Guava Mochi
Great Notion Brewing

16 oz can from Jeremy. Flat pour, dark golden, hazy. Aroma leads with the guava, followed by vanilla. Rice and lactose smooth the brew out, and adds the nice sweetness. As milkshake IPAs go, this is pretty nice.

 

Canned 2021/08/02
Pours a light fizzy bubbly 1/4 finger head with med-low retention, hazy cloudy light pale orange-yellow color

Nose is loaded with guava, like overpowering guava somehow, mild spicy grassy hops under that, some citrus like grapefruit as well, vanilla, and a strange peppermint thing

Taste is basically artificial, lots of guava but not fresh guava more like extract or artificial, vanilla and lots of milk sugar, a little citrus grapefruit orange like, grassy spicy green hop notes, but basically like a super cheap sugar loaded guava popsicle,

Mouth is med to a bit lighter bod, a little creamy, med lower carb

Overall Eck! Terrible IMO.

 

Well now, that's super interesting..... Says here this is been retired, but I just bought a four pack for $25 at my local grocer .... Born on date just a month or so ago.... Not sure if I'm drinking a thin guava smoothie or a brewski..... By the way I'm glad I tried

 

 

 

Guava Mochi is special. The nose is divine. Uses vanilla and milk sugar to accentuate the Guava in a way that is both deft and indulgent. A tulip of this on a beach in Maui would be heaven.

 

 

 

Cloudy straw appearance with white head that dissipates quickly. Very prominent grapefruit aroma. Taste is also a prominent grapefruit that is exceptionally good.

So I had my blood tested back when I still had access to chemical reagents and ELISA machines and ran an allergy panel on myself after I had realized that my throat would get really itchy and sometimes closes up each time I drank Zico coconut water after working out. According to the allergy panel, I’m deathly allergic to coconut and I apparently test positive for mangos and tropical fruit (including guava, passion fruit, and papaya). I’ve since tested this theory on mango and confirmed that I’ll probably have to pack an epi-pen if I ever take a vacation to Thailand, but haven’t been able to test it on much else, since I don’t eat fruit, and I didn’t have easy access to tropic fruit while stationed in the sun belt.

Whereas an anaphylactic episode ain’t nothing to fuck with, I’ve been periodically testing my tolerance against my alleged allergens mostly through beers infused with them; the only beer that’s ever given me anything resembling anaphylaxis was Death by Coconut, and I’ve yet to come across a mango/tropical fruit infused beer that’s made me feel not quite myself.

Knock on wood, as this beer delivers exactly what its name suggests went into it, and I don’t currently have an epi-pen handy.

The nose is a rather simple trichotomy of guava, vanilla beans, and milk sugar. Whereas the guava comes on real strong when the beer first fills the glass, the vanilla and the lactose combine forces and becomes this fluffy vanilla McFlurry kind-of aroma, and starts to make the guava component less relevant with time and temperature; by the end, the guava is haplessly assimilated into the sugar-y vanilla mix—it’s like you stuck a slice of the fruit to the side of the McFlurry cup and started sniffing the ad hoc combination from the top.

I’m going to fixate on something probably trivial in terms of the palate, so maybe take the next few sentences with a grain of salt.

For the most part, the descriptors for the palate is relatively predictable—there’s a pleasant hint of guava resting on top of the same yoghurt-like milk sugar/vanilla-ish base that we’ve seen from others in the “Mochi” series and to a lesser extent, the last two batches of Luminous. In the middle of it all, there is this really distinct scorched rice candy (누룽지 사탕) flavor sandwiched between the Guava and the aforementioned milk sugar/vanilla base; in the beginning it actually felt more like the grainy rice flavor you get from adjunct lagers like Bud and OB, but as the flavors are given time to develop, some of the vanilla becomes enjoined by the grainy rice notes and somehow magically becomes nurungji. I’m actually tripping out pretty hard generally about this and the fact that it kinda works—here’s a new project for Korean brewers: Nurungji Pale Ale, or maybe even a Nurungji Porter.
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The malted oats give this brew a dreamy creamy texture all around, supported nicely on a supple medium body. There is a noticeable slickness that forms around the tongue as the brew glides down toward your esophagus. The carbonation curiously interacts with the slickness: it feels like you’re coating your tongue with mild, guava-flavored pop rocks. I wonder if this brew tastes better when frozen. Or if they sell it at Trader Joe’s, for that matter.