Don Durio's Filthy Mustochio was MobCraft's 14th crowdsourced brew. It won in November of last year and even came with a tale of an apocryphal Spanish 16th century Spanish explorer. The beer made it to shelves in January. It was brewed with cashews and durian, a southeast Asian fruit renowned for its malodorous aroma. When I bought this beer I figured that the recipe won the vote purely on novelty terms with voters keen on seeing a stinky fruit having its 15 minutes of fame. This coupled with my understanding that MobCraft had precious little, if any, experience making lagers did not give me high hopes for Filthy Mustachio.
The beer poured a nice dark straw color and was clear. I got a decent white, frothy head that disappeared fairly quickly. It did, however, have the requisite bubbles going up the glass. A very pretty beer. Too bad the head went away with such celerity. I'm not sure if this was because of the age of the beer or if the head dissipated that fast when fresh as well.
With the durian's reputation, I was rather worried that I'd sniff the beer and inhale a miasma. Instead my nose was greeted mainly with a biscuity/grainy aroma. When I inhaled extra deeply I caught an odd, musky fruit scent which I took to be the durian. It was by no means unpleasant but it was also rather faint. Although I was relieved that my nose was not assaulted by the fruit, I was a bit worried that my tongue would not be so lucky.
My fears were allayed quickly as Filthy Mustachio yielded primarily the moderately sweet taste of malt and cracker with a high dose of carbonation. The cashews were present but offered a subtle nuttiness. Also in the background was a bit of sweet fruitiness. Never having tasted a durian I had no idea what to expect them to taste like. I tasted something fig-like here which was pleasant enough.
The brew finished just this side of dry with the carbonation and a touch of spicy hops attempting to keep some maltiness at bay.
It's difficult for me to judge Filthy Mustachio since I drank it somewhere around six months late. I'm not sure if the fruit and nut flavors would have dulled over this amount of time. As it was I'd have liked them to have been just a bit stronger, a bit more up front instead of adding to an overall flavor which I found to be un-pilsner-like. Not bad, mind you, just not clean. I was hoping for a nice clean pilsner base upon which the durian and cashew were layered upon. Plus I tasted no hops. I've had pilsners that were this old and, while they certainly had lost hop flavor, they did not lack the presence of lupulin as did this beer. I'd wager that most of the imported pilsners on store shelves are roughly this old.
One thing that I really liked about Filthy Mustachio was the use of cashews. I am intrigued by the use of nuts in beer. Lazy Magnolia did a fine job utilizing pecans in their Southern Pecan Nut Brown, for instance. The cashews work well here but I wonder how they tasted in Filthy Mustachio when it was fresh. I'd imagine that a pistachio would be a more suitable companion to the clean, crisp flavors of a pils.
Junk food pairing: While drinking Filthy Mustachio eat Cheez-It Duoz Sharp Cheddar and Parmesan. The latter especially have a bit more salt than the average cracker and help highlight the cashew and durian in the beer.
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