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I'm really looking forward to this beer. Partly because I fondly remember watching the original Voltron on TV, and partly because I like both of the breweries that had a hand in making this beer. Southern Grist is from Tennessee, and they produce some very good beers, and Four Hands is from Missouri and has proven equally capable. Admittedly, by slapping the Voltron name on the can, this is potentially a giant cash grab for name recognition, but I like to think that these breweries know that they can get better distribution with a combined effort and a good brand name, so they work in unison to try and come up with the best beer they can. This has actually had fruit added to it afterward, and that can sometimes work.
Wow. There are so many chunks of fruit at the bottom of this glass when I'm done pouring that I started to question whether or not maybe they should have gone ahead and filtered the crap out of it. They should really have taken anything that was a half inch and got rid of it - I would argue maybe even a quarter inch. There is too much. I can't be clear enough; they need to filter this better. I know that's not what they were going for, but this needed to be addressed before it got to my glass. I'm okay with bottle conditioning or can conditioning, and I understand why you might want some texture added to the beer, but you have clearly gone too far. That said, the orange beverage produces a slight head, and that head disappears almost entirely. There isn't going to be any lacing, as there aren't any bubbles to leave any lacing. The aroma is, predictably, notably fruity, but the fruits are not individually discernible.
First sip is sweeter and smoother than I expected. Genuinely, I was starting to worry with not just the giant bits on the bottom of the glass but also the suspended bits all over the inside of the beverage, but the fruits are merging into a rather pleasing smoothie with sweetness and tartness intermingling as fruits and their skins are left to impress upon the mouth that care has been taken when it comes to the flavor of the beverage, if not the filtering of it.
Tip-in is kiwi, guava, orange, grapefruit, mango, and probably a bunch of other fruits that I can't even pick out. The carbonation is fairly mild, and it certainly doesn't intrude on the smooth and sweet nature of the fruits. The middle continues the smoothness as the fruits form a helix that serpentines its way down the gullet and leaves alternating fruit flavors in its wake. The finish becomes tart as the fruit skins make themselves known and bitterness finally starts to peek its head up around all that sweetness.
Bottom Line: a fairly good tasting beer that is marred by questionable canning processes.
3.5/5
