450 North Brewing

Time to get all the other juice factories tested.. next up Imprint, Answer, and Burley Oak.

 

I just don't understand how this "style" is even a thing in the craft beer world. And I mostly mean from the perspective on waiting in line or paying $25/4pk to a trading/secondary market? Sure, I'm sure it tastes great but so would most beers if I mixed them half/half with a bottle of my kid's Juicy Juice. Same goes for adding fruit/lactose to NEIPA'S, it is just a crutch for the inability of a brewery to make proper hazy beer.

 

It is essentially impossible to make a 10% beer when you dilute it with 70% by volume fruit puree additions that aren't being fermented. Unless you were adding neutral grain spirit which isn't legal to do for this type of product at that ABV. This honestly should have been caught a long time ago by some customers.

 

It could be.. I also see it as a gateway "beer" to draw interest of those who would normally not be interested. It leads to higher volumes in a taproom and caters to a wider demographic.

 

I trade a decent amount and I've never even heard of 2 of those 3. Pretty happy about that actually.

There's a Trillium joke here somewhere. Haven't had enough coffee yet to piece it together though.

 

It's not quite that simple. It would be difficult to brew the 24% ABV beer you'd need to dilute - many yeasts can't ferment past 10%-12% ABV without additional help.

Also, yeast performs very differently with different sugars. Table sugar (sucrose) doesn't perform nearly as well as something like corn sugar (dextrose), maybe supplementing fermentation with enzymes would help. Of course, hundreds of years of brewing have demonstrated that they ultimately prefer malt-based sugars (maltose).

 

Pretty much all best in show for the style.

 

I think that is fine as a style that exists and may bring people into craft beer. But what is bothersome is that so many people were willing to wait in line and there was enough demand within the craft community on the secondary market for something that doesn't really taste like beer.

It was the same with with Not Your Father's Rootbeer, now of course no-one cares about it, but when it was new and claimed to be a "beer" people were going crazy for what is essentially an FMB.

I think some people just hope the craft community would be better than that.

 

Or don't be so hypocritical in criticizing someone for drinking a hard seltzer.

 

I'll be serious here for a moment. I am not a home brewer. I know a few people in the industry and have a few home brewer friends. Pair that with what I've learned on BA and I at least have a cursory understanding of the process. That said, if it was really difficult (maybe impossible) to brew a beer with a high enough gravity to achieve these ABVs they were advertising after mixing in the puree, why did it take so long for people to really start questioning what's going on here? Or maybe this has been going on behind the scenes and now that there's data to support the claim it's gone public?

So basically what @Bretts545 said.

 

I drove by at around 10:15 for the 11:00 release. Line was pretty long, but the back parking lot was only about 3/4 full. It's usually overflowing.

Stopped in a local watering hole for a GI Lolita and lunch instead. Good stuff.

 

That would be cool.

Burley Oak, definitely needs to be tested. I remember drinking the Quad Hmm (which was awesome btw) thinking this tastes like 4%, NOT 11%.

But the Answer produces both 3.5% and higher % ones. Might be accurate.

 

Personally, the Answer Joose does not taste (to me) like nothing but fruit. I get heavy fruit in the same way that SP beers are “jammy.” So, I do not question theirs. I did not think the one sample I had from 450 tasted the same, but a sample is a small comparison.

 

"Gateway beer" is fine and I fully support a variety of offerings that cater to a wide range of people.

Other than the ABV issue, I guess I can fault a brewery for pumping out fruit smoothie beers if people are gullible enough to pay $5-6/can or trade their cellar for them, right?

 

A couple things:
1) I think these imperial versions haven't been around for all that long, from the Instagram link earlier about a year and a half. And they've become a known thing where people line up like crazy for them for less than that, maybe 6 to 9 months. At least that's when I started hearing about them (and also about when this thread was created). Before this year I had actually heard of them just for being one of the first NE IPA producers in Indiana.

2) The post above assumes they put 70% fruit juice in there. I think @Bretts545 was just throwing a number out there. Point is, people don't usually think "I better not trust that ABV". Maybe people just thought "man, they really get a lot of fruit taste without sacrificing the ABV".

3) These are often share beers. The 2 or 3 times I've had a slushy beer, it was always with like 2-4 other people splitting a can. And usually there are a number of other heavy stouts involved. No way to tell if those weren't giving you a buzz if you're already buzzed. For the type of person who's drinking these beers; you'd probably need to have 2 full cans to realize "this is totally out of whack to the listed ABV"

4) To your last point, it wasn't going to blow up when people were just saying "hmmmm...". Now, if the brewery had more integrity, maybe they would have done something earlier in response to rumblings on forums or in their social media account comments - but since they deleted those sort of comments at first when this all came out, it's safe to assume they deleted other ones until it went viral and they couldn't control it. And thus it's fair to say they don't have much integrity surrounding this subject. Not until someone sent a fancy pic of a laboratory test before they got caught red-handed.

So all those things mean to me - this was a pretty reasonable timeframe for the poop to hit the fan.

 

From the looks of it they’re posting sarcastic emojis under people making valid complaints on Instagram. This is classic.

 

The market is what it is. Secondary is the pretty simple result of supply and demand, and you know a product is good because people want it. regardless of the type of beer, its clear that they created a product that turned the dial.

As for judging certain types of beer as being more worthy than others, I'd say thats pretty unfair. Ive had my fair share of pastry stouts and other beers where I was impressed but I wouldnt say that it tastes like "beer" in the traditional sense. Judging people for the style of beer they like seems pretty contrary to the hobby. Sure, its half smoothie/half beer, but its another style in the spectrum that makes beer great and interesting for all of us.

None of this is to excuse 450 who seem to be run by people who defrauded customers, but I think extending it to bashing people for their preferences is pretty unfair.

 

They could learn a thing or two from Pipeworks on how to take responsibility for a screw up. I can't stand people that can't take ownership for stuff that is 100% on them. And to try and make up for it (instead of a BS $2 off year end thank you) offer something sincere.

I don't think there is any way they would have sold as close to as much beer in the past (at the current price tag) if people knew this was under 3% abv the entire time.

 

Hell, they could take a page from Mikerphone on how to take responsibility for a screw up.

Again, to me, the fact that they still released these beers today when they admittedly don't know the ABV is pretty damning.

 

Apparently they’ve already sold out of the XXLs released today. Still some XLs and one Triple IPA left. I guess they still had a decent line after the news. We’ll see how the next release goes.