Remember when sourness was something only found in the Aussie breweries of people who didn't know what they were doing or maintained filthy habits? Or in the fridges of the tiny band of Belgian beer cognoscenti? Or when adding fruit to beer was a fad that wouldn't last? It really wasn't that long ago, yet now it seems like one in every three beers landing at Crafty Towers is sour, laden with fruit, or, commonly, both.
That's the case with Capital's summer seasonal, which arrives in your glass with densest of appearances and serves up mango for miles on the nose. And then some more. Indeed, to look at it, you'd swear fruit and/or purée play a large part in the production process; an email to the brewery confirms just that: "Yes, it has a shit tonne of fruit in it! Pineapple, passionfruit, guava, mango, lime, and calamansi lime to be precise."
The two biggest fruit additions are pineapple and passionfruit, apparently, despite mango's initial muscle-flexing, although it's not long before passionfruit and citrus show up to add some twang on the palate. Trop Pop is heavily dry-hopped with Mosaic, Citra and Amarillo too, which might account for some of the grip within its mildly pithy bite, but really this is a highly fruity, juicy refresher: boozy brekkie juice in a can.
James Smith
Published November 26, 2020 2020-11-26 00:00:00
