canyonwalker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
canyonwalker) wrote2023-06-01 09:55 pm
canyonwalker) wrote2023-06-01 09:55 pm
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Beer Tasting: Fat Tire versus... Fat Tire!
A few months ago New Belgium Brewing announced a change the packaging of its signature beer, Fat Tire— and changed the recipe, too. That caught my attention because in this Beer Tasting project I've been running for over a year now Fat Tire has steadily edged out the competition in amber ales, one of my go-to categories, rising to a position among my top few beers overall. Would this change make it better— or worse?
Worse is definitely a possibility. We older kids remember the New Coke debacle of the 1980s. Coca-Cola saw that it was losing some taste tests to Pepsi and thought it had to reformulate its main brand. The result was disastrous. Coke drinkers hated the new flavor despite a big-dollar advertising campaign with celebrities like Bill Cosby telling us how amazingly better it was. (Maybe the taste was better for disguising roofies.) Coke had to quickly backtrack and introduce "Coke Classic", which they restored to the original branding later when New Coke was put to quiet death.
Anyway, New Belgium announced this change a few months ago, but there must have been a lot of older product still in the sales channel as it wasn't until recently that I saw the newer packing in stores. I picked some up the other day, after having purposefully saved a few bottles of the older recipe, to give them a head-to-head taste test.
Right away I noticed that the new Fat Tire has a lighter hue. With the beers poured into glasses (photo above) you can see the new Fat Tire has a lighter yellow color, vs. the older recipe's more amber hue. The new formulation has a lighter colored head, too.
Taste differences are small but noticeable. The older Fat Tire recipe has a stronger flavor; the newer Fat Tire is just a touch sweeter and richer. Drinking them alone (without food) I definitely liked the new Fat Tire a little better. But would that preference hold up with food?
It turns out the taste differences hold up with food as well as without. I drank the beers with a pizza dinner. Rich food like a meaty pizza is what amber ales are meant for! I thought maybe the older recipe's slightly more sour hops would help it stand up better to the umami, fats, and salt of pizza, but the sweeter new recipe continued to hold its own. It tasted better with rich food because it maintained its sweetness as a gentle counterpoint to the food's flavors, enabling both the pizza and the beer to shine throughout the meal.
Winner: (new) Fat Tire!
Worse is definitely a possibility. We older kids remember the New Coke debacle of the 1980s. Coca-Cola saw that it was losing some taste tests to Pepsi and thought it had to reformulate its main brand. The result was disastrous. Coke drinkers hated the new flavor despite a big-dollar advertising campaign with celebrities like Bill Cosby telling us how amazingly better it was. (Maybe the taste was better for disguising roofies.) Coke had to quickly backtrack and introduce "Coke Classic", which they restored to the original branding later when New Coke was put to quiet death.
Anyway, New Belgium announced this change a few months ago, but there must have been a lot of older product still in the sales channel as it wasn't until recently that I saw the newer packing in stores. I picked some up the other day, after having purposefully saved a few bottles of the older recipe, to give them a head-to-head taste test.
Right away I noticed that the new Fat Tire has a lighter hue. With the beers poured into glasses (photo above) you can see the new Fat Tire has a lighter yellow color, vs. the older recipe's more amber hue. The new formulation has a lighter colored head, too.
Taste differences are small but noticeable. The older Fat Tire recipe has a stronger flavor; the newer Fat Tire is just a touch sweeter and richer. Drinking them alone (without food) I definitely liked the new Fat Tire a little better. But would that preference hold up with food?
It turns out the taste differences hold up with food as well as without. I drank the beers with a pizza dinner. Rich food like a meaty pizza is what amber ales are meant for! I thought maybe the older recipe's slightly more sour hops would help it stand up better to the umami, fats, and salt of pizza, but the sweeter new recipe continued to hold its own. It tasted better with rich food because it maintained its sweetness as a gentle counterpoint to the food's flavors, enabling both the pizza and the beer to shine throughout the meal.
Winner: (new) Fat Tire!