We started with puckered faces and an emphatic “absolutely not”. We finished the can, admitted we’d buy it again and somehow crowned it our new Choose Your Fighter champion.

This week, we’re drinking Vault City’s Hot Honey Apple Mango — a 6.2% smoothie sour combining fresh apple, tropical mango, chilli flakes and Scottish blossom honey. It looks like a defrosted ice lolly, pours like mango juice and eventually leaves Matt wondering whether the heat in his chest is chilli or the beginning of a medical emergency.

Created through Vault City’s You Choose, We Brew competition from more than 2,000 suggestions, this is a beer designed to challenge expectations. But is it genuinely well-crafted, or has modern beer finally disappeared into complete madness?

We explore Vault City’s rise from small-batch Edinburgh brewery to one of Britain’s best-known sour beer producers, why heavily fruited sours divide drinkers and whether this might work better as a shared dessert drink than a traditional pint.

There are food pairings including vanilla cheesecake, coconut panna cotta, fish tacos, Korean fried chicken and strong cheese. Elton also attempts to turn it into a spicy mango margarita or a dangerously drinkable Bellini.

Then Hot Honey Apple Mango faces reigning champion Dead Reckoning West Coast IPA in Choose Your Fighter, judged on flavour, drinkability and character. The result irritates both of us.

Finally, we check Vault City against the Italian legal definition of craft beer: independence, annual production below 200,000 hectolitres and beer that is unpasteurised and unfiltered.

Would you drink a hot honey, apple and mango smoothie sour? Tell us what you think and follow Beer, Together for a new episode every Friday.

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