Breweries release same beer under different name

Victory Helios was originally V Saison. Their Yakima Twilight became Yakima Glory. To the best of my knowledge, these were changes mostly driven by marketing and were both publicly announced.

 

No, Helios has Brett and V Saison did not.

Yakima was a name issue with another brewery who has a certain beer called Twilight.

And Victory Lager just got more descriptive with adding Helles to this name.

 

I suspect Kulmbacher is doing this. I mean they have so many Pilsners and Helles with different Labels, all from the same brewery and in the same strength. I can't tell them apart to be honest- Kulmbacher,Mönchshof,Eku......In my opinion it is very dishonest and one of many reasons I avoid their products.

 

De Molen had to change their Rasputin stout to Cease and Desist / Disputin due to legal issues I think

 

It's been said that Trinity does this on occasion just to laugh at the differences in the reviews here.

 

Victory's description of Helios says that it is the same beer. http://www.victorybeer.com/beers/helios/

 

Rogue is the undisputed heavyweight champion of doing this. Look at their beer list here on BA, there's a ton of beers with Alias'. Locally, Fremont has done this a few times. Difference is, they generally make a one-off that gets such a great response, that they put it into rotation.

 

Yeah, Pabst, they probably have 20 labels and one beer contract-brewed.

 

I can't recall the breweries but I do recall that there have been a couple where a batch didn't turn out the way they wanted it so they gave it a new name and released it rather than waste it.

And all Budweiser products are essentially the same; when they want to release a new beer, they add a [very] small amount of a different flavor, change the label and unleash a killer marketing campaign.

 

I know in the olden days breweries used to change the cans with the same beer in it. A lot of times having many names for the same beer. A lot were private labels. They did this because they could sell a significant amount of beer to beer can collectors. I would not be surprised to see this start happening today to get the ticker market to increase sales. At some point the increased sales will make up for the cost of having another name. Does anyone know what it costs to get state approval?

 

There are some brewers that do private label beers for bars and restaurants. Usually those are just a standard recipe with a tap handle for "Bob's Bar".

 

Locally, Saint Arnold has taken some one-offs and put them into regular rotation (albeit sometimes slightly different from the original) under a new name: Divine Reserve 9 became Pumpkinator and Divine Reserve 11 became Endeavour. The first in the movable yeast series became the year round Weedwacker, although I think it had that name when it came out as well.

 

Cenotaph became Zombie Dust (no subterfuge)

 

"Captain Sea Weeds Lager"

Me: What's this? (motioning towards the tap handle)
Bartender: It's Captain Sea Weeds Lager
Me: Yeah, but what is it?
Bartender: Natty Light

To be clear, beer is not the number one priority at Captain Seaweeds (cocaine is), so I wasn't expecting anything special. Nevertheless, that memory, amongst countless others from Seaweeds, makes me chuckle and I wanted to share it.

 

Yeah, I always wondered why Pabst discontinued Falstaff a decade or so ago. If they're just filling Falstaff cans with Old Style, I can't imagine there's much marginal cost in maintaining the brand. But then I don't live in Omaha anymore, so whatever.

 

Dark Horse recently had an "oops" batch of beer where they added chocolate malt to their raspberry ale on accident. They were calling it "dark raspberry" when I was there. The labels and packages were all the same as the regular raspberry ale, only way to tell was the batch number in the barcode. They were selling it cheap. $6 a 6pack.

They posted a fb picture up yesterday of the tap list. New beer on it called "Bramble On: Our raspberry ale brewed with chocolate malt to give it a darker, more complex flavor."

Sounds like they decided to rename it. Possibly because "dark horse dark raspberry" is kind of hard and could be confused with regular "dark horse raspberry" easily.

Although that could cause some issues, just looked in untappd and there are quite a few beers out there called "bramble on"

 

Great Lakes had Alchemy Hour and then due to a nastygram from the Alchemist, they changed it to Chillwave

 

Odell Brewing's Runoff Red IPA used to be Red Ale, IIRC.

 

I don't think it was the Alchemist. I believe it was for Widmer's Alchemy Ale. Still, dicks.