Alpine Nelson 2020

Pat and Shawn are gone from Alpine. It is now officially dead. Just a brand made by another brewery. We can all blame Mike Hinkley and his scumbag ways for this. GF will be a thing of the past soon enough and will be a cautionary tale to every brewery out there. Be a dick and do scummy things and eventually it comes back to bite you. Wash your hands all.

 

Wouldn’t mind Le Freak either...

 

Isn't this the truth! He built a brewery here in VA, hired good people, and in the we hours of the morning, high-tailed out of town leaving people scratching there heads. I feel terrible for Pat, Val and Shawn! He personally is responsible for destroying a fantastic family-run brewery!

 

Two breweries actually. Lets not forget how he dissolved the original GFBC LLC in March 2018 and left his shareholders and vendors screwed out of $$$$Millions instead of doing the right thing and filing for chapter 11.
Want to see something really funny go to hinkleybcs.com
Some Trump level stuff....

 

Hell as long as we're at it, original recipe Hop Head Red would be fine by me!

 

Alpine Duet 2010 or so (bomber) was one most memorable brews that and Pure Hoppiness. Not sure if it was the times,availability,and my palate or all 3.

 

Incase anyone is feeling nostalgic...

 

Yeah, I never had the OG Nelson directly from Alpine. I have had a couple of the canned six-packs that are now distributed. They are good, not great...and I assume they are a shadow of what was.

 

I think I have a picture of the first time I traded for Duet and Nelson! You might as well have sent me gold (not sure I would have taken it over the beer)!

 

That link is not working for me Pat...

 

this landed in houston (6 pack cans) a while back and I picked one up. It was legit good. I really enjoyed it

 

We all talk about how when companies change ownership etc. the beer changes. One thing no one has talked about or maybe I missed it is why would new ownership want to change a great beer? It seems to make sense as a new owner to want to keep the beer the same no? Why invest into a company to make the beer worse?

I guess I was thinking about this and it sort of makes no sense to me. We see this all the time when breweries are sold everyone says the new beer sucks and is not the same. Seems that it would cost the new owner money in lost sales to intentionally do this.

With that said are we going off memory and thinking it was way better than it was. Also, we are in a time where beer is amazing, so are people comparing a beer that was great then to other beers now and its actually not as great as we think in the end. I guess my point is did the beer really change or did we change/our tastes change. I know beers I used to love years ago are not so great now, did the beer change or was it me that changed?
Cheers

 

In this particular case it was because they wanted to capitalize on the beers name and make more of it so they could sell more of it. The consensus among people who tried both is that the scaled up recipe brewed at the gf (instead of the small alpine) brewery was never any good and that now that it is being brewed on the old system (but by a new brewer) it is similar to the og but lost a step. Maybe that's due to some behavior by the original brewer that is essential but not captured in the recipe, or maybe they aren't able to source the same caliber of hops

 

The original Alpines were a pleasure, I bought them by the case from SD. I loved them all, maybe Duet was my favorite, but Pure Hoppiness was killer good too as was Nelson. I’d get them two weeks old, at the peak of my hoppy beer phase.

 

The packs I’ve bought were within the last 3 months. They were good, just not great...IMHO.

 

Or water. I remember sitting down and talking to Val McIlhenney and we discussed the recent, at the time, transition of GF and Alpine. She said that Nelson was her favorite and, no matter how good GF brewed it, she could tell the difference. She said she could always tell when Shawn brewed it.

 

Same. I keep seeing it on shelves and am always tempted, but I fondly remember those alpine bombers.it was arguably the first hazy boi I had.

 

You can find that in many (most) SEPA brewed German lagers. And as regards packaged (bottles, canned) beers in much fresher conditions.

Cheers!