I recently had Epic's Elevated IPA. On the bottle, they had the batch number and the hop they use. You go on the site to find out their hop/malt bill, which they change. Why is this not done more? Modern restaurants do it all the time. Fresh ingredients, whatever is available, you serve what you have, and you cook it well. What are beers that change their recipe frequently? Why don't more beers change their recipes and adjust to perfect the beer or just do it for change? Wouldn't it be something "gimmicky" as Stone's Enjoy By to change the recipe every batch so that people want to try the new batch and see how the beer is?
A lot of breweries are stuck in the BMC mindset, where they have to maintain an a static product or they will lose their customer base, their afraid to experiment and complacent with the status quo. LAME
A lot of anniversary beers seem to change from year to year. But I'd guess if a brewery is pumping out a successful regular offering they don't want to rock the boat.
Epic Brewing out of Utah does this with some of their beers. Duvel Tripel Hop and Troubadour Magma Special Edition change hops every year.
Yeah, you know what they need to change up...Zombie Dust. Seriously though, people complain enough about how this or that brewery must have changed their recipe because it didn't taste like it did 3 years ago.
I like that idea, and there a handful of breweries that I wanna try beer from just for that reason. Pipeworks is a big want for me because they seem to be pumping out variations of beers all the time. Idk how great they turn out, but I'd love to see for myself!
surly wet has been using a different single hop the last couple of years. they should make the citra version a yearly ting mon
But where is the line? I would guess that many beer recipes need to be tweaked due to how each ingredient is each time things are brewed, just like in cooking if something is slightly off you adjust it so it's right. Even if a "big change" vs a "small change", who decides what that is? The OP's idea is solid, but I don't think the beers should have to change names every time.
Historically, every beer frequently changed ingredients. British breweries would use three different types of pale malt and three of four diffrerent hops in a beer. So that when one ingredient became unavailable and had to be substituted there wouldn't be a big change in the flavour of the beer. Malt and hops are natural products and not identical from one year to the next. If a brewer is aiming for a particular flavour profile, it makes sense to adapt the recipe to compensate for the changes in the raw materials.
Yeah, this can go either way. NEB changed Sea Hag IPA and it's now fantastic! Ithaca Brewing changed Flower Power and I don't like it as much... One thing that's funny about these changes, not that brewers should have this at the top of their priority list), is how it affects ratings on sites like BA. Sea Hag is tremendously underrated on here because most people reviewed the old one.
Restaurants that constantly change menus like that are doing so to take advantage of fresh, seasonal produce. In brewing, the basic ingredients don't change. (fruit beers and fresh hop beers being exceptions)
To the OP, are you implying that beers that use the same ingredients year to year are inferior or lower quality than a beer whose ingredients get tweaked all the time? If so, I wholeheartedly disagree with you. [if not, then sorry for the following...] Production of beer ingredients are very well standardized and surprisingly consistent year to year, so the idea that you can get significantly fresher or "better" ingredients is a little misguided. Besides there are many excellent beers that many BA's would miss sorely if the recipe were to change. Also a brewer with a popular beer would be insane to risk alienating their customers by tweaking recipes. It's the consistently popular beers like SNPA, Bell's Two-Hearted, 60-minute IPA, Magic Hat #9, Pliny the Elder, Fat Tire, Dead Guy Ale, etc. that keep the lights on in the brewery, and get people to try the brewer's other beers from time to time too. I'm not saying a brewer shouldn't ever tweak recipes, but when they do it's more of a marketing thing to get people trying each new recipe, than to necessarily "improve" the same beer. For example Anchor's Our Special Ale (Christmas beer) is a little different every year on purpose.
yea i mean its tough to judge where the line is drawn...i feel if the taste of the beer is noticeably different then the name should be changed..for example, sixpoint brewery's fall release: autumnation last year was a pumpkin beer, and this year is an ipa...i personally like what sam adams did better with their spring release when they changed from white ale to noble pils...they didnt keep the same name(even though they couldnt because the kind of beer it was is in the name of the beer)
When I go to a restaurant I'm familiar with, and order an entree I know and like, I expect it to be more or less the same every time. That's why restaurants have specials, so they can try new things without making too many alterations to their core menu. Likewise beer. Two Hearted should taste like Two Hearted. SNPA should taste like SNPA. If you want to play around with ingredients and recipes, fine. Call it something else. When I order an Anchor Steam, I want an Anchor Steam.
