Mandarina Wheat
Postmark Brewing

 

Pours pale straw with hints of orange under a frothy head that dissipates quite quickly. Aroma spicy, citrusy, orange with significant sulpher when first poured. This clears very quickly. Flavours of spicy coriander, fruity hops and similarly fruity malt sweetness, orange, lemon, as well as wheat spice. Carbonation is high ensuring a good mouthfeel even for so light a beer.

 

 

 

 

Appearance - Pours a clear topaz/amber with three fingers of fluffy white head.

Smell - Wheat malts, citrus hops, orange fruit and orange peel (like tangerine), coriander, and a little yeast.

Taste - Wheat malts and orange fruit/peel upfront, followed by a light bitterness from the hops and coriander. The orange flavour isn't as potent as the aroma, which in this case is a good thing (balancing nicely with the wheat).

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with high carbonation and a crisp, dry finish.

Overall - A wheat ale that doesn't disappoint on wheat and orange flavours. I'm intrigued by the Mandarina hop varietal and I look forward to trying other beers with it. I can imagine enjoying this year-round, summer or winter.

 

650ml bottle - with some nice glacial lake imagery on the label.

This beer pours a clear, medium golden amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly off-white head, which leaves some mostly melted defrosting windshield lace around the glass as it quickly and evenly subsides.

It smells of bready and doughy pale malt, a lesser edgy wheatiness, some prominent mixed citrus notes (orange, lemon, and exotic grapefruit, for starters), further indistinct fruit preserves, a sense of musty yeastiness, and various leafy, weedy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy pale malt, wet wheat crackers, still rather robust domestic and tropical citrus esters, a suggestion of bubblegum, more jam that's been in the cellar for way too long, a more understated yeasty brimstone character, and some very plain earthy, weedy, and dead floral verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly heady in its robust frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and mostly smooth, with a pleasant airy creaminess evolving as things warm up a bit out of the fridge. It finishes off-dry, the mixed malt and blended citrus notes playing off of each other rather well into perpetuity.

Overall, this is an approachable, and full-seeming wheat ale, with the various citrus notes aiding and abetting the cause, as it were. Easy enough to drink, and perhaps pair with some spiced to the nuts leftover deep dish pizza, I'm guessing.

A: Amber, excellent clarity, white head
S: Clean scottish yeast, earthy, marmalade
T: Juicy malts, earthy, a little sulfur on the finish
F: Medium body, medium carb
Not bad, it seemed very english to me and couldn't really detect a lot of Mandarina.