I don’t doubt you, but I've always felt like there was considerable batch variation (from batch to batch). So it's been hard for me to tell whether there's been a recipe change. That being said, early batches were really terrific (back when you could only get it on tap or Crowler), and more recent batches have been pretty "mehhh." Soooo....
Pliny the Elder is available in my area on draft. PtE has definitely 'evolved' over the past decade+ and FWIW for the better IMO. One striking aspect is the appearance. Contemporary PtE looks like a Pilsner (straw yellow color); Vinnie has 'backed off' the amount of crystal malt. And there has been some 'tweaks' as regards the hops (and hopping schedule) as well. Cheers!
I nearly baptized the bar top in non-amber spray when I had Fat Tire last year. There was a time it poured like polished copper and drank like it meant something. Toasty, a little sweet, built for long conversations and questionable decisions. Then it drowned, first in a rising tide of turpentine IPAs, and later under the murky flood of turbid haze. It didn’t so much disappear as get swallowed whole by the arms race. When it resurfaced, it wasn’t bad. That would’ve been merciful. It was fine. Lighter. Politer. Scrubbed down until the fingerprints were gone. Not a tweak. Not a gentle evolution. This felt like something else zipped up inside Fat Tire’s old skin. Same badge. Different pulse. The kids call that skinwalking.
Iron City, out of Pittsburgh, was a bad beer. They closed their Pittsburgh brewery down and moved to the old Rolling Rock brewery in Latrobe, PA. It got worse. About 5 or 6 years ago, they opened a new brewery in Creighton, PA and, in my opinion, it has become a drinkable beer.
I remember initially liking most Anchor beers, but let down as I revisited them (Porter, Steam, Liberty, Christmas variants all seemed thin). Didn't they used to make a barleywine, or maybe I'm just imagining?
I may be wrong, but I think they are still rocking the same recipe. Just had one the other day, and as I remembered it, it is still a super easy drinking, flavorful, and balanced brew.
I go the other way... Harp is better now than it used to be. The old green label lager wasn't as good as it is now. I'm guessing Guinness Americanized it so we'd drink more.
Americanized it? Not sure what you mean by that. If I heard that expression with respect to a lager, I would be afraid that meant the recipe had been dumbed down.... so it would taste more like a macro AAL.
When drinking Harp while visiting Ireland, I found it to be thin and watery. How much more like an AAL can you get?
I have a long neck Pete's with no pitchfork that I intend to open on the Cellaruary thread this month.
