Back in April I picked up a bottle of Mango Weizen from Laughing Buddha Brewing—now known as Trade Route Brewing due to a legal dispute. The beer was new to my local Whole Foods and I’d been reading about the unusual brews Trade Route was producing (Purple Yam Porter, Ginger Pale Ale) so I had to try a bottle.

Plus, the opportunity to pick up a bottle while still under their old name, you know.

This is a wheat beer brewed with real mangoes, and is 5% alcohol by volume. This is the first commercial mango beer I’ve tried, and only the second I’ve ever had; years ago, my friend Justin brewed a mango wheat ale (using the flavored extract). From what I remember (it was about 12 years ago!), the mango character in the homebrew was more pronounced.

Appearance: Cloudy orange with fizzy mild head.

Smell: Delicate, fruity—sweet with a hint of sour. Mango (guava?), apricot, fruit-juicey.

Taste: Yeasty, wheaty, with mild fruits toward the back of the tongue. The wheat component is toasty, crisp, and bracing; the mango character is fairly ephemeral and very unassuming. There’s almost a “peach pit” character here.

Mouthfeel: Light with a bit of bite from the cloudy yeastiness.

Overall: Very mild and a bit brisk. By itself I don’t know that I’d pick mango from a blind taste test. Otherwise a decent American hefeweizen.

On BeerAdvocate, it scores an overall grade of B. On RateBeer, it scores 3.08 out of 5 and is in their 49th percentile.