I’ve just drunk – in fact, I’ve just made a small detour in order to drink – a pint of Burning Sky Plateau. Burning Sky is a brewery I’ve got a lot of time for. I don’t know all the ins and outs of their relationship with AsahiFuller’sDark Star but I understand that there are some song lyrics which offer a bit of background.
Now, Plateau is a pale ale – a very pale ale – and it used to go out at 3.5%; it’s currently 3.4%. Which you wouldn’t think would make much odds, but I wonder. I remember it being hoppy; I remember it being very hoppy. When I first encountered Magic Rock‘s 3.8% pale, which at the time was going out under the name of Curious, I wrote that it was not so much “hop-forward in the modern style” as “hops smacking you about the face, in the style of a demented alcoholic Tango advert”. I don’t think Plateau was ever quite that full-on – a commenter on this 2016 blog post nominates it as an example of a style “somewhere in between” the full-on hop-monster and the old-school bitter (It tastes zesty, fruity, fresh and very bitter, but it’s not ‘Like drinking bloody grapefruit juice’.) It used to be quite an assertive beer, though, in a good way. What I had today was just a pale ale; in fact I’d go so far as to say it was a golden ale. It’s a big change, and I can’t help wondering if that drop in gravity – even if it is only 0.1% – has something to do with it.
I know why they have dropped the gravity – I know exactly why they’ve done it – and I sympathise. (Marble have done something similar with Pint, with a similar dulling effect on what was previously quite a bold flavour.) But if that’s going to be the effect on the beer, I can’t really approve. It’s a difficult one. A brewery’s got to do what a brewery’s got to do, and as a beer drinker I certainly don’t want to live in a world where breweries like Burning Sky can’t make ends meet. But at the end of the day, as a beer drinker I want to drink good beer – and I’m afraid that Plateau seems to have gone from being a great beer to being… fine. It’s worth mentioning that Marble recently trialled a 3.8% pale ale called Draft; I can’t say what it’s like, though, because by the time I got to the Beer House it had all gone.
I guess my only conclusion is that breweries need to be very careful they don’t saw off the branch that they’re sitting on. Perhaps the answer is to take advantage of the new duty rate by formulating new beers for the below-3.5% slot. Which reminds me, aren’t we about due for a mild revival?
Oh Good Ale 
2 Comments
There is a range of +-0.5% abv in the what you declare on label (so technically, a 3.4 beer on label could legally range from 2.9 to 3.9 abv) therefore I couldn’t see why they would have dropped gravity on the recipe for that small change – however, it could be that they changed recipe over the years: the market is not asking for bitterness anymore (sad reality but it is a reality). You can see it clearly when you drink a West Coast IPA, they’re definitely not bitter as they were once. Anyway, I’m digressing. I find that my palate is changed a lot as well and sometimes I think a beer has changed, but what happened really is that my taste has changed. Personally I think that Plateau is still a great beer and still on the bitter/hop-forward side. It’s not easy to land well and balance a recipe at that level. Annoyingly, there isn’t also much better on the market. If you ever in York, Brass Castle makes the Blue Bell IPA for the famous pub. I find that beer a hidden gem, especially if the cask is just tapped and fresh. Seriously good.
Hi Pietro – thanks for commenting (he said, two weeks late!).
I guess it will be a change in the recipe independent of the small drop in headline a.b.v. There are still some very hop-forward session-strength pales out there – Dark Star Hophead comes to mind – but maybe BS are aiming for a slightly different (bigger?) market now.