baitcon | So, you hated the Mango Beer Sorbet

I was quite surprised to see the Mango Beer not only make it to the "Better than ceviche" list but apparently get the second highest number of votes. I was initially perplexed. The beer from which it was made went over well and I've gotten a number of compliments on it. I'd started with a homebrew wheat beer kit and added some brewer's mango flavoring. The decision to make it into sorbet came from the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Cookbook, where they mentioned that beer has just the right sugar and alcohol quantities to be dumped into an ice cream maker without further adulteration.

Fortunately for me, I encountered a man who was actively discussing the sorbet when I walked past. He used the phrase "Tasted Rotten" and then talked about the hops probably being at fault. He not only disliked it, but had a good idea as to WHY he hated it. I'd just decided I needed to pick his brain, when one of the people to whom he was speaking pointed at me and said "He made the sorbet." This was about as good an introduction as I could have hoped for.

What followed was an enlightening conversation about where I had gone wrong and where I might go in the future. Before I post some of the ideas that came from that conversation, I'd like to get some feedback from all y'all.

Why did you dislike the Mango Beer Sorbet?

What did you hear about the Mango Beer Sorbet?

What would you do differently?

As you can guess from this post, I intend to revisit the flavor, believing it has potential. No doubt, everyone who tastes the revised flavor next year will be glad of any feedback I get now. :)

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Perhaps next year - to avoid people thinking you are repeating the same flavor they hated - you should name it something like "Mango Beer Sorbet Revised".

The texture was one issue - it kind of seemed to have frozen into long thin layers of ice, definitely too icy. I'm guessing that its particular sugar
content was not right for the texture.

The bitterness was the other issue : I would have wanted something sweeter for my tastebuds, and I was expecting the mango to be more prominent. I don't brew, so I have no idea what made it taste so strongly bitter when frozen - but I suspect I would have liked the beer just fine when melted.

There were two flavors this year that I actually spat back out.

One was Olive Raisin. It tasted like drinking the liquid off of canned black olives, only nastier. Never even got to the raisins.

The other was Mango Beer. That surprised me enormously, since I have imbibed the exact mango beer in question, with great pleasure. I was completely flummoxed as to what on earth had gone wrong during freezing, or maybe you'd unwittingly used a bad bottle (I assume this happens sometimes).

All I could tell was that the beer had gone bitter. When I say bitter, I don't mean as in "bitter beer" kind of it's-supposed-to-be-bitter. I mean really really spit-it-out bitter.

It's the one flavor fault that I can't tolerate. It's why I'll eat red bell peppers but not green - I'm oversensitive to bitterness. I have thrown away entire batches of soup. There are certain wines I'll dump down the sink due to bitter undertones or finish.

Why I loved the beer and hated the sorbet - you've got a better theory going than I do, that's for sure.

On a side note, the next time you find a bottle of wine that's too bitter, let me know. I've started making vinegar and half a bottle of bitter wine could be put to good use. :)

I was psyched to try it, but it was quite possibly the most bitter thing I've ever put in my mouth, with the exception of that time I licked an ant by accident. (Pure formic acid wins for bitterness.)

I'm guessing it was the hops as well, but there shouldn't be that much bitterness in your average wheat beer.
What were all the steps taken between buying the homebrew kit and freezing it? (Are you a homebrewer?) We might be able to identify something there.
Did you taste the mango extract? Maybe it was off...

(I'm a homebrewer and hoppy-beer lover, just for context.)

I'm starting to suspect the bottle may have been off. The texture variations plus the intense bitterness people describe is getting hard to explain with the hops. I REALLY wish it hadn't been gone before I got to try it at the running of the flavors.

What I find odd is that it tasted fine when I tried it when I froze it. It sounds like it got worse when it froze harder.

I love the icon by the way. I keep meaning to take a camera to a fresh ferment to create a brewing icon.

I disliked the intensely bitter flavor of the mango-beer sorbet. I didn't try the unfrozen beer in question, but I do tend to less enjoy beers made with lots of bitter hops. If I were making something for myself, I'd probably do a sweeter belgian ale, and possibly even add some sugar syrup.

I know the human tongue can't taste sweetness as well in cold things -- syrupy-sweet mix freezes into merely-sweet ice cream. Is bitterness similarly muted by the cold?

Did you try making one (or more) tiny test-batch before your final freeze, to see if you needed to add sugar, or dilute the beer (with water or with less-bitter beer)? With the liquid nitrogen, it's super-easy to freeze a quarter-cup and see how it tastes....

I didn't taste the sorbet. (Never liked mangos)

Oh! I didn't realize that other people also didn't like it. I just hate alcohol, and wouldn't have tasted it if I'd known that it had beer in it (yeah, I know, that's what the label is for).

I wonder... what would happen if you put more (malt) sugar in the wort than normal, and then prematurely stop the fermentation at the appropriate ABV? My hypothesis is that you'd have the same basic flavor, but with enough residual sugar to make a suitable sorbet.

I also learned a trick from talking with someone from Blue Moon at the craft beer festival -- he suggested using hibiscus during the boil. He said it adds no flavor of its own, but it does tend to cut the bitterness without disturbing the hop flavor. I'm not used to wheat beers being even remotely bitter, but if the sorbet setting somehow brings that out, maybe this would help ameliorate it?

I've been doing some research into how temperature affects taste and adding more sugar is a must if I'm to get this to taste like the beer. The cold suppresses sweetness and to get the same taste I need to add more sugar. This could be done as you described during the brewing process, or I could add dried malt extract to the beer before freezing it. This would also remove any carbonation from the beer, which may have been responsible for the texture issues.

Dammit, I don't remember seeing this one and I wish I'd tried it. Well, except maybe I don't, at least this time. :)

I wish I'd remembered to bring some of our latest homebrew for freezing...

So, you hated the Mango Beer Sorbet

Next Year's Name

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