Preach it brutha, give me a porter, a red ale, even a Bass, I’m happy enough to get a Yuengling Lager as at least it has taste and isn’t bitter. Newcastle was a good occasional summer drink for me. Inbev already wrecked the Bass distribution in my area. About half the bars had it on tap here and now it is rare as rare can be. Finding a Murphy’s Red ale or Stout is next to impossible. Even Smithwicks is far and few between.
You don’t seem defensive about it at all.
On my way to my brother’s earlier today, I stopped by the local supermarket to pick up some beers. Thinking of this thread, I looked for a Newcastle in the “Build Your Own Six Pack” section of the beer cooler. They had one Newcastle left. And it was a Dutch one (brewed in the Netherlands on the label)! I looked at the rest of the cooled beer section and found the new Newcastle (said it was brewed by Lagunitas right here in Chicago.) Yay! We could do a proper side-by-side taste test.
First impressions: Lagunitas Newcastle poured slightly darker than the old Newcastle. Not a whole lot of difference–at first it seemed much darker, but after we poured the glasses and compared them in the light, they were pretty close in color.
Smell: Lagunitas Newcastle was very malt forward on the nose. I was expecting hops, given the descriptions of bitterness, but I didn’t really detect much, if any, hops on smelling. But it definitely had a nice, sweet crystal malt scent to it. The Dutch (old) Newcastle had none of this sweet malt on the nose. Just a straightforward “beery” scent to it. Nothing particularly distinguishable.
Head: Lagunitas Newcastle, much thicker and somewhat darker head. Old Newcastle didn’t pour with much head, and what head there was was gone by the time we got halfway through the glass. Lagunitas Newcastle had a sturdy head that lasted all the way to the bottom of the beer.
Taste: They definitely tasted different, but I was expecting a hopped-up Lagunitas-style ale when I read the complaints about the new Newcastle, but I did not find that to be the case. The Lagunitas Newcastle has more malt flavor to it. Not outrageously malty, but definitely more malty than the old one. It did have additional bitterness, but no overwhelming hop flavor. Just a bit more bitterness to balance out the malt. And the bitterness lingers a little bit, which it does not with the old Newcastle.
My brother and I basically had the same conclusion as the above. My wife also tried one of each (when she drinks craft, she gravitates towards ambers and middle-of-the-road beer.) She actually preferred the new one (enough so that she drank three of them. My brother and I just split the one and moved on to other beers.)
My impression is that it is certainly different, and if I were a Newcastle fan, the difference would be enough that it’s’ no longer “Newcastle” beer to me. Why they didn’t just name this something else, I don’t know. That said, it is still a very middle-of-the-road beer, well-balanced, and not a hop bomb or anything like that by any stretch. To my tastes, it’s a much better beer than the original Newcastle, but, as I said above, I don’t like Newcastle. However, I’m also not going to be running out to buy this beer any chance I get (though knowing that my wife seems to like it, I’m more likely to pick it up.) And for the cooking uses that I normally liked Newcastle for, this new one actually should do fine, probably a bit better.
(And I agree that Lagunitas is quite different than Fat Tire or any of New Belgium’s offerings – they have a very distinct cereal malt taste to most of their brews that drives me nuts-- and certainly not mistakable for Dogfish Head, which doesn’t have that super citrussy/graperfruity West Coast IPA flavor to it. )
Well, if you reread the OP, I never said it was Hoppy, just bitter. to my taste very bitter. But less Hoppy then say a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Pulykamell: Did Lagunitas up the ante ABV-wise?
No, I’m not talking about your comments–there were some others online I read that mentioned hoppiness, which I don’t taste. But there definitely is some astringency there that isn’t there in the original. I find it pleasant and not overbearing, but it’s noticeable and changes the beer enough for it (along with the additional maltiness) to be a different beer. I just was expecting a hoppy brew, given the online description of it, and the fact they were using Centennial and Chinook hops, but their flavor is subdued. One of the articles I read did say that the IBUs have gone up by about 8, though.
Nope. Still 4.7%.
ETA: I should also add that I failed to check the date on the old Newcastle bottle. The beer didn’t taste off or skunky to me or anything like that, but it must have been somewhat aged stock if it was brewed in Holland (and since the new one was introduced in March here), so the less malty and subdued characteristics of it may have something to do with that, although it did taste as I remember Newcastle tasting, though perhaps a bit less “nutty” that my memories of it.
Actually, a call to my brother says the “drink by” date was Sept 2019, so still fresh enough for a fair impression and comparison.
Do let us know what you think. I remember enjoying a few pints of it back in the 90s in London. It has occurred to me I haven’t seen it on tap here in quite some time, nor has it been at the beverage store.
Thanks. Ugh. I guess it’s a good thing I moved on to ciders. :mad:
In my college days Newcastle was one of my favorite beers, probably because I was new to drinking beer and I liked it because of its mildness. Then years later my taste in beer changed, and I moved on to more flavorful beers. But one day I decided to pick up a pack of Newcastle just for old time’s sake. I hated it. I might as well have been drinking water.
Word. If you go to the craft brew section of a supermarket, subtract the IPA’s, you have about 3 beers left. I can’t stand most American hops as they taste “catty” or “skunked” to me.
The Dutch Newcastle is sweet colored water. The British guys I used to work with back in the 90’s disparaged NBA as “the dog” and thought it was a pretty poor representation of UK beer.
The UK is extremely good on brands, how to build them and promote them and in addition many UK brands are quite old with some dating back to mid Victorian times.
In the US and Europe they are not as good at managing brands, and do not understand that part of the value of a brand is brand loyalty - which means not making changes and certainly not ones that can be seen as downgrading the product.
You can see the effect of poor brand management when Coca Cola tried to make changes and how well it went in the US some years ago.
The point is that many of those old UK brands have been taken up into conglomerates and some of these have then been taken over by the likes of Nestle and Legunitas.
These are organisations that tend to be short termist, so they look at returns and bottom lines, especially in highly leveraged buyouts where debt has to be serviced.
One of the things they will do is to reduce the strength and quality of the ingredients, along with trying out novel variations of the brand. This runs counter to the much longer term prospect of managing a brand, where change has to be extremely circumspect - successful brand managers tend to concentrate on promotion and careful advertising placement rather than adulterating the product.
What you have with Legunitas is a company that simply does not understand how to manage a brand, they have effectively cheapened and changed Newcastle Brown in an attempt to capture a larger market, but in the end they have damaged the brand such that the original market will no longer touch it - to be honest their version of the product is execrable so I stopped buying it some time ago.
Nestle did this with Kit Kat - added more sugar and less cocoa solids and the customers walked away in droves, now they are promoting the “new” more chocolaty version of Kit Kat - which of course is a return to what the product was in the first place.
It’s only been on the market since mid-March or so. I guess that can qualify as “some time ago,” though I tend to think of the phrase as spanning a larger time gap. Just want to make sure you’re thinking of the right product. I’ve actually only just noticed it on the market, and apparently they still had some old Newcastles from Holland around, as I was able to do a side-by-side taste test.
While your colleagues might have been disparaging of Newkie Brown, “dog” is actually a traditional (and affectionate) nickname for it. Apparently, from the classic British euphemism “going to see a man about a dog” (ie. going down the pub).
OB
OB, I appreciate the color and get it. Even as a septic, it was pretty obvious out on the piss going with FILTH to see a mana about a dog in HK in the 1990’s, the dog was not held in high esteem. We could get a proper pint of Tetley’s and Boddington’s though.
Yeah, I dated a British girl for a while (ethnically Scottish, but grew up near Southampton), and she mocked me pretty mercilessly for drinking Newcastle Brown also. Apparently it’s in the same league there as the megabrews (Bud, Miller and Coors) are here.
Personally, I always thought that it was ok, but not stellar, and was often the only beer I could find that wasn’t a light lager. (why I was drinking it in the first place).
Relates to a promise I made to do a little research. Well, I have a glass here now - UK product, brewed in Tadcaster in (I presume) what was the John Smith’s brewery. If that doesn’t lower your expectations…
Anyway this (I think I cocked the link up last time) is the spiel
Nope, you got me beat. I was thinking that the aroma was a bit hop oily - as in the hop oil you can buy for home brewing - and I see that the ingredients do include hop extract. Also slightly floral.
It’s not very bitter, but actually moreso (and a little less bland) than I remember. Overall I would call the flavour thin and rather citrus. Certainly not notably malty. But to be fair, with a little more character than many general purpose bitters.
It’s been a little while since I had one, but I think this is much the same (UK version of) Newcastle Brown. If that’s the case then presumably there’s a UK product and an International product brewed to different recipes. That’s not that unusual, but it usually works (here) the other way around (European lager brands were introduced into Britain back in the 1970s in a locally brewed, watered down version).
Not while I’ve got my strength.
j
Fucking preach it brother. In my neck of the woods you don’t even get Bud or Bud Light. The hipster douche canoes running these places have decided that no macro brew shall ever soil their tap lines or weigh down their coolers. You WILL drink a microbrew and it WILL be hoppy as fuck, like it or not. These same people happily pour Sam Adams, Goose Island, Lagunitas and Blue Moon without a hint of irony.
Give me my malt, give me my wheat, and sometimes, give me my god damned lawnmower beer.
Come to my side of town. 