#12 Matso’s Mango Beer

Mangoes are a pretty awesome fruit and, around here, it’s a sign summer is approaching/here/outstayed its welcome (delete as appropriate for November/December/January).

Matso’s Brewing up in Broome, of all places, has had a crack at mixing one of Australia’s most popular fruits with beer. When you consider the staple beer up in Broome is probably something owned by Lion Nathan or Fosters, one’s initial thoughts are that if the locals are used to Australian lager, that plus mango does not compute.

However, the label lays out a more promising concept:

Matso’s Mango Beer is based on a classic Belgium Blonde recipe using a 100% natural mango fruit blend. An easy drinking beer with excellent fruit aroma and balancing dry sweetness.

Fruit aroma is right. Boom, in your face. Pouring it into the glass and the beer is moving down towards amber on the colour scale but staying this side of golden. It’s a clear brew with not much happening in the CO2 department.

Smell: mango. Like mango puree. What? Were you expecting something else? Mango is not a euphemism. Matso’s take that shit seriously. But it smells good. It reminds you of carefree childhood days with mango bubblegum. No one else had that? Maybe it was just me.

But here’s a tip: don’t mix Belgian blonde beers, which I take to mean a Hoegaarden knock-off, with mango. Do what the Bavarian Beer Cafe (yeah, okay, you don’t have that in Broome) does on their ladies’ menu and use a hefeweizen with mango syrup. That’s tasty. This is not. The Belgian blonde flavours override the appealing tang of the mango taste and supplant it with too much bitter and too much malty sweetness. It’s #3 all over again: poor beer selection overwhelmed by the worst aspects of a fruit.

But, unlike #3, you know who will ~~probably~~ may like this? Women. I’m not inclined to speak on behalf of a sex I know very little about but I’d say that’s where Matso’s going with this. Maybe up in Broome there’s a dire need to get the local women consuming alcohol but here in the decreasingly economically viable urban areas on the east coast, we have a broader selection and I can’t see this making anyone’s listing.

Summary