Jack Sramek / Head Brewer, Tin Man Brewing, Kokomo, Indiana
A beloved craft brewer in the lively Indiana town of Kokomo, Tin Man Brewing Co. uses The Perfect Purée Mango Puree in its Mango Malfunction, a light-bodied American IPA that’s the epitome of an aromatic, tropical summer beer.
Head Brewer Jack Sramek pours the purée straight into the fermenter and leaves it to work its magic on the beer, producing a bright, hoppy flavor with clear but subtle mango notes. Jack says adding the purée at the start of fermentation reduces the mango’s sugar content, preventing the yeast from fermenting the sugar later in the process and leading to over-carbonated beer.
Mango Malfunction’s tropical nose finishes with a pleasant bitterness for an IPA, says Jack.
“It has a mango-y aftertaste as well and a lingering fruitiness,” he says. “It’s one of our most popular beers and it will be staple in our brewery.”
Jack refuses to use “fake flavor” in his brewing process, which rules out extracts.
“You get more flavor out of an extract. That’s why breweries use it, but to me it doesn’t taste real. It tastes like a popsicle,” he says.
He likes tweaking the flavor intensity of his finished product by adding more or less purée.
“With the purées it depends on when you add it — you can get more flavor or less, which is great,” he says.
Once defrosted, the purée tastes exactly like he’d just processed 30 pounds of mango by hand.
“But I don’t have time for that,” he says, laughing.
Tin Man has an industrial aesthetic made playful by its trademark big-eyed cartoonish robots like the one on Mango Malfunction’s label, which was created for Tin Man’s debut at the 2018 Craft Brewer’s Conference. The brewery’s name is a reference to the Wizard of Oz character, who the brewery’s founder imagined was a robot when he was young.
Tin Man began brewing in 2012 at its original location in Evansville, IN. It opened a new facility with a taproom in Kokomo in December, 2016, where it quickly became a favorite destination in downtown Kokomo’s historic train depot. Kokomo has since become Tin Man’s sole public facility since the Evansville brewpub closed. The streamlined brewery in Kokomo doesn’t bottle or can its beers and doesn’t serve food in the tap room, though customers are welcome to bring takeout to enjoy with their beer.
Beer goes straight from the serving tank to the tap and into glasses for people staying in the tap room, which has a friendly, neighborhood feel. Others take their beer to go in growlers or grumblers (half a growler at 32 ounces).
Jack brewed with The Perfect Purée Prickly Pear Puree at another brewery and made a well-received one-off for Tin Man but switched to Mango because people are more familiar with that flavor.
“That turned out to be one of the most excellent beers I’ve ever had,” he says.