There are 148 bottles of Fat Tire in the chandelier located in the entranceway of New Belgium’s packaging hall. I know this because I’ve done the official tour at the Colorado brewery’s Fort Collins headquarters four times. When you arrive at this stage, the tour guide will ask the small crowd of visitors—often from other states, or even other countries like me—how many bottles they think are in the handmade light fixture above their heads.

On my third time around, I confess I cheated; correctly stating the number despite already knowing exactly how many bottles were up there. I even won a prize—a 22-ounce bomber of Fat Tire. And you know what? I enjoyed every single last drop.

I have had a relationship with Fat Tire, formerly an amber ale inspired by the Belgian spéciale style—now reformulated as a blonde ale—since my first visit to Fort Collins in 2010. At the end of this visit, it was the beer I declared to be my favourite, not the eponymous IPA from the nearby Odell Brewing Company that I would later centre the inspiration for my entire career around. At this stage, my palate was not yet adjusted to more intense levels of hop bitterness, so I found solace in this dry, biscuity, slightly sweet, and subtly hoppy American amber.

When I did succumb to the lure of more salubriously-hopped beer, I began to dismiss Fat Tire as “ordinary” or even “boring”. In fact, there were a few years when, on my visits to Fort Collins to see my family there, I would ignore it completely. And if you’ve been to the Choice City (or FoCo, as some locals affectionately refer to it) then you know that this makes complete sense; this is a beer town through and through, and you’re never short of interesting new delights to sample. Why drink Fat Tire when there’s still so much to discover?

On subsequent visits though, as the years passed and the shine of visiting Fort Collins began to wear off—as it so often does with cherished things you hold too tightly, too often—I began to settle back into more of an established rhythm. I now had my favourite bars, my go-to sandwich joints, and a couple of beers I would always want to drink by the pint, in decent volume, when in town. For the days when, for whatever reason, my palate felt burnt out, or I just felt plain-old jaded with beer or the world in general, there was Fat Tire. Faithful, reliable, and without any off-note or overzealous flavour to interrupt the fact that I was presently (and blissfully) doing sweet fuck all. Fat Tire had come to represent the final form of a perfect moment. A visit to Colorado had established itself as a time and place to rest and recharge, this malty, amber beer becoming wholly symbolic of this mindset.

““Did the sales and marketing team not understand how this would affect me personally?””

So in January 2023, when New Belgium went and changed the beer wholesale, from the packaging to the recipe, to say this was a bit of a curveball is an understatement. Did the sales and marketing team (at the now Lion-owned company, after it was acquired by the Japanese-owned Australian conglomerate in 2019 for an undisclosed fee) not understand how this would affect me personally?

This shouldn’t have come as that much of a shock. In the 12 years I’ve been visiting Colorado it’s the fifth time the packaging has had a refresh. When, years ago, they dropped its original hand-painted artwork for a far more modern-looking, typography-based design, I thought it was a positive. Although today I find myself pining for that legacy New Belgium branding more than ever. The latest design takes this typographical approach even further and drops most of the fire engine red colour that has been the signature of Fat Tire cans and bottles for as long as I can remember.

This is now replaced with a white background, offset by an oval of royal blue. The red that once dominated its design is now restricted to a simple setting sun at its centre, underneath which, the bicycle from where the beer gets its name remains. From a branding perspective, I feel it says, plainly, that this is beer-flavoured beer: classic, clean, and refined. I nodded in agreement when, on Twitter, writer Dave Infante compared it to the design used for Miller Lite.

The new branding also leans in heavily to New Belgium’s planet-first approach (the Patagoniaization of brands now well and truly in full effect.) “High Quality, Low Impact” reads one of the new slogans, “Alternatively Powered” reads another, while the multipacks state that this beer is “Carbon Neutral”. Climate activism isn’t a new thing for this brewery: on their tours, they make a point of explaining how they capture biowaste to create their own electricity, and that they have solar panels atop each of their facilities. They also (for now, at least) give employees a free bicycle after completing the first year of their employment, in part to encourage them not to drive to work, and in part as a nod to the cycling influence that inspired the brewery.

In the days before New Belgium was established in 1991, co-founder Jeff Lebesch was fascinated by the beers he drank during his time cycling around Old Belgium. In fact, it was the more refreshing, lower-alcohol beers found in rural café bars, such as the spéciale from Palm or De Koninck (the latter presently known as Bolleke) he would drink after long, hot days on his bicycle that the entire concept of Fat Tire, and indeed New Belgium, was based on.

Even when Lebesch parted ways with the brewery in 2009, after he divorced co-founder (and CEO until New Belgium’s acquisition in 2019) Kim Jordan, Fat Tire remained central to its brand. Despite dwindling sales, it is presently the 16th most popular craft beer brand in the USA. For me it never just felt like an American amber, it felt like America’s amber. It was central to how New Belgium grew to become one of the largest craft breweries in the United States—until its expansion ultimately plunged it into the millions of dollars of debt that forced its hand in its decision to sell to Lion.

““We were once bold enough to call the emergence of American craft beer a ‘revolution’. This feels like a revolt.””

The rebrand I can deal with. But changing the recipe, wholesale, to something that looks and tastes different, after it essentially defined the entire legacy of one of the most important breweries in the history of modern American beer? That is a pill too large for me to swallow. I feel bad for the people who drink this regularly; people who don’t chase the latest craft beer trends or read Twitter. I feel even worse for the bartenders and servers who will present these drinkers with this pale and golden beer and have to explain that, yes, this is Fat Tire, and no, it doesn’t look or taste anything like it used to.

Imagine, for a second, if Fuller’s decided to reformulate London Pride—a classic British amber bitter—into a pale ale. Americans often tell me how much they cherish stepping off a plane, straight into a central London pub and savouring those precious first sips—a feeling I’m certain many of you reading this can relate to. Imagine if you ordered a London Pride and instead of an amber, malty, soft, and subtly bitter beer you received a pale ale, hopped with Citra. Given Fuller’s was also recently acquired by a multinational it's not an unreasonable thing to assume might happen. And I know exactly how many of the folks defending the reformulation of Fat Tire would feel if this came to pass.

Changing the recipe of Fat Tire is not just something I consider to be a poor marketing decision. It’s sacrilege. The wholesale abuse of a genuine icon. We were once bold enough to call the emergence of American craft beer a “revolution”. This feels like a revolt.

It fills me with sorrow to see the steady watering down of a brand that emerged from a noble, romantic vision, now steered by a multinational conglomerate and driven by the number of zeros at the bottom of a ledger. Especially, because I fear that once the rot gets in, it’s going to be hard to shift. And as other long-time fans of the brand will know, there’s a lot of wood at New Belgium.