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The thing that strikes me going into this is that this is really going nuts to try to look authentically Mexican. Like, it's going harder than beers out of Mexico. The next thing that shocks me is the 5.3% ABV. That's not amazingly high, but it is significantly higher than any Mexican lager I can think of. They are usually directly competing with the American macro-lagers in the low 4% area, so I don't know if this got out of hand during the brewing or what. It should, at the very least, be different from other Mexican lagers.
It doesn't look different. It is a pale yellow beer with enough carbonation to sprout a meaningful head and then leave a dusting on top with the requisite ring around the sides of the glass. The aroma isn't great. In fact, I'd say it is bad. Unlike most bad beers, this isn't the result of coffee or even it getting skunked. Instead, the aroma is like someone left flowers on a heating plate until they started to singe. Maybe I'm just imagining things. No one would intentionally have a beer smell like this.
First sip explains the aroma. The smell was way worse than the taste, and the smell was coming from the bread malt that seems like it's been basted with flowers and citrus before being put into the oven. The back end has a bitterness that really seems to liven everything up and benefits from the flowers in a big way, so they lighten up the beer and really make me want another sip, and I didn't expect that.
Tip-in is moderate carbonation burn with sweetness and light flowers over soft bread. The middle moves to add a hint of citrus while the rest of the mouth gets a nice heft of malt with, again, the flowers alighting atop it. The finish is bitterness and flowers hanging over crackers for the trail-off.
Bottom Line: Different is good.
3.0/5
