The Marc’s & Tony “Chonky” Banana Apple Berliner Weisse

Beer Reviews, Philippines / By / , , , , , / 07/25/2021

Name: Chonky
Brewers: The Marc’s & Tony Brewing Co. (Philippines)
Style: Fruit Beer (Base Style: Berliner Weisse)
ABV: 4%
Review Year: 2020

Tony Sindayen of The Marc’s & Tony Brewing Co. doubles down on his mantra of brewing fun, flavorful, and fresh beers with the first of two simultaneously released fruited kettle sours– Chonky, a Berliner Weisse fruited heavily with apples and bananas. Meanwhile, the second beer featuring cherries takes a more traditional approach in adding fruits.

Read More: The Marc’s & Tony Brewing Co. “Berliner Weisse with Cherries”

STYLE GUIDELINES

This beer is being evaluated as a Fruit Beer (29A) with the Berliner Weisse (23A) as the base style in the context of the 2015 Beer Style Guidelines of the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP). The most current version of the guidelines can be found on the BJCP website.

Heavily-fruited sour beers have been gaining popularity in recent years. These are not your typical kettle sour beers (e.g., Gose, Berliner Weisse) brewed with juice, but are thick, smoothie-like beers concocted with large amounts of fruit puree. 450 North Brewing in Indiana is noted to have spearheaded the popularity of these heavily-fruited sours with their SLUSHY XL beers.

The BJCP recommends a classic style (e.g., Berliner Weisse) brewed with fruit be entered as a Fruit Beer. However, these heavily-fruited variants might be the new outliers. Only time will tell.

Recommended Readings:

Are Fruited Sours Taking Over Delaware Valley? (Fueled by Hops, 2020)

FAQs #1: Sour Fruit Beers, Specialty IPAs, Gruit and English Brown (BJCP, 2017)

TASTING NOTES

Hazy pale straw with tons of fruit bits; foamy off-white head. Light apple aroma. Light-medium bodied, although tricky to decipher due to the fruit bits; carbonation is still moderately-high. Approachable sourness harmonizes with the apple flavor. The keyword is “approachable.” Low sweetness; very subtle (almost none) banana characters. Notable doughy, wheaty backbone. Leaves the palate slightly sticky akin to eating apples; faint impressions of apple, bitterness, dough, and wheat.


THE VERDICT

These heavily-fruited and chunky kettle sours are the juices with pulpy bits of the craft beer world. It is what it is. As to their market longevity, only time will tell.

Tony Sindayen lives up to his mantra of brewing fun, flavorful, and fresh beers with Chonky. It is essentially a Berliner Weisse with approachable sourness accentuated by the apples against a backdrop of wheaty and doughy flavors. We did not get much of the banana, so the future variants could improve on this. Overall, a fun experiment. Gently roll the can before opening, but you still might need a spoon for this.