Mango in Beer?

Anyone done this before? Good results?

West Highland brewery in Vancouver Wa, it is one of their signature beers.

I would be very careful experimenting with mango post-boil, as you can bet - like most fruit - it's crawling with wild beasties that will give your yeast a run for the money...

Cheers!

Wow, just reading your title brought some great flavors to mind. How about a mango hefe or wit? That is kinda sounding good. Might be one to explore in the secondary.

Or extract in bottling may be better. Less mess, easier to work with.

I would add pureed mango to the boil for 15 minutes, and be sure to keep the malt profile of the beer light, the hop selection very citrusy/floraly, and the yeast very neutral.

I make an all-citra APA with two row and honey malt that people swear has mango in it, just from the flavor profile of the Citra additions. I've even started calling it a "honey mango APA." I might try some actual mango in the boil next time I make it.

You've all hit on most of my concerns:

Would mango in the boil cause the beer to thicken because of pectin? I suppose you could put it in during the last 5 minutes or so. But, would it all ferment out, and just raise gravity but not really affect the flavor of the beer? Same question would obviously apply to adding to primary during active fermentation.

If you add it at bottling, wouldn't it contain tons of sugar? Seems like that would mess up the carbonation.

As far as I can tell, the best place to add it in order to get mango flavor would be in secondary. Could you pasturize it before you added it, in order to at least eliminate some contamination concerns?

Are actual mango peices preferrable, or would mango puree be a better bet?

what I want (obviously) is to get a real mango flavor from the mangos. I am not super familiar with brewing fruit beers, and I want to avoid just getting a heightened gravity but no actual mango flavor.

Thoughts?

Don't add it to the boil. I have experience adding fruit (raspberries) to a boil and it brought out really astringent flavor's that just tasted bad. The time to add fruit is secondary. Mash it up really well then freeze it. Add that at secondary to get that fruit flavor. Lots of people will say that you run the risk of infection but I disagree here. The alcohol and ph combined with the freezing should stop any little beasties from getting a foothold in the beer. The chopping and mashing if the fruit allows for more surface area and will give off more flavor's. I got into a pretty long back and forth about this topic on another thread and three solutions were found, only one would I use. The first was to do a brief soak in starsan then add to secondary. I won't do this as I don't want chemicals (even starsan) added to my beer like that. The second was to pasteurize in a 165* water bath for 10 minutes to sterilize then add to secondary. I will never heat my fruit so this one is your call. The third was to freeze like I mentioned. Another way I would like to try is to make a homemade syrup or extract using sugar and boiling. Seems like it should work but never tried it.

I have struggled getting mango flavor into a finished beer. I use extract now. I think mango is one of those fruits that you are going to have to use a whole bunch of to get flavor-I'm thinking well over a pound per gallon. Good luck.

Good advice, Ry. I'm sure you are right, the combo of freezing and the alcohol in the beer would probably knock out any yeast or bacteria in the fruit. I will probably just throw some mango in the food processor, then either freeze it or pasturize it before dumping it into secondary. Thanks for the adivce!

That last method sounds almost like dumping mango jam into the beer.

I've done a mango IPA a couple times. I put it in secondary. Chop it up, freeze it over night and the day you're going to rack it to secondary you should bring the mangoes out to thaw a little.
You should use more than you think you need. A pound or more is a good start.
I found that an aged mango IPA, like 6+ months had WAY more mango flavor than fresh which was interesting.
Just my 2 cents.

Mango jam is a great way to look at it. I've wondered how that would work. Maybe it will be to tart but with the sugar, your certainly going to get another, stronger, secondary fermentation. It might be interesting to try but that might be one to try samples of prior to finding that right amount of "jam" to add. One problem that comes to mind about testing like that is there is no way to gauge what the secondary fermentation will do without doing it.

I'm real interested in this as one of my favorite types of beer is a raspberry brown. I am still working on the right way to do it so I love hearing about others using fruit and how they did it. I, personally, don't want to use extracts. I like the idea of fresh fruit.

Ailstock, a mango IPA sounds awesome! With the right hops I bet that could be a great Combo.

A friend made a mango wit years ago. It had amazing laxative properties.

Thanks for all the advice guys, I will be trying this in a few short days! Will update my results accordingly. Hopefully laxative properties will not be too pronounced.

Using Citra or El Derado will help the mango mango flavor, considering they have tropical fruit properties.

So I got a flat of mangoes, do you guys think I should just chop them up and freeze them, and just tea bag them like dry hops in secondary, or would pureeing then with vodka would yield better results?

Soak 'em in 80 proof booze for a week. Freezing won't kill the bugs. Add the booze and the mangos to a 5% beer to get to 7%. Make sure the mangos are RIPE before you soak them.

Ailstock said:

I've done a mango IPA a couple times. I put it in secondary. Chop it up, freeze it over night and the day you're going to rack it to secondary you should bring the mangoes out to thaw a little.
You should use more than you think you need. A pound or more is a good start.
I found that an aged mango IPA, like 6+ months had WAY more mango flavor than fresh which was interesting.
Just my 2 cents.

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+1 to this. I did a mango rhubarb wheat last year, five pounds of champagne mangoes from Costco in the secondary (plus another 1/2 pound of rhubarb). It was horrible at first, but mellowed out perfectly after 3 months in the bottle. I'm definitely going to brew it up again soon, it's a great summer beer.

Randy_Bugger said:

Soak 'em in 80 proof booze for a week. Freezing won't kill the bugs. Add the booze and the mangos to a 5% beer to get to 7%. Make sure the mangos are RIPE before you soak them.

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Well the freezing part is to breakdown the cells in the mangoe, so it'll impart more flavor.
I've done this before with just chopping them an putting them in a giant hop bag, but for my taste it didnt give as much flavor as I wanted.

A few ounces of Citra has more mango flavor than a few pounds of mangoes minus their fermented sugar.

Freezing won't provide more flavor than very ripe mangoes soaked in booze and pureed in a blender.

This is on the list to brew soon. Right now I'm working on the tangerine wheat (there's a thread here somewhere). In that case, you put tangerine extract in at bottling or kegging. I'm thinking of using the same approach, and same basic recipe, but substituting mango extract, which I already bought. Based on the comments here, the Citra hops sound like a good idea, so I may incorporate that as well.

Well I just threw about a pound of mango into my secondary. Made a Honey Mango Ale about two weeks ago - grist: 11# domestic 2-row, 1# honey, .5# each, cambrius honey malt and chrystal 40. 60 min Magnum, 1oz, 10 min Citra, 1 oz; 1 min Cascade, 1 oz. OG: 1.061, FG: 1.009. WLP001/1056.


Just dry hopped with 1 oz each, cascade and Citra. I also took two fresh, ripe mangos, skinned them, collected the flesh (about 15 oz), hit it with the food processor, brought it up to 160F slowly, then back down slowly. Hopefully that should pasturize it.

If any beer goes funky on me, it will be this one - threw (relatively) fesh fruit into secondary, and my secondary vessel is an old plastic ale pale. We will see! Tasting notes to come!

I just brewed a blonde ale using citra (.25oz late hop additons starting at 30 minutes and every 5 minutes afterward with a half oz at flame out. Wanted to use some El Dorado or Galaxy but the LHBS was out of both) that I'm going to rack on to some mangos I'll be getting off a tree at my friend's house. Since they have such a huge pit on them, how many mangos should I get? Alot of the latin markets here have mango nectar. Would that be good to use or is there too much added sugar in the processed juices?

Just to update, I had an idea to try out my mango extract idea. Poured a glass of my cream ale, which is a very light, easy drinker. I added mango extract a drop at a time until I got to the right level. That's when I realized I just didn't like the combination of beer and mango. Oh well, just a half glass drain pour. I think I just need to move on to a raspberry wheat.

bazowie said:

West Highland brewery in Vancouver Wa, it is one of their signature beers.

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By far the worst beer I have ever had. No question.

Brewbien said:

By far the worst beer I have ever had. No question.

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I am not a fan either.

Troegs collaboration triple mango IPA. Blew me away at craft beer fest. Here is recipe

Ok well I accidentally uploaded a picture of someone giving my friend the finger and cannot delete it from the phone app. Enjoy!

Ugh. Mango in beer? First rule of my brewing...NEVER fruit the beer.