I’ve always admired and envied brewers because you can turn on a dime, and make something else tomorrow. Yet I’ve never understood why a brewer would take an excellent, established and iconic brew and adulterate/dilute/or risk the goodwill and following they built.
Holiday beers are a great temptation to do this. Add some pumpkin for Thanksgiving. Hazelnut and coconut and “spice” for Christmas. Even mint. I’m sure I’ll eventually see an Easter beer redolent of Peeps.
Tonight saw the ruination of a good Holiday beer known as Kitten’s Mittens. It’s a happy day when it arrives, but tonight I learned it had… coconut added. Out of deference, I ordered it anyway. Simply terrible, in the same vein as every overdone pumpkin, rausch, or chocolate beer I’ve had.
Must say something about the competitiveness of the craft beer market that some breweries apparently feel the need to brew something maybe just to be different. I have family that own a craft beer bar and, beyond the mainstays, there are usually a couple of odd flavors on tap.
They sell cans and bottles too. Some of the names and artwork breweries use on their beers are kind of jarring to see on a label. Again…… the need to be different I think.
I think it speaks volumes. I didn’t give enough specific facts for much perspective, but this was a successful, recognized brewer in a brew haven, and the unflavored holiday beer was a popular classic with a multi-year run. Maybe it was an ill-informed one-off soup-du-jour, in which case I was misinformed by our server. IMO, it’s lack of subtlety was a Neil Armstrong giant step backward. It was like ordering an Old Engine Oil, and finding it had been brewed with lychee.
I’m glad to hear the perspectives of someone in the industry. I’m sure frenetic competition drives a lot. I just don’t get the appeal of outre renderings or following the herd.
Let me ask: Do you think brewers of this scale roll snake eyes on something grossly overdone like Coconut Kittens’ Mittens, and just dump the thing? Or do they soldier on and keep a straight face?
I can ask specifically when I have a chance but I’d be very surprised if their suppliers intentionally take fliers with brews they know are going to reflect negatively on them. Maybe at their own facility, if it’s not too bad, but not likely distributed. Business is still in the recovery stage from Covid for my relatives to be pouring ‘bad’ beer, and I haven’t heard of them refusing to tap or sell anything.
Of course, I have no way of knowing the ‘taste’ of people I don’t know.
Well, until air roasting machines were invented, all malted beers were “rauch”. It’s not so much a “style” as it is an artifact of how malt had to be kilned over wood fires in and before the mid-15th Century.
I spoke with my family member and she looked up Kittens Mittens on Untappd as she hasn’t had it. She said It has lots of fans and its listed ingredients don’t include coconut, so it was really impossible for her to draw any conclusion.
She did say that when their bar has tapped something they find really ‘off’ they’ll pull it and ask the rep to come by to taste. Sometimes it’s just a bad barrel, and the brewery almost always appreciates the feedback. She did wonder how your server knew about the coconut and did mention that, occasionally, a brewery with which they have a close relationship will send them something ‘experimental’.
Thanks. The brewer is 30 miles away, and supplies many taverns and restaurants in an even wider radius.
There was no missing the coconut, in the same sense as not missing the halibut in Fishy Coke. Just my opinion, but if this was an experiment, it went horribly wrong.
Luckily for me, the place that was pouring this also had Sierra Nevada Celebration. What they should have had was Maritime Pacific’s Jolly Roger.
Kulshan Brewing is using the “original” Kitten Mittens as a starting point for several different variations as it is very common at almost all breweries with their mire successful beers. And so there are multiple variation of Kitten Mittens available - coconut, coffee, barrel-aged, blended with Russian Imperial stout etc.
I haven’t been to the taproom but had the “original” Kitten Mittens years ago (and thought that it was OK - not bad, not outstanding which is also along the lines of its rating on different sites). The other variations are then captured in the databases (18 as far as I can see but some not any longer in production)
