- Matso’s Mango Beer
- Beer Type: Wheat Beer with Mango Flavoring
- Brewed in: Broome, Western Australia
- ABV: 4.5%
- Cost: $8 for a 400mL glass
During a recent sojourn in Broome, Western Australia, Deep and Radical experienced many strange new things: a proper and oppressive heat and humidity combination, mosquito swarms, and paying $25 for a Pacifico six-pack. Most bizarrely, fruit beers became genuinely appealing.
Deep and Radical has always been deeply suspicious of fruit flavored beers, subscribing to the traditional German concept that beer is made exclusively from water, beer, hops, barley, and yeast (wheat beer being a separate entity). Adding anything beyond these ingredients usually functions as marketing scheme, offering new products to sell to people who want to drink beer that doesn’t taste like beer (Bud Light with Lime jumps to mind). For many years, Deep and Rad relegated all fruity beers onto the “It’s time to leave the party if this is all that’s left to drink” list. Good beer is all about context and in Broome Deep and Radical learned there’s even a time and place for even the most sickly sweet and least beer tasting beers.
Matso’s Broome Brewery describes itself as the most isolated brewery in the world, a likely honest claim to fame. The tropical climate of Broome makes for excellent mango growing so naturally the town’s sole brewery makes a Mango Beer. It’s novelty beer meant to entice tourists to come in and spend money on something uniquely Broome. It is sweet stuff, way too sweet for a beer, but in the Broome heat it goes down beautifully. A glass of Mango Beer is basically Kimberley Gatorade, with all those mango sugars replenishing all the vitamins and electrolytes lost during shirt-drenching bike ride across town. Paying $8 for a 400mL glass seems stupidly expensive, but it’s worth the price to momentarily forget the really horrible aspects of tropical living and enjoy life’s sweet side.
Outside of the Kimberley and the tropics, the idea of drinking Matso’s Mango Beer genuinely disgusts Deep and Rad. It would be like willingly drinking a Smirnoff Ice. But in during the brief period between the onset of the cooling afternoon sea breeze and evening mosquito awakening, there’s no better way to settle into Broome time then with a Mango Beer.
Deep and Radical 