't go so far as saying Victory has abandoned their German heritage. They've always dabbled in American and Belgian styles, so it's nothing new for them. They still make Prima, Helles, Festbier, Braumeister Pils, Mad King's Weiss, Winter Cheers. I enjoyed Moonglow and St. Vic but maybe they just weren't selling well?

 

I still have wet dreams about Alpine’s glory days. Sigh.

Another brewery here in SoCal that has gone bass ackwards is Noble Ale Works. I don’t even have the desire to describe why. Cheers.

 

And now it's more "refreshing."

@Ahonky

 

That spot is a good laugh.

“What if we double the amount of chocolate and coffee in that beer, or triple the hops in this one, or throw that one in a bourbon barrel?”

Gotta love it when something is written to make an organization look cutting edge but just ends up making them look doltish.

Related to the thread, it also states: "What if we unapologetically stay true to who we are"

 

Until they reformulate it as Prima 2.0 and try to tell me it's the "coldest tasting" pilsner or the V on the label turns blue when the cans are cold. That's when I jump ship.

 

Fuller, Smith & Turner