Today we have a Hoarders only bottle that people were writing fanficiton about all year, just waiting for this banger to drop. All fucking year we witnessed other west coast breweries parade out reasonable ABV wild ales, fruited goses, fruited berliners, DOUBLE FRUITED sours. Each impatient dipshit in the Hoarders crew longingly shook a snowglobe and waited and waited for this beer to drop. FINALLY WORD CAME! HS ballers would get a single. bottle. with their membership. To prevent people flipping over Priuses in the streets of Placentia, another bottle was available for purchase. A single. bottle. The anticipation ran high and, with a crisp fulfilling base beer, WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Well strap yourself into that sex swing and prepare for that mango to get plenty bruised in today’s review.

The Bruery, Placentia
3.2% abv, Berliner with Mango

A: This is a messy, turbid affair that wears the mango guts proudly like an ornate sash of pulp and frothy flotsam. It isn’t particularly beautiful, but regular old Hotty didnt have a pilates body either. The carb exits almost upon inception, a wry tip of the hat as if to say “we lived in the bottle for long enough as it is, good luck with this one, Mango Hotty is a hot mess.” There is no lacing, no cling, just you and this second runnings from the Jamba Juice blender. A Petite Smootheeiere`

S: The nose is undeniably mango, tropical life savers, Haribo peach rings, yes yes, that is all present. Apricot Jolly Rancher even? Sure. The problem is not within the mango funzone, it is within the dark undercurrent of odd happenings that clearly were not invited and are stretching the expanse of a +1 roster. You get a sort of lemon meringue, alright not standard but, wait is that egg? Hold on, sulphur? Detonated fireworks? WHO LET THESE INTO THIS HERETOFORE AMAZING BEVERAGE? The whole thing closes with a sort of “bottle shock” note that makes it seem like, despite waiting so long to release this bottle, the March 31 pickup date pushed this to be released too soon. And DDB, like a stupid asshole wants to have the first review up, so I opened mine far too soon. Let’s move on.

T: Things continue to get weird from here on in, theres some apricot fruit leather and a brackish spray like riding a clementine orca over a sea of Donald Duck Orange Juice EVERYTHING IS AMAZING- until you swallow. The clinging pulpy barbs leave an odd “Bubbilicious chewed way too long” sort of cling and a waxiness like those opaque candy bottles with juice inside of them. Something just seems, not quite right. It isn’t exactly sick or ropey or phenolic, none of that, but it feels kinda like I am sipping a molten mango Yankee Candle. The whole affair is circumspect and breaches the expectations of “Yeah I love Hottenroth, just put mango in that shit, alright, let’s get this done.”

M: This is crushable and drinks like an odd variant of Vitamin Water. It is crackly, crisp and dry, leaves a tannic presence along the gumline and leaves nothing to be desired in this realm. It never becomes too acidic or sweet and cloying. The weird eggy taste along the back palate is strange and I can’t come up with a reasonable explanation for it, if you like Mango Oikos Greek Yogurt, you will love this untameable Rancor.

D: I can’t pretend to know what happened here. This seemed like a simple enough task but things just did not work out as expected. You take your Civic Si in for a new timing belt, suddenly it has a wet fogger system and isnt street legal and runs in a less than satisfactory fashion. Hottenroth is simple as shit and people love it. Adding mango to this should have been a plug and play affair but this thing has spoilers and sideskirts and all manner of shit that seems to have overly complicated the whole execution. This is by no means a bad beer, it isn’t a drainpour, and if you split it at a massive Indiana backyard share the untappd single digit reviews would rain like Phoenician arrows. It is a disappointment though, given the high hopes, delays, anticipation and fanciful imagination of beer nerds everywhere. Perhaps the promise of unbridled deliciousness were unfair from the inception, maybe Trevor put out way too many fucking tasty De Garde BU’s and people just assumed this would be the same way. I don’t know, it is Friday don’t you have better things to do than read this shit? It has to be 25 cent wing night SOMEWHERE.

SHAMELESS APOLOGIST SIGNING OFF.