Fat Tire taste test: Is New Belgium nuts to mess with a classic?

FORT COLLINS — A group of 30-something friends gathered on a Saturday afternoon in mid-January for a showdown. 

The matchup pitted a well-respected, familiar commodity against a scrappy upstart that seemed to appear on the scene out of nowhere.

I’m talking, yes, about the Kansas City Chiefs and the Jacksonville Jaguars in the Divisional Round of the NFL playoffs. But I’m also talking about New Belgium Brewing Co.’s classic Fat Tire and the Fort Collins brewery’s newly released Fat Tire redux. 

After tens of millions of beers sold over more than three decades, New Belgium, which was acquired in 2019 by Australian brewer…