Mallow Mania

Alvarado Street Brewery — Salinas, CA

15 Apr 2020 · Stephen

Sour Alvarado Street Brewery

8.0% ABV

Golden orange Color

Contributing Factors

Presentation ✓

Character ✓

Experience ✓

Return –

3 / 4 I'd recommend trying it

Tasting Notes

Appearance Golden to hazy orange, opaque with a minimal white head — fruit purée and milk sugar giving it a thick, almost smoothie-like appearance. Looks exactly like something that came with a warning from an Emergency Broadcast System.

Aroma Marshmallow leads — not the artificial-candy marshmallow of cheap extracts but the real, gooey, toasted-sugar quality of actual dehydrated marshmallow character. Tangerine comes in right behind it, bright and citrus-fresh, cutting through the sweetness with zesty clarity. The vanilla sits underneath as a warm, creamy base note, and the milk sugar gives the whole aroma a rounded, dessert-forward softness.

Palate The kettle sour lactic tartness arrives first — bright and clean, providing the structural contrast that keeps this from being pure dessert. Then the marshmallow sweetness rolls in through the middle, gooey and full, supported by the milk sugar's rounded creaminess and the vanilla's warmth. The tangerine carries through with a citrus brightness that dances against the marshmallow — exactly as the Emergency Broadcast promises. At 8% ABV the body has real presence and weight, but the lactose smoothes the whole thing into something that drinks far easier than the ABV suggests.

Finish 500 lbs of dehydrated marshmallows, tangerine purée, milk sugar, vanilla, kettle sour base, 8% ABV — Mallow Mania is Alvarado Street's most unhinged pastry sour and one of the most committed dessert beer experiences in the California craft scene. The Emergency Broadcast is real. Open wide.