It’s Summer.
Our season to be joyful. Mainly because it’s hot and people drink lots.

But also because it’s mango season, which also means it’s mango beer season.
More specifically, it’s that time of the year when we bring out one of our all time favourites, that usually sells out before we can say Aam Aadmi.

The Aam Aadmi Ale comes from a lineage that is thousands of years old. The fruit-in-beer lineage that is. Let us learn.

A little fruity history

The earliest evidence of brewing itself might have had some fruit involved. Studies have pointed towards a Neolithic Chinese (7000 BC) community creating a beverage comprising of honey, rice and grapes.

There’s also the other big fans of brewing, the ancient Egyptians, who used both dates and pomegranates in their versions of beer.
While there have been instances of fruit being used in the brewing process from 9,000 years ago, it somehow didn’t catch on as a standard.

And as with all radical ideas, it faced quite a bit of criticism from the purist brewers.

The English and Germans largely spurned the idea of fruit in their beer, and it wasn’t until the Belgians decided to do something about it that fruit beer made a comeback.
They used cherries, and later raspberry and peach from way back in the 1930s, which sort of paved the way for the fruit brewing culture that went on to become quite the rage in the American brewing scene.

And once the Americans decide to do something, you know they’re going to market the hell out of it, making things like pumpkin ales and cherry stouts commonplace.

Fruit beers still remain a passion (fruit) project, mainly because of the unpredictability of the fruit flavour and also because the practice of masking the flavour of a bad batch of beers with fruit flavours gave the impression that fruit beers were somehow inferior brews.

An Indian brew, through and through

But when you do get it right, there is nothing quite like the feeling of a refreshing cold one, with just the right amount of fruity notes. Which brings us to—the Aam Aadmi Ale. Our refreshing mango-infused response to the scorching summers of Bangalore. (a sentence we never thought we’d hear ourselves say…type…you get it.)

It’s quintessentially Indian, and we use the freshest of mango pulp to make it. Of course, the process of using fruit in beer isn’t simple, and we take extra care to make sure the best selection of mangoes are what goes into you beer.

A beloved national fruit, combined with a beloved beverage—what’s not to love? (Speaking of which, we think beer should be the national beverage, but the jury’s out on that one. But all those in agreement, raise those glasses up.)

And while the name is surprisingly similar sounding to a beloved (?) national party, our loyalties will forever lie where they always have—with beer that brings the common man together for the greatest cause of them all, spreading the cause of quality brewed beer. As if there could be anything more noble than carrying on the conquest of our founding fathers.