When we set up this blog, one of our unwritten rules was that we would not be overly negative about beers. If we didn’t like something, we would move on and blog about something we did like.
I’m going to break this rule now to warn to fellow beer lovers, particularly you experimental types. Do not try Mongozo coconut beer. It is possibly the nastiest thing I have ever tasted (yes, that means worse than the polio vaccine). I’m not the only one to be disgusted – see reviews on RateBeer. 
One of my locals has been stocking this stuff for years, with increasingly desperate signs (“Have a refreshing, unique coconut beer!”). I should have heeded the warning, but I was in an experimental mood. Oh dear. Having had a couple of sips and visibly reeled from the shock, I tried my usual tactic in these circumstances of pretending it wasn’t beer. That didn’t work either.
The sad thing is that I like the idea in principle. The Mongozo beers are brewed by Brouwerij Huyghe and use fairtrade coconuts. I’ve nothing against coconuts in beer, and think they could work quite well. Lew Bryson (“Seen through a glass“) has a review of a Coconut Porter here which sounds right up my street.
The problem with this one is the sugar. It is just so sweet, you can feel your teeth rotting as you drink it. I can forgive many flavours in a beer, but excess sweetness is not one of them.
Sorry Mongozo. I wanted to like you, I really did. If it makes you feel better, The Beer Nut has had some other Mongozo products and is cautiously polite about them.
Boak
3 replies on “Do not try this at home (or anywhere else): Mongozo coconut beer”
[…] The Spanish-speaking beer blogosphere has started its own “Session” – La Ronda. This month it’s hosted by Pivni Filosof, who’s an Argentine based in Prague, and who writes in English here. The theme is “the worst beer you”ve ever tasted”. After careful consideration as to the demerits of Desperados and Adelscott, I eventually decided to base my response on one of our posts from last August about Mongozo coconut beer. […]
Afraid I must beg to differ on this one; admittedly it is rather on the sweet side, but this is a light, exotic fruit beer we’re talking about here, not something like, say, the Liefmans Kriek which is based on more savoury brown ale. It’s a totally different style of fruit beer and not attempting to compare with the more “serious”-styled ones on offer.
Having said that, everyone’s palates do have their own detection thresholds for sweetness, acidity etc, and mine is fundamentally immune to sweetness…maybe it DOES actually taste like it could liquidise your dentures with the sweetness, or perhaps you’re oversensitive to sweetness yourself? Either way it’s actually a very tasty beer, and a good alternative to other sweeter fruit beers (yes,I’m one of those people who can drink pints and pints of Fruli without batting an eyelid).
I’m also going to have to disagree with this one… I generally loathe sweet drinks, even Belgium’s fruity beers were too much for me. However, I didn’t find this one terribly sweet. I was simply curious when ordering it at the Delirium cafe in Brussels, possibly the taste is different from the tap. I also ordered a small glass, predicting I wouldn’t love it or that a whole glass would just be overwhelming. My description of it would be a bubbly pina colada.
The ideal situation to drink this would be a hot day, preferably a beach bonfire in the background.
I can guarantee this isn’t for everyone, but I was thoroughly surprised that I enjoyed drinking it. It was completely different than anything I’ve tried before. Overindulging would be terrible I predict, though.