We’ve all been to breweries that have lots of beers that taste the same. At Luppoleto, we try to make sure each recipe has a relatively distinctive place within our portfolio. If there is too much overlap, we either reformulate the duplicate beer or retire it.
Careful Icarus is one such beer. The core recipe was similar to other IPA’s in our lineup and we wanted it to be more unique. It has been reformulated with a decisive push towards a pithy, grapefruit-forward profile. This might be jarring to folks who entered craft beer thru the Hazy, Juicy, Fruity, Tropical NEIPA Portal but we have a hunch there are still some folks with fond memories of Stone IPA, Harpoon’s Leviathan and other boldly bitter IPAs of the early 2000’s who will embrace this change.
Mantello is one of our earlier beers that has been retired. This beer was first brewed as a way of learning more about the distinctive flavor profile of Thrall Malt. It was intentionally simple but was so well recieved at first that we brewed it fairly regularly. Then we did a side project with this recipe that became the far more popular Hausitspelt. In 2024, we brewed Publicano, borrowing from the Mantello template, as a way of exploring the distinctive flavors of “Floor Malted Barley”. That beer rendered Mantello obsolete, as it became a rendundant flavor profile within the portfolio.
This is the other, much trickier component in the recipe evaluation process. It is very hard to know whether a neglected beer style has slipped into irrelavance or is ripe for resurgence. For us, we’ve dipped our toes into trends as they come and go but invest more heavily in what we consider “timeless” or at least far more durable styles. Trends quickly feel dated, but revisiting them at the right cadence can be nostalgic and can be fun. It’s a perpetual balancing act. As we see many old-guard breweries closing their doors, it’s clear there must be some balance between the old and the new. What’s the right balance? Who knows.
The best we’ve come up with is to regularly review our beer lineup and make incremental adjustments. This seems to ensure we are never particularly far from a well-balanced, hopefully relevant, beer portfolio. But we’re always interested in hearing from you. Is there something you’d like to see added to the lineup? Don’t hestitate to let us know.
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