Ballast Point beer name changes

AB?? Why would they be involved? They don't own BP.

 

Sorry, drtth, got my corporate beer marketing juggernauts mixed up. Constellation is a totally different beast than AB--I used to get Webster and Arnold from Diff'rent Strokes mixed up all the time and, boy, did that upset some folks. I swear I won't let this happen again...

 

I'd think there's no way Sculpin would change. Way too much name recognition. I would bet money on Big Eye changing though.

 

I always considered Grunion their Pale Ale. Didn't even know they had another one.

 

No if you squint you can see in the image posted in the first post they will not be changing the recipe, 22 gold medals between the 2

 

Everyone wants to blame Constellation for any changes occurring with BP, but they have been pumping out the fruit beers way before they even started looking for a IPO/buyer. These beers have been in their taprooms for ages and based on the popularity, they make it to market. I think any brewer can tell you, you don't get bought and within a month start cranking out new recipes with adjuncts. Lots of planning and testing goes on there. Hate them if you want, but don't be blaming the buyout on beers that have been released since November, nor this label change which @jesskidden shows going back to July 2015

 

BP has seriously gone down hill after their buy out. Come on artificially fruited beers. Where is the craft in that. To top it of they weren't great. I refuse to buy any of their stuff anymore.

 

I am gonna guess the CALIFORNIA name will help in broader distribution as a catchy name. That is all. Now if they drop their prices a bit more I may actually buy more than the occasional 6 pack.

 

Sale of BP to Constellation took place well after they began the fruited beers. Constellation bought them none the less, thinking they have a great potential.

 

Whaaaaat the fu@k. Sculpin - California Hoppy Pale Ale; Dorado - California Dry Hopped DIPA; Victory At Seas - California Porter w/coffee & vanilla ... Insanity. Who are we catering to, beer lovers or common piss beer drinkers.

 

Victory At Sea is great for $14.99. I do agree on Sculpin being expensive, though.

 

I don't know enough of what they have served in their tap room before they were bought out, but if they were using artificially flavoring their beers before hand, it def shouldn't have been brought to market. If you can site a source for your information i'd definitely like to see.

 

Change owners, names and recipes. If they don't change the price, none of it will matter to me.

 

No one in this thread has claimed they use "artificial" flavoring but even the labels from the pre-Constellation era show they used "natural" flavors rather than the actual fruit.

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Can't give you a direct pointer as my information is based on posts by apparently knowledgeable BAs based in California who report drinking some of those beers in the tap room before the purchase. There may actually be one or more of them who posted in this thread. Another place I may have seen that is in the Beer News thread about the sale of BP to Constellation since several concerns such as yours have been voiced by others. I realize this is now, for you, third hand information but there were enough posts from people who had been to the brewery etc. and were independently saying the same thing that I decided it was trustworthy.

Note: they don't report artifical flavors being used but natural flavors being used. That is what is currently listed on the labels of the BP beers I've had here in PA and the two or three I was looking at just today while shopping for a few bottles of new stuff to put into the fridge.

 

I love the complete lack of reading in here. As others have said and the rest of you apparently can't grasp, is that Ballast Point was doing almost every fruited version of their beers we're now seeing in package long before they were bought by Constellation. The money they got is just helping get those beers in package more and into more markets. Blaming Constellation for fruited variants is completely stupid as hell. They did nothing other than help BP get more of them in larger markets instead of just having it draft only once in a while in one single market.

 

Natural is a word the food industry uses to hide the fact they aren't actually using pineapple or watermelon or whatever they've decided to use. So for instance natural would not mean pineapple per say but something derived from a natural occurring substance that approximated the flavor of pineapple. Take for instance coloring. Yes they can say natural red food coloring, but it really comes from a beetle ( like the insect husk) to make the dye. Which worries me about some of the breweries that are getting bigger and more known.

or its like switching from double or triple folded vanilla extract to nillin. Breweries that become more like companies start looking at the bottom line and disregard the craft part of the business. This is where I see BP is at. They are at the tail end of the apex of a turn. They are becoming more like an ABInBev.

 

The need to change Grunion so you don't have to say the word "onion" when ordering it.

 

Yes, I'm aware of that. Over the years I've seen several food items with the wording Natural Flavors on the label that do it that way, if only because of the difficulty of using the real thing. Since the government regulations that define when the word "natural" can be used are quite clear it actually has to be "natural" and not "artificial" to use the word "natural." That's one of the nice things about having the FDA in place, there are clear rules about what is "natural" and what is "artificial" and when those words have to be used.

If you find that makes you uncomfortable hopefully you also restrict your diet and avoid consumption of all such food items since some folks do believe those ingredients (natural ingredients substituted for the real thing) can produce often unrecognized health problems. The real difficulties arise when people mistakenly attribute "evils" that don't exist to such ingredients. Several years back there was a big fuss about Red Dye No. 2 being a causal factor in Hyperactivy in children that was based on poorly conducted observations. When the serious studies were done it was found that the much touted improvements in children's behavior that people thought they were finding after removing RD2 from the diet were actually based on sloppy observations and the improvements were related to other factors. So lots of people went to lots of work and incurred expenses they didn't have to pay in the first place.

BTW, breweries that don't attend to the bottom line are hard to find since they tend to fail and disappear.

 

I think it's a real shame that Kolsch is a bastardized style and these jerks at Ballast point simply attach the word California to it as if to ad sophistication to a lackluster beer.

Why not call it California American Pasteurized Cheezy Lager.

The breweries these days have no respect for German beer and technique...