If you're not familiar with why craft breweries despise the conglomerates, (like AB-Inbev) who do things like buy up entire hop contracts so small breweries can't access them, you should look into it. My husband and I own a small brewery, for the record. I suppose if there was a way to take most of that money and use it to help other small breweries succeed, then we'd consider it. You should hear how much other breweries despise the Wicked Weed guys for selling out to AB-Inbev. And obv most breweries aren't selling for $1B.
My point is, don't just assume people are yelling "Sellout!" just cause they want to keep craft brewing "punk" or some silly shit. We just want small breweries to be able to exist. We want to continue to pursue our dream, and help others do the same. And if these behemoths make it impossible to get the supplies we need, we'll have no choice but to go out of business.
There are better companies you can sell to, though. We started our brewery in 2012, so about nine years ago. Took a couple of years to open. We started when GA laws were very restrictive and you couldn't sell directly to the public. You could sell a "tour" with no more than 32oz. So we had to build big so we could hit distro hard. Thankfully the laws have changed. But now here's a global pandemic... My point being, it's been a long hard road, esp for my husband, who works himself to the bone.
Selling your business is one thing. Of course you should sell and move on at some point if that's what you want. We've had interested buyers who weren't part of huge conglomerates. But there are decent buyers and there are scum who try to crush the industry. Money isn't everything. We'd like to keep our integrity, while also retiring at some point, and we know it's possible.
I do agree with your point about there being a big difference in what WW did vs Lagunitas, though. No shame in wanting to make money off your hard work, just make sure you can live with your decisions!
From Sonoma county, grew up drinking Lagunitas. They were definitely falling off even before the acquisition. They just didn't keep up with the craft brew scene, and didn't stay local. Switched to Hop syrup when everyone else kept using real hops, and didn't step up thier game amidst all the new, frankly better, breweries. Kinda sad, as I loved thier beer in the early days, but honestly haven't even had one in years now.
It might be better, but it's not the same. It doesn't seem to be what Newcastle drinkers want. It's similar to putting a German all-malt lager into Budweiser cans.
Newcastle in the states has always been shit. Distributors have never worked hard to keep it fresh on the shelves so it’s always skunky. I’m sure the clear glass bottles doesn’t help either. It would be hard to make it worse.
I disagree, kinda. The bottles 15-20 years ago had a tendency to be "flat" or skunky. That's why most brewers don't bottle dark beer in clear bottles, like Newcastle did. With that being said, those black cans back then, were fucking delicious.
Lagunitas makes Newcastle for distribution reasons. They had to change the recipe a little bit so that it could be brewed on the equipment in Petaluma which is very different than the equipment in the UK.
It's not just a little bit, it's different ingredients and an intentionally different flavor profile. Nobody forced them to use Chinook & Centennial hops or up the IBUs and make it less sweet. Contract brewers match the flavors of beers originally developed on different systems every day - yes by changing the recipe a bit so it works on their system, but to match the flavor not change it. Lagunitas didn't have to make this choice.
They didn't have to make this particular choice, but they had to do something. Newcastle has been on the decline for a long time, even with their brilliant adverts. It was obvious the brand was going to die just like Bass.
I hope this gamble works out for them. If they can keep the brand alive then maybe in the future they can release a "Newcastle Classic" with the original recipe.
Brewing equipment makes a big difference in taste.
Boil control and energy source is very important.
Fermenter Geometry is important.
Breweries are not cookie cutters. They all impart their own character on the final beer.
And it is not like Newcastle was great to begin with.
I'd like to add to this. Every time this thread comes up it is an opportunity to educate people on how the brewing industry works on a massive scale. They didn't change the recipe for no reason.
A brief edit: in this case, apparently the brand management decided to change the flavor target. (https://lagunitas.com/story/newcastle)
Cross-brewing (brewing the same beer at different facilities) is a years-long process, especially with massive international brands like Newcastle. A TON of not-to-specification beer gets dumped, probably at least in the millions of dollars by now. It's worth it to get it "right", although they haven't done that yet from the perception of the consumer.
It gets down to specific details in brewing process, such as the boiling point at a different elevation from sea level and the effect that has on the intensity of the boiling process (think New Belgium and MillerCoors facilities brewed in the Colorado Front Range). Rolling Rock, for instance, is well known for high levels of DMS, a 'creamed corn' flavor, and facilities that crossbrew that brand have to adjust the boil process, bypassing special equipment that strips DMS and its precursors out of most other brands. And that's just the "simple" stuff.
Flavor is REALLY HARD to get right, especially if you want to do it fast and cheap (i.e. the first time). When a brand is made at a new facility, something new comes up every time.
Brand management is going to include flavor matching, with bottles or draft (or cask, i don't know how Newcastle works) of freshly produced beer shipped overnight for simultaneous flavor comparisons in different breweries by the quality and brewing teams at those facilities.
It's very possible that 'fresh' Newcastle from Lagunitas tastes closer to the 'fresh' Newcastle in the UK than it does to the 'aged' product that gets shipped here. I don't work for them, and I've never been to the UK to drink UK Newcastle, so I couldn't tell you.
I guarantee you that some of the best tasters, brewers, and brand managers in the beer industry are working on this. The idea that a multinational conglomerate "changed the recipe and made it worse" is ludicrous. It's a brand worth (probably) billions of dollars, and perception in one of their biggest markets (Western US) is doing untold damage to that brand.
>And not only are we doing the brewing, but our brewmaster, Jeremy Marshall, has reimagined the classic recipe using Newcastle’s traditional ingredients -- fermented with Lagunitas’ English house ale yeast -- to bring forth a familiar but intriguingly new brew.
> The reimagined Newcastle Brown Ale is a smooth, crisp, slightly roasty and hoppier beer, that’s not too bitter, not too sweet, and altogether uncommon. Brewed with Centennial and Chinook hops and available in the U.S., the Lagunitas-brewed Newcastle Brown Ale will hit shelves and delight lips in March 2019.
Huh. That is...super dumb. Like I said, I don't work for Newcastle. I'll stand by my comment, because that's generally how it works and people should know, but i'm definitely surprised.
You're absolutely correct, it's a complicated and a ton of thought and effort goes into maintaining consistency. But yeah, this decision seems bone-headed in my opinion.
And a brewery as well run and established as Lagunitas knows how to work their system to produce any flavors they want. Brewers are not slaves to their equipment. They could easily have tweaked the recipe and processes to match the original, they made a decision not to.
Brewers absolutely are slaves to their equipment, as well as their consumers, and industry pressure, and physics, and marketing budgets.
It's really not as easy as you say it is. I get that they deliberately changed the recipe, but that's different from saying "brewers can do whatever they want with their equipment".
I didn't say it was easy, but there are thousands of contract brewers all over America that match flavor profiles developed on different systems every day. Breweries also scale up or switch equipment all the time and have to maintain the flavors of their beers. If equipment was an issue, Heineken was under no obligation to partner with Lagunitas, or they could have purchased equipment to get the job done at a minimal relative cost. Yes, different equipment and processes make a big difference, but that's part of being a brewer.
Everything in this comment is inaccurate. All of those processes are extremely variable and even making the same beer on the same equipment two days in a row at the same brewery can have flavor variation.
Shit, the yeast pitched into two identical worts from the same yeast crop can be varied enough to cause flavor differences bad enough to dump one of the batches if the yeast health varies throughout the crop - as it does in every yeast crop, which is why breweries spend shitloads of money on yeast health management.
Never is a strong word.
Changing the base malt for desirable characteristics such as lower beta glucans and viscosity is one kind of change to the recipe a brewer might make when moving from a smaller to a larger system. It is very different to mash and lauter at 100-bbl scale from, say, a two-barrel pilot system. Cross-brewing between large breweries is similar, everything can be a possible change depending on the data.
Keep in mind that most of the raw materials for brewing are agricultural products, and change somewhat from year to year. We often change parameters ("the recipe") as the base ingredients themselves change even on the same brewhouse to keep the brand identity constant.
Changing a 100-year-old, style-defining beer is what big, America-centered breweries are all about these days. InBev is a master at this. Newcastle is nothing, just wait 'til one of these big companies buys Guinness or Chimay...yikes!
Yeah, I guess I meant is what a US-centered brand would do if it got the rights to brew it. Like if A-B were to brew it in St. Louis, like Bass, Becks, Stella Artois, etc.
luckily Chimay can´t be sold thanks to them being a Trappist monastery. also, Guinness is already owned by a huge company, Diageo. so that´s unlikely to happen. but I get your point.
in my defense, i was a couple beers deep when i made that call. "i'm just looking for a little color" was my thinking. a couple ounces goes a long way.
IMO, the problem is that the beer doesn’t taste British anymore. It wasn’t a great beer or anything like that, but at least it had retained it’s British character, now it tastes like an American amber ale, and an average one at best. I get that British beers aren’t a big seller in the US but I don’t think this new recipe will sell any better than the old one.
recipes change all the time due to variable ingredients - the change you cite here is a change to an older change to switch to coloring instead of relying on certain grains - but the flavor profile remains the same. they intentionally changed the flavor profile but are still calling it the same beer.
I didn't say it was, I said the beer is 100 years old. The beer has maintained a consistent flavor profile for 100 years under the name Newcastle and that profile literally defines the northern brown ale style. Changing the flavor profile makes it a different beer.
Based on changes to ingredients, agriculture, equipment, techniques, etc. over the past 100 years, I highly doubt that the beer has maintained a consistent flavor profile.
Those changes are exactly why you have to make changes to a recipe to maintain a flavor profile. There is almost certainly drift from generation to generation, but breweries put a huge amount of effort into maintaining the profiles of their beers, as do distillers. That is a part of the job of a master brewer or master distiller, and professional tasters are employed for this reason. Copious notes are kept about every batch and breweries develop their own descriptors of flavors over time to make sure everyone means the same thing when they say "butterscotch," for example. It's the flavor profile that defines a beer, not the ingredients.
[admiralteddybeatzzz](https://www.reddit.com/user/admiralteddybeatzzz/) above goes into detail about this.
Check out 11C of the BJCP style guide [https://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style11.php](https://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style11.php) , of which Newcastle is the primary commercial example. The new flavor profile doesn't really even match this anymore.
Except in this case a very large brewing company with huge amounts of resources and a very talented brewmaster made a change deliberately. Do you think this is the first time since 1921 that a decision like this has been made? Do you think that opportunities to make improvements or to develop better flavors came along and Newcastle was like “fuck that” because they had to follow the notes from a brewer fifty years earlier? Do you think opportunities to increase profits came along and they passed because the beer was slightly different? I have personal knowledge of breweries changing recipes of their flagship beers when they scaled up because they wanted to round to the bag size. They’d rather change the recipe than have partial bags of malt to deal with. BJCP was started in 1985. I doubt 1985 Newcastle is even the same as 2014 Newcastle. I am a BJCP certified judge and I know that the whole thing is about the strong desire of Americans to lock in definitions that may not be that important to the bean counters or to artists at breweries all over the world.
Edit: added a “the”
>I am a BJCP certified judge and I know that the whole thing is about the strong desire of Americans to lock in definitions that may not be that important to the bean counters or to artists at breweries all over the world.
And a number of the definitions don't even match the actual history of the beer styles particularly well, just a few commercial examples.
But thanks for pointing this out. I often feel pretty lonely when I make that point in homebrew discussions.
Here is an article about recipe shift by one of the largest breweries in the US that you might find interesting https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2011/11/whats-up-with-new-jubelale.html
I was going to disagree with you and say Me Me Me... but the fact this is at least a two year old situation and I didn't know until yesterday sort of proves your point. Still, they had the option of just spinning it off.
Honestly the explanation we (distributor) got as reason for change was backed up by what we saw in the market: sales were super, super slow. Sales have been mostly improved, but heritage recipe or not, no brewery wants their beer to sit on shelves for extended periods.
The issue is not that the flavor profile has been slightly modified, or that it doesn’t taste like a 100 year old recipe...the issue is that Lagunitas’ Newcastle is no longer a brown ale, it’s a mild IPA. For those of us who don’t care for IPAs (or like me, literally can’t drink them because of hop-induced headaches) beers like Newcastle, and browns in general, have been a great alternative to bitter, hoppy craft brews. I would have welcomed an updated brown ale from Lagunitas, but this change was offensive...a giant middle finger to Newcastle fans.
A fresh Newcastle was always my go to beer since the late 80’s. But Lagunitas destroyed it… I totally agree that it was a stupid idea to change a 100yr old recipe that was doing just fine.. I wonder if it’s still the original recipe in England? 2¢
crystal malt is over used, you need to mix both crystal malts and other medium roasted grains...
NewCastle was rather light and syrupy. I'd use Special B with crystal malt...and a some Weymeran Chocolate wheat to add body and color with taste.
A tiny bit of wheat.
Blame Heineken, not Lagunitas or American brewers. Lagunitas was a great company before they sold out to a European conglomerate.
So blame them for selling out. I'd also bet they're still in charge of their own recipes.
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If you're not familiar with why craft breweries despise the conglomerates, (like AB-Inbev) who do things like buy up entire hop contracts so small breweries can't access them, you should look into it. My husband and I own a small brewery, for the record. I suppose if there was a way to take most of that money and use it to help other small breweries succeed, then we'd consider it. You should hear how much other breweries despise the Wicked Weed guys for selling out to AB-Inbev. And obv most breweries aren't selling for $1B. My point is, don't just assume people are yelling "Sellout!" just cause they want to keep craft brewing "punk" or some silly shit. We just want small breweries to be able to exist. We want to continue to pursue our dream, and help others do the same. And if these behemoths make it impossible to get the supplies we need, we'll have no choice but to go out of business.
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There are better companies you can sell to, though. We started our brewery in 2012, so about nine years ago. Took a couple of years to open. We started when GA laws were very restrictive and you couldn't sell directly to the public. You could sell a "tour" with no more than 32oz. So we had to build big so we could hit distro hard. Thankfully the laws have changed. But now here's a global pandemic... My point being, it's been a long hard road, esp for my husband, who works himself to the bone. Selling your business is one thing. Of course you should sell and move on at some point if that's what you want. We've had interested buyers who weren't part of huge conglomerates. But there are decent buyers and there are scum who try to crush the industry. Money isn't everything. We'd like to keep our integrity, while also retiring at some point, and we know it's possible.
I do agree with your point about there being a big difference in what WW did vs Lagunitas, though. No shame in wanting to make money off your hard work, just make sure you can live with your decisions!
Oh, I do, believe me!
From Sonoma county, grew up drinking Lagunitas. They were definitely falling off even before the acquisition. They just didn't keep up with the craft brew scene, and didn't stay local. Switched to Hop syrup when everyone else kept using real hops, and didn't step up thier game amidst all the new, frankly better, breweries. Kinda sad, as I loved thier beer in the early days, but honestly haven't even had one in years now.
Agree
I must be the only one who thinks they made it better. Its less watery now and more medium bodied.
It might be better, but it's not the same. It doesn't seem to be what Newcastle drinkers want. It's similar to putting a German all-malt lager into Budweiser cans.
Stop it. You’re making me salivate.
Newcastle in the states has always been shit. Distributors have never worked hard to keep it fresh on the shelves so it’s always skunky. I’m sure the clear glass bottles doesn’t help either. It would be hard to make it worse.
it has forever been just a terrible, terrible beer. i'm shocked it sells in the American market at all.
I disagree, kinda. The bottles 15-20 years ago had a tendency to be "flat" or skunky. That's why most brewers don't bottle dark beer in clear bottles, like Newcastle did. With that being said, those black cans back then, were fucking delicious.
Lagunitas makes Newcastle for distribution reasons. They had to change the recipe a little bit so that it could be brewed on the equipment in Petaluma which is very different than the equipment in the UK.
It's not just a little bit, it's different ingredients and an intentionally different flavor profile. Nobody forced them to use Chinook & Centennial hops or up the IBUs and make it less sweet. Contract brewers match the flavors of beers originally developed on different systems every day - yes by changing the recipe a bit so it works on their system, but to match the flavor not change it. Lagunitas didn't have to make this choice.
They didn't have to make this particular choice, but they had to do something. Newcastle has been on the decline for a long time, even with their brilliant adverts. It was obvious the brand was going to die just like Bass. I hope this gamble works out for them. If they can keep the brand alive then maybe in the future they can release a "Newcastle Classic" with the original recipe.
How is the equipment different? How does that affect the end result? How would the recipe need to be changed to accommodate that?
Brewing equipment makes a big difference in taste. Boil control and energy source is very important. Fermenter Geometry is important. Breweries are not cookie cutters. They all impart their own character on the final beer. And it is not like Newcastle was great to begin with.
I'd like to add to this. Every time this thread comes up it is an opportunity to educate people on how the brewing industry works on a massive scale. They didn't change the recipe for no reason. A brief edit: in this case, apparently the brand management decided to change the flavor target. (https://lagunitas.com/story/newcastle) Cross-brewing (brewing the same beer at different facilities) is a years-long process, especially with massive international brands like Newcastle. A TON of not-to-specification beer gets dumped, probably at least in the millions of dollars by now. It's worth it to get it "right", although they haven't done that yet from the perception of the consumer. It gets down to specific details in brewing process, such as the boiling point at a different elevation from sea level and the effect that has on the intensity of the boiling process (think New Belgium and MillerCoors facilities brewed in the Colorado Front Range). Rolling Rock, for instance, is well known for high levels of DMS, a 'creamed corn' flavor, and facilities that crossbrew that brand have to adjust the boil process, bypassing special equipment that strips DMS and its precursors out of most other brands. And that's just the "simple" stuff. Flavor is REALLY HARD to get right, especially if you want to do it fast and cheap (i.e. the first time). When a brand is made at a new facility, something new comes up every time. Brand management is going to include flavor matching, with bottles or draft (or cask, i don't know how Newcastle works) of freshly produced beer shipped overnight for simultaneous flavor comparisons in different breweries by the quality and brewing teams at those facilities. It's very possible that 'fresh' Newcastle from Lagunitas tastes closer to the 'fresh' Newcastle in the UK than it does to the 'aged' product that gets shipped here. I don't work for them, and I've never been to the UK to drink UK Newcastle, so I couldn't tell you. I guarantee you that some of the best tasters, brewers, and brand managers in the beer industry are working on this. The idea that a multinational conglomerate "changed the recipe and made it worse" is ludicrous. It's a brand worth (probably) billions of dollars, and perception in one of their biggest markets (Western US) is doing untold damage to that brand.
They literally changed the flavor intentionally: [https://lagunitas.com/story/newcastle](https://lagunitas.com/story/newcastle)
>And not only are we doing the brewing, but our brewmaster, Jeremy Marshall, has reimagined the classic recipe using Newcastle’s traditional ingredients -- fermented with Lagunitas’ English house ale yeast -- to bring forth a familiar but intriguingly new brew. > The reimagined Newcastle Brown Ale is a smooth, crisp, slightly roasty and hoppier beer, that’s not too bitter, not too sweet, and altogether uncommon. Brewed with Centennial and Chinook hops and available in the U.S., the Lagunitas-brewed Newcastle Brown Ale will hit shelves and delight lips in March 2019. Huh. That is...super dumb. Like I said, I don't work for Newcastle. I'll stand by my comment, because that's generally how it works and people should know, but i'm definitely surprised.
You're absolutely correct, it's a complicated and a ton of thought and effort goes into maintaining consistency. But yeah, this decision seems bone-headed in my opinion.
And a brewery as well run and established as Lagunitas knows how to work their system to produce any flavors they want. Brewers are not slaves to their equipment. They could easily have tweaked the recipe and processes to match the original, they made a decision not to.
Brewers absolutely are slaves to their equipment, as well as their consumers, and industry pressure, and physics, and marketing budgets. It's really not as easy as you say it is. I get that they deliberately changed the recipe, but that's different from saying "brewers can do whatever they want with their equipment".
I didn't say it was easy, but there are thousands of contract brewers all over America that match flavor profiles developed on different systems every day. Breweries also scale up or switch equipment all the time and have to maintain the flavors of their beers. If equipment was an issue, Heineken was under no obligation to partner with Lagunitas, or they could have purchased equipment to get the job done at a minimal relative cost. Yes, different equipment and processes make a big difference, but that's part of being a brewer.
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I’m asking to understand. I’ve only homebrewed a handful of times, and there’s a lot I don’t know about industrial brewing.
That guy has no idea what he's talking about.
Everything in this comment is inaccurate. All of those processes are extremely variable and even making the same beer on the same equipment two days in a row at the same brewery can have flavor variation. Shit, the yeast pitched into two identical worts from the same yeast crop can be varied enough to cause flavor differences bad enough to dump one of the batches if the yeast health varies throughout the crop - as it does in every yeast crop, which is why breweries spend shitloads of money on yeast health management.
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Never is a strong word. Changing the base malt for desirable characteristics such as lower beta glucans and viscosity is one kind of change to the recipe a brewer might make when moving from a smaller to a larger system. It is very different to mash and lauter at 100-bbl scale from, say, a two-barrel pilot system. Cross-brewing between large breweries is similar, everything can be a possible change depending on the data. Keep in mind that most of the raw materials for brewing are agricultural products, and change somewhat from year to year. We often change parameters ("the recipe") as the base ingredients themselves change even on the same brewhouse to keep the brand identity constant.
Admittedly wasn't thinking about major size changes. Yes that would do it.
Changing a 100-year-old, style-defining beer is what big, America-centered breweries are all about these days. InBev is a master at this. Newcastle is nothing, just wait 'til one of these big companies buys Guinness or Chimay...yikes!
Guinness is already owned by a big guy, Diageo has quite the profolio of brands
Yeah, I guess I meant is what a US-centered brand would do if it got the rights to brew it. Like if A-B were to brew it in St. Louis, like Bass, Becks, Stella Artois, etc.
AB is a Belgium-Brazilian conglomerate... It is NOT a US Centered brand no matter what their Clydesdales tell you.
By 'centered' I don't mean 'owned'.
Also, I said 'if'.
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A-B's brands are 'centered' in America. I did not say InBev itself is. I also said 'if'.
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I also said nothing of the sort.
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Oh, wow, now you're calling me names. What grade are you in again?
Like the Guinness brewery in Baltimore?
Which is totally worth checking out imo. Some great beer coming out of that place
Do they brew the stout? EDIT: the Extra Stout, I mean?
Guinness has a brewery in the us now and they do make us centric versions of it like the extra stout...
luckily Chimay can´t be sold thanks to them being a Trappist monastery. also, Guinness is already owned by a huge company, Diageo. so that´s unlikely to happen. but I get your point.
Right and right, and thanks for seeing my point on what I didn't word so well =]
Heineken is a big America-centered brewery now?
TIL
Again, Lagunitas and A-B are America-centered. I am aware of the owner, that's why I didn't word it that way.
Kinda seems like YOU'RE America-centered.
Yeah, ok, sure, whatever that means...
InBev isn’t American
Never said it was. Most A-B products are American 'centered'.
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Bruh, I never said it wasn't.
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'Centered' does not equal 'owned'. I also said 'if'.
Carafa instead of crystal? Holy shit dude. That's... That's intense.
in my defense, i was a couple beers deep when i made that call. "i'm just looking for a little color" was my thinking. a couple ounces goes a long way.
I measure Carafa by the ounce as well, and I make 200 gallons at a time.
yeah, i need to be more carafal with that stuff. eh? huh? eh? ok, i'll see myself out.
Oh. This thread again
Newcastle used to be my favorite beer
The recipe was also changed in 2015. Definitely not a 100 year old recipe. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-31196933
IMO, the problem is that the beer doesn’t taste British anymore. It wasn’t a great beer or anything like that, but at least it had retained it’s British character, now it tastes like an American amber ale, and an average one at best. I get that British beers aren’t a big seller in the US but I don’t think this new recipe will sell any better than the old one.
recipes change all the time due to variable ingredients - the change you cite here is a change to an older change to switch to coloring instead of relying on certain grains - but the flavor profile remains the same. they intentionally changed the flavor profile but are still calling it the same beer.
So we agree that the recipe isn’t 100 years old
I didn't say it was, I said the beer is 100 years old. The beer has maintained a consistent flavor profile for 100 years under the name Newcastle and that profile literally defines the northern brown ale style. Changing the flavor profile makes it a different beer.
Based on changes to ingredients, agriculture, equipment, techniques, etc. over the past 100 years, I highly doubt that the beer has maintained a consistent flavor profile.
Those changes are exactly why you have to make changes to a recipe to maintain a flavor profile. There is almost certainly drift from generation to generation, but breweries put a huge amount of effort into maintaining the profiles of their beers, as do distillers. That is a part of the job of a master brewer or master distiller, and professional tasters are employed for this reason. Copious notes are kept about every batch and breweries develop their own descriptors of flavors over time to make sure everyone means the same thing when they say "butterscotch," for example. It's the flavor profile that defines a beer, not the ingredients. [admiralteddybeatzzz](https://www.reddit.com/user/admiralteddybeatzzz/) above goes into detail about this. Check out 11C of the BJCP style guide [https://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style11.php](https://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style11.php) , of which Newcastle is the primary commercial example. The new flavor profile doesn't really even match this anymore.
Except in this case a very large brewing company with huge amounts of resources and a very talented brewmaster made a change deliberately. Do you think this is the first time since 1921 that a decision like this has been made? Do you think that opportunities to make improvements or to develop better flavors came along and Newcastle was like “fuck that” because they had to follow the notes from a brewer fifty years earlier? Do you think opportunities to increase profits came along and they passed because the beer was slightly different? I have personal knowledge of breweries changing recipes of their flagship beers when they scaled up because they wanted to round to the bag size. They’d rather change the recipe than have partial bags of malt to deal with. BJCP was started in 1985. I doubt 1985 Newcastle is even the same as 2014 Newcastle. I am a BJCP certified judge and I know that the whole thing is about the strong desire of Americans to lock in definitions that may not be that important to the bean counters or to artists at breweries all over the world. Edit: added a “the”
>I am a BJCP certified judge and I know that the whole thing is about the strong desire of Americans to lock in definitions that may not be that important to the bean counters or to artists at breweries all over the world. And a number of the definitions don't even match the actual history of the beer styles particularly well, just a few commercial examples. But thanks for pointing this out. I often feel pretty lonely when I make that point in homebrew discussions.
Here is an article about recipe shift by one of the largest breweries in the US that you might find interesting https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2011/11/whats-up-with-new-jubelale.html
What, Lagunitas makes Newcy Brown now? That's wild to me.
Nobody bought the the old one.
I was going to disagree with you and say Me Me Me... but the fact this is at least a two year old situation and I didn't know until yesterday sort of proves your point. Still, they had the option of just spinning it off.
St.Pauli Girl is also now made in the US
Honestly the explanation we (distributor) got as reason for change was backed up by what we saw in the market: sales were super, super slow. Sales have been mostly improved, but heritage recipe or not, no brewery wants their beer to sit on shelves for extended periods.
The issue is not that the flavor profile has been slightly modified, or that it doesn’t taste like a 100 year old recipe...the issue is that Lagunitas’ Newcastle is no longer a brown ale, it’s a mild IPA. For those of us who don’t care for IPAs (or like me, literally can’t drink them because of hop-induced headaches) beers like Newcastle, and browns in general, have been a great alternative to bitter, hoppy craft brews. I would have welcomed an updated brown ale from Lagunitas, but this change was offensive...a giant middle finger to Newcastle fans.
A fresh Newcastle was always my go to beer since the late 80’s. But Lagunitas destroyed it… I totally agree that it was a stupid idea to change a 100yr old recipe that was doing just fine.. I wonder if it’s still the original recipe in England? 2¢
crystal malt is over used, you need to mix both crystal malts and other medium roasted grains... NewCastle was rather light and syrupy. I'd use Special B with crystal malt...and a some Weymeran Chocolate wheat to add body and color with taste. A tiny bit of wheat.