Anyone else notice the last few batches seem to have a different hop profile and a larger malt presence? 2 other regular 1500 drinkers said the same thing. It used to be that the fresh stuff (3 weeks and younger) was super juicy. Now, not so much... What do you think? Recipe change? False date stamps?
Every batch of anything they make seems to taste completely differerent in the last year or so, it's a bummer.
All the kegs we've had at work in the last year have been as awesome as always. I seriously doubt they changed anything significant, but breweries do have to adjust to different hop crops and availability.
This was my first thought as well. I know that Drakes got a 2nd or 3rd new head brewer in as many yrs last May, and heard they might have a new one now (couldn't confirm) so perhaps that has something to do with it?
Pretty sure John Gillooly has been their head brewer for ages. That said, they've expanded like crazy over the past couple years. It's always hard for hoppy beer oriented breweries to maintain consistency while also significantly increasing batch sizes. As far as I'm concerned, hoppy beers just don't scale well.
I could have been mistaken. At a local event last year, I met a female brewer (who was introduced as head brewer, could have just been a brewer though), that was leaving to go to a SoCal brewery. She told me she had only been there about a yr and replaced another brewer, who bc of what I thought her title was thought was another head brewer, had also left for another brewery. Again this was all based on the fact that I thought she was the headbrewer.
That female brewer was the head brewer at Drake's as far as I know and left to go brew as head brewer at Kinetic Brewing in Lancaster, CA. Since then, I believe she's also left them and started as head brewer of another brewery. I also believe her replacement at Drake's has left as well. So, there has been a lot of turnover on the brew staff at Drake's the past few years.
Alex was the Lead Brewer, John Gillooly is the Brewmaster and as far as I know, has been Brewmaster for a while - they don't have a new Lead Brewer (they do have a Head Brewer now), but it seems based upon their website that Brewmaster is the highest brew house position. The ambiguous semantics of brewer titles make these discussions extra fun.
Well i for one would just like to see this male or female, veteran or newbie, brewmaster brewleader brewwizard get 1500 tasting like it used to. That was my favorite yearround sixer. I just downgraded it from 4.5 to 3.25. It's a very different beer than it was this time last year.
John Gillooly has been the brewmaster for a while. Alex Nowell was lead brewer at Drakes until she left early last year for Kinetic...which she left for the soon to be open Three Weavers. No changes to the recipe have been made.
Pretty much agree on 1500, that beer used to be killer. Hasn't had the same hop intensity for quite a while.
To be clear, I'm aware that palates change with time, but I'm pretty sure that's not what's going on here. This isn't one of those "This year's HopSlam isn't as good as last year's" threads either. We're talking about a year-round beer that occupied many of our refrigerators on a weekly basis for years, that has - in the last 3-5 months - become noticeably darker in color, less citrussy, less juicy, and is nowhere near as enjoyable as it consistently was. Something has changed, and I don't think it's those of us that have noticed.
I'm not saying it doesn't look, taste and smell different...I just had it recently at my beer bar and it tasted just like I remember. Also being technically employed by Drakes, I asked about the recent batches because of this thread. As far as the recipe goes, no changes were made, but from time to time, the hops and malts are received from different places.
This is potentially terrible news. 1500 so good. Just had a sixer if their ipa which was very nice, so hopefully your experience is more of an outlier.
Man Kinetic's beer at the DIPAfest in Feb was awesome.. I still remember that.. I think it was Afterburner? hhnnnnggg for more of that IPA..
