Consistency and Craft Beer?

Yeah it kinda annoys me. For example, I had SA Octoberfest canned and thought it ok but I had it in bottles and to me it tasted better. Shouldnt it have tasted the same ? Ugghh. I can think of other examples where I had a beer in a variety pack and I had the same beer in a sixer and it tasted different to me.

 

Beers change over time once they're bottled - freshness, exposure to light & heat, etc. You don't always know where your beer has been before it is purchased by you from the shelf.

 

When a beer has both a canned version and a bottled version I think we wish they would both taste exactly the same but from my experiences that usually isnt the case.

 

With the rare exception of getting an infected beer (Central Waters BB Peruvian Morning), I haven't noticed inconsistency in the craft brews I drink. I will go for the bottled version before I purchase cans, but even the canned beers (Tallgrass, Sixpoint) seem consistently good.

 

From what I've seen, more people seem to "notice" inconsistencies in seasonals and/or limited releases that they haven't had for several months. Which means it could just be a trick of memory. But I do think there can be variations from year to year and even batch to batch. Although it's not the same as the difference in annual grape harvests, like wine, we are talking about agricultural ingredients which are subject to variation, after all. So, it's possible one shipment of hops is slightly different from another, for instance. I think it's also very possible that brewers will "tinker" with their recipes from time to time in an effort to improve them or, possibly even to make them somewhat more cost-efficient to brew. There was a recent thread that talked about how Ithaca had changed the recipe for Flower Power several times over the years. So, yeah, a beer can change for a variety of reasons. Whether it's for the better or worse is in the palette of the be-drinker.

 

are they inconsistent constantly? I haven't noticed any of the regular beers I drink inconsistent but I did have fresh bp dorado and a week later had it again from the same keg and it was not as tasty

 

Some more specific examples could help support the claim...

However, If the OP's join date (May 4, 2013) is anything close to when they got into craft beer, then I question if they can really speak to beer consistency yet. It might just be that the craft beer "honeymoon phase" is over... you know, where every beer is new and unlike anything you've tasted before. Taste is highly subjective and influenced by expectations and surroundings way more than most people realize or are willing to admit.

 

Kind of hard to say for sure than the inconsistency is in the beer. Might be. Might not be.

Beer is an articultural product and the crops can vary from year to year and even from field to field in the same area. The human palate is part of a living thing and is changing over time (in any give 7 year period the taste buds are different than they were in the previous 7 years). The human memory for flavor details isn't particularly good from one year to the next and sometimes from one month to the next. In addition the foods we eat through out the day can have an effect on how a beer tastes in the evening.

There's also cumulative effects over time, say of drinking the same beer repeatedly. One example of this is LTS, the Lapulin Threshold Shift. After drinking lots of well hopped beers they begin to not taste as hoppy as they once did. In this case the beers are the same it it’s the palate that's changed.

 

I remember the first time I had Thrill Seeker I thought it was pretty good; then I had it again a few months later and found something astringent and off-putting in the finish, like drinking orange juice after brushing one's teeth.

 

I've noticed a couple beers from different breweries being different from one batch to the next. The only couple I've noticed it on are from fairly small breweries. Never noticed anything from some of the larger ones.