For our collaboration with Teenage brewing, there was no lack of cross-inspiration.
Teenage recently brewed a green curry beer inspired by Indra Kunindra, an export stout with curry spices that James brewed with Ballast Point many years ago in California. After speaking with the brewing team at Teenage, we learned many of their beers take inspiration from food, often including deconstructing ingredients to recreate flavours in beer. We thought this was a perfect direction to take this beer. With our head brewer James loving Mexican food, and all the spices and flavours associated with it, and with one of his favourite treats when visiting California being a Chamoyada (or more specifically a Mangonada), we decided this would be a perfect drink to base this on. The chamoyada Mexican dessert is a smoothie made from fresh fruit with fruit sherbert, chamoy sauce and chili powder. The mix of sweet with savoury spice is hugely impactful and very addictive, and so we decided to take this drink, deconstruct its flavours, and replicated them in a sour IPA. The beer starts with an oat cream base to ensure we have plenty of creamy mouthfeel. For hops we chose those that focused on different citrus and mango flavours, with some Sabro to add its creamy signature to the beer. With this beer being based on a fruit smoothie, a huge amount of fruit was added including a blend of Mango purees for flavour, and some lime juice for acidity. The real challenge came when replicating the chamoy and tajin elements. Chamoy is a fruit-based pepper sauce with a distinct character. We reconstructed this combination of flavours by using a mixture of apricot juice, kaffir lime leaf, sea salt, chili peppers, and guajillo peppers. While this has chili peppers in the beer, its not spicy, and the goal is for the savoury spice character to balance and bring out the sweetness in the fruit by giving your palate contrasting flavours. It's a bit like salting a pineapple. This beer is sweet, sour, savoury, with a little spice, with these complex flavours evolving with every sip. This was one of the more challenging and ambitious recipes we’ve put together in a while, and it is one of the most impactful beers in terms of flavour. We hope you like this treat to the senses as much as we do!