Review: 4 Non-Alcoholic Beers from Mash Gang

UK-based Mash Gang got started during Covid and has expanded rapidly, now producing products in the U.S. Their offerings span a ton of standard beer styles (over 200 have been produced), and lately the operation has delved into non-alcoholic offerings, of which four are now available. We tasted the full set — from 16 oz cans, even. (12 oz cans are also available.)

Thoughts follow.

Mash Gang Journey Juice Fruited IPA with Mango, Chili, Lime – The description of this scared me a bit at the start. Mango, chili, and lime are a classic combination… but in a beer? Rest easy: This stuff is great, the hazy/juicy IPA that Chug (see below) perhaps aspires to. The mango notes are sweet and tropical, quite prominent but not at all overdone, pairing nicely with the beer’s slightly nutty maltiness and a gentle salinity to create a fruit-forward delight that is wholly crushable — though it’s touched with acidity thanks to the addition of lime, which appears late in the game. I quickly finished off the full 16 oz can of Journey Juice and immediately wished for another — guilt free! A

Mash Gang Chug IPA – A vaguely hazy style, this uses Citra and El Dorado hops to create something that’s a hybrid between east and west coast IPAs, firmly bitter up front and amply fruity as it develops on the tongue. Notes of lemon are prominent, followed by expressed grapefruit juice and then a rumbling, generalized bitterness and a curious, light dusting of nutmeg to finish. Solid. A-

Mash Gang Lesser Evil Stout with Chocolate & Cherries – Well, this tastes exactly how you think it’s going to taste: Sweet, for the most part, with a strong cherry cola note, plus a light layer of Hershey’s chocolate syrup on top. The beer evolves in glass to show off some heavier notes of malt and well-baked bread, though it’s all in service of the cherry-chocolate attack, which fades on the back end to reveal notes of molasses, prune, and licorice. Definitely a much different animal than the above trio. B+

Mash Gang Glug Cerveza – Intended as a simulacrum of a Mexican style lager, this doesn’t particularly hit the palate as Corona-esque but rather more like a European lager, with a slightly funky, mushroomy quality throughout. Glug reminded me a lot of Heineken 0.0, with its very bready consistency and slightly off finish, and while it wasn’t entirely off-putting, it paled in comparison to a number of other N/A lagers on the market. B-

each $15 per four-pack of 16 oz cans / mashgang.com

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