Walkabout Piña Colada
Fat Orange Cat Brew Co.

Smoothies and mixed drinks collide in a craft brewed colada. Fat Orange Cat brewers are no strangers to the trends, inspiration and challenges that the beer world throws at them. They embrace them and then take the tastebuds to the beach.

Their Pina Colada version of Walkabout brings a rather unsettled science experiment of literal fruit pieces, clumping foam and caldering muddy vegemite overtake the rim. With a bready sweet scent laced with citrus, tropical fruit and cream, the initial scent proves lemony and punch-like. Sweeter with fruit and cream, the early taste is a tropical cocktail of flavors wrapped in the softness of candied coconut.

But the chunky pieces of pineapple and coconut that come with the taste gives the mouthfeel a curdled, deliberate and level of difficulty that’s never expected nor wanted. While its hard to drink solids, the flavors carry the citrusy underpinnings of lime, lemon, green apple, white grape and gooseberry with a finish of fruit acidity and vitamin C.

Full bodied, weirdly chunky and overall off-putting, Fat Orange Cat takes the fruit too far when giving us a beer that drinks like a meal. Now time to find a tooth pick…