Tasting: Old New Belgium Fat Tire vs. new Fat Tire -- The most surprising takeaway here is that the original was barely an amber ale at all! craftbeer beertwitter FatTire
Fat Tire Amber Ale, following years of dwindling sales. Particularly thanks to the brewery’s odd decision to let the redesigned beer begin hitting store shelves in various markets weeks before officially announcing the change, there was a period of rather chaotic uncertainty that ensued, with fans of the classic amber ale haranguing the brewery over social media, asking what exactly what going on.
Personally, although I certainly admire the environmental consciousness of the New Belgium brand, I’ll always be more interested in the beer itself. And so I was certainly curious to taste this new version of Fat Tire, a beer that was extremely important to the craft beer awakenings of so many drinkers in the 2000s in particular.
In truth, Fat Tire has always been something of a stylistic quandary. The original version was made with clean-fermenting American ale yeast, but at the same time there was always a semi-widespread perception among drinkers that the brand was meant to be a “Belgian amber ale,” an assumption that made more sense in the early day of New Belgium’s production.
The new Fat Tire, meanwhile, seems to be going out of its way to avoid stylistic comparisons at all. Reflecting a belief, perhaps, that beer drinkers are increasingly disinterested in “beer styles” and instead are interested in lifestyle branding, the new cans don’t make any particular claim about what this new Fat Tire is supposed to be. In reality, though, it seems to be an American blonde or golden ale.
All that’s left, then, is to pour these two versions of an iconic, former craft beer flagship and see how they compare.The truly striking thing, as I poured the bottle of the original Fat Tire recipe into a glass last night, is that it doesn’t really look much like an American amber ale in the first place. In the years since I’ve previously had a Fat Tire out of a glass, I’d forgotten that this beer is just about the lightest approximation of “amber” on the market.
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