Kill Your Idles: Tropical
Idle Hands Craft Ales

 

Canned 2022/04/13
Pours a large foamy fizzy 3 finger head with med retention, a little lacing, hazy apricot-orange color

Nose tons of mango and passion fruit, lots of juicy tropical fruits, mild tart lacto like funk and acidity in the background, little creamy doughy malt

Taste starts a little tart with more of the lacto yogurt tartness, mild acidity, funk, etc, quickly followed by loads of mango puree and passion fruit juice, some creamy doughy malt notes, lots of tropical juice, creamy yogurt and mango sherbet blended with passion fruit sorbet, touch of a flemmy like finish

Mouth is med to a tad lighter bod, med to a bit higher frothy carb, a bit creamy, touch of acidity

Overall pretty good, light sourness with loads of fresh fruit which is nice

 

 

 

Pours as a bright opaque yellow color with a quick fading head on top. The smell of the beer is overloaded with tropical fruit aromas. The taste has a big fruit flavor of juicy mango, passion fruit and guava mixed with a bit of tartness in the finish. The feel is smooth and juicy. Overall it's a very nice fruity beer, would be awesome to drink in the summer.

 

 

Poured a light golden color with a 3F head in a Tulip.

Light aroma: lemon meringue, mango, tropical fruit. An original taste for the style.

Biting, tangy, with not too much sourness.

Excellent tropical fruit taste, mango, citrus, orange juice. The flavors broaden with warming.

An innovative approach to a style I generally don’t like. The brewery is getting more and more innovative with every new beer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

About five months ago, I reviewed the Blood Orange version of this beer (Kill Your Idles), and gave some moderately-harsh criticism but also felt that it was quite interesting in terms of kettle-soured fruit beer in the NE scene.

This one is similar to the blood orange varietal in recipe, but it's fermented with mango, guava and passionfruit instead of blood orange. It pours an opaque sunburst-orange color with a tiny ring of foam that sinks down to nearly nothing in my glass. Like the other KYI I've had, this is essentially just juice in my glass, but it's not a great looker other than the awesome color.

The nose here is bountiful with tropical fruit and slight kettle-sour-funk originating from lacto bacteria. I pick up a big hit of passion fruit, dragonfruit and papaya with some light guava. I don't really get much mango from this one, but perhaps that's because ripe mango is a bit sweeter than most of the other fruits I notice (and thus, it gets lost in the shuffle of sourness)? Not sure, but this definitely smells delectable.

The flavor profile is tart but not overpowering at all, with a great balance between the fruits mentioned on the can plus the lactose addition. Very juicy, mostly papaya and guava forward with some crispness from the bacteria and clean malt bill. I recall being kind of put-off by the lactose addition in the KYI: Blood Orange I had, but I'm not super sure why, looking back, as it really seems to help things in this beer. The smooth and palatable feel is really necessary with this complex fruit addition, plus I noticed that this one says the beer was "fermented" on the mango/passion fruit/guava, which can definitely change the final product to such an extent that lactose to smooth things out is almost a necessity. I understand that and, honestly, commiserate with IH for doing so with something like this. It actually tastes really unique, refreshing and lively the way that it is. I'd say they dialed this in just fine!

The feel, as hinted at above, is mostly acerbic but with a rather tasteful diversion towards creaminess and succinctness in the finish. The carbonation is fine, sharp and mostly tuned toward the frontend, as the lactose addition would imply, but that isn't to say that this falls apart in the finish by any means. KYI: Tropical is a drinkable, flavorful and interesting beast from start to finish and represents a big improvement to the series since my first brush with it some months back.

 

From a 16oz can, dated 01/(something illegible). Served in a big tulip-goblet-wine glassy thing I don't properly know the name of and don't get to use too often.

Pours a bright, semi-opaque, sunshiney-mango colour with nearly a finger of snow-white, soapy head. Head dies back pretty much immediately leaving a narrow collar and a short-lived thin, slippery film of lacing.

You can smell this beer the instant you crack the can and I wouldn't be surprised if the people next door can, too. The nose is tart and sweet with tons of ripe orange and lime.

Taste is super-tart without quite hitting sour. All sorts of underripe citrus, lemon and lime, orange and grapefruit, all the juicy bits without the bitter pith, salt, papaya and hard, unripened kiwi. Finishes with mouth-puckering salty lime. OK, so maybe it's a little sour.

Feel is bright and quenching, medium-light bodied but maybe feeling a little heftier-verging-on-juicy because of the relatively light carbonation. Nice.

Overall, a really nice beer. I'm not a huge fan of the sour stuff, at least not on a regular basis, but I love tart and this one falls somewhere in the middle. At any rate, I enjoyed it, I'd have it again and, in fact, since I have three more cans, I will have it again, probably as soon as I finish my chores.