Trigger’s Broom

“We changed the recipe, we put oats in it now, to fill out the mouthfeel”.

Said a brewery rep to me at London Craft Beer Festival last year, as I sipped a sample of their flagship beer. This is a beer that had been in production for the last seven years. A beer that I had drunk frequently at one time. The beer in my glass did indeed have a thicker body to it, which, to be fair, probably did improve the overall character, but I couldn’t help but feel a touch annoyed. It wasn’t the beer I knew, it wasn’t the beer I had expected, it wasn’t the beer I had asked for.

“Has anyone noticed?” I asked.

“No, not really, only when we tell them, so we don’t tend to”.

The tweaking of a core beer’s makeup and profile is not uncommon in the beer industry, in fact it is par the course. Recipes get adjusted from batch to batch in the never ending quest for perfection. Occasionally a satisfactory version is found and variations cease for a few years, but inevitably over time, brew kit changes, personnel changes, ingredient availability, market trends, changing consumer preferences or something else will demand more revisions. But how far derived from the original brew can a beer go, before it cannot arguably be the same beer anymore? Certain sections of the beer market are more forgiving than others when it comes to variation under the same name. Fans of wild ales will appreciate the differences from batch to batch and understand that complete repetition isn’t achievable. Likewise those who follow the smallest startup microbreweries might understand that kit, lab and experience limitations mean exact duplications are tough. But for most of the market, I would think drinkers would expect a high degree of consistency under the same name.

In recent years the most common change of beer makeup seen in the UK has been that of ABV reductions. The duty bracket changes, brought in on the dying breath of the last Conservative government, has seen a huge number of beers reduce their ABV to 3.4%. For most, this change was a nominal change, but for a few brands the drop has been much more noticeable. The Asahi owned lager brand Grolsch was 5% five years ago and is now 3.4%. Asahi obviously have a vested interest in keeping the brand the same, but such a significant drop in strength can’t sit well with fans of the beer?

There is also the other side is this coin, when the terminology used around a beer changes, without a noticeable change in recipe. For example Fullers’ London Pride has, in its sixty-six year history, been at various times a best bitter, a pale ale, and an amber ale, (as well as the more woolly titles of “premium ale” and “original ale”). I wasn’t alive for the first half of Pride’s lifespan so I can’t speak to the earlier changes, but in its more recent updates, from premium ale, to original ale and then to amber ale, I did not detect any change in its flavour profile once the new badges were rolled out. The brand vocabulary moved on when the liquid didn’t.

Some brewers go even further and re use a brand name for a completely different beer. In 2023 New Belgium Brewery radically changed their flagship brand Fat Tire from a malt forward amber ale to a much lighter golden ale to ‘appeal’ to new drinkers. Such wanton disregard for such a popular beer seems like insanity to me and was met with vocal dissatisfaction from the beers long time fan base.

When drinkers profess a deep love or admiration for a particular beer, what is it that they are actually aligned with? Is it the liquid in the glass as it is now, or how it was in the past? Is it the style, the strength, the brewery? Or is it the attributes of the brand, and how the consumption of it speaks to their own identity? I have no insight on this, but I am inclined to think most customers would say their allegiance is based on the liquid. However it is probably more based on the brand and the language around it, even if they don’t realise that.

Between the transient nature of recipes, the variables of storage and dispense, the variation in ingredient qualities from harvest to harvest, and the cycles of branding and descriptors, is it even valid to say you “like” a beer, in the present tense, unless it’s in a glass in front of you at that point? I’m not convinced. Perhaps I should try to set an example by adapting my language from “I like that beer” to “I enjoyed that beer, last time I drank it”.