Pulped Fiction NEIPA: A Collaboration in the Making
- Umang Nair
- Jun 29
- 6 min read
Some collaborations start with a detailed plan. Others start with a conversation that gets repeated over the years.
"We should brew something together sometime." That was pretty much the story of Pulped Fiction.
I've known Lynette(Brewmaster) from Flying Fox for quite a while now. Like most brewers in India's craft beer industry, our paths have crossed regularly over the years at festivals, brewery visits, industry events, and over countless beers shared between shifts. Every now and then, the conversation would drift towards the same topic: we should brew a collaboration together.
As often happens in brewing, life got in the way. Production schedules, launches, events, and a hundred other priorities meant the idea kept getting pushed down the list. Until this year, when we finally stopped talking about it and brought the idea to life with a collaboration between BLR Brewing Co. and Flying Fox. Interestingly, the original plan wasn't to make a mango beer.
It was simply to brew a great New England IPA.
Starting with the Pulped Fiction NEIPA
Both Lynette and I enjoy hop-forward beers, and the idea of building a juicy, expressive NEIPA felt like the perfect place to start. While I personally gravitate towards classic IPAs and the bitterness they bring, a well-made NEIPA occupies a unique space in the beer world. It delivers all the hop aroma and flavour that beer geeks love, but in a softer, more approachable package.
And let's be honest , we're not exactly an IPA-drinking nation.
While there is certainly a growing audience for aggressively bitter beers, styles like Hefeweizens, wheat beers and Belgian ales continue to appeal to a much broader group of drinkers. A NEIPA sits comfortably between those worlds.
It gives hop lovers something exciting while remaining approachable for people who may not normally order an IPA.
With that in mind, we built the beer around three hop varieties that work beautifully together: Citra, Simcoe and Amarillo. Citra brought bright tropical fruit and citrus character. Simcoe layered in ripe fruit notes and complexity, while Amarillo contributed citrus, peach and stone fruit flavours that tied everything together.
The Mango Question
If you're brewing beer in India during peak mango season, eventually someone is going to ask the question:
"What if we add mango?"
At first, it was just an idea floating around the brewhouse. But the more we talked about it, the more it made sense. The hop profile we had already created was packed with tropical and citrus character. Mango didn't feel like an ingredient we were forcing into the beer. It felt like a natural extension of what was already there.
Before brewing began, we spent time tasting different mango varieties. Alphonso, Kesar, Badami, Banganapalli and several others all made an appearance. We weren't looking for the sweetest mango or the most famous mango. We were looking for the right mango for the beer.
Eventually, we landed on a combination of Alphonso and Kesar. Alphonso brought its intense aroma and rich mango flavour, while Kesar contributed a juicier profile with its own distinctive fruit character. Together, they delivered exactly the layered mango expression we were hoping for.
By the time everything was finalised, we had committed roughly 400 kilograms of fresh mangoes.
The Moment of Doubt
One of my favourite things about brewing is that beer occasionally surprises you. The first surprise came before the mangoes were added.
When we tasted the base NEIPA from the tank, it was genuinely difficult not to smile. The hop expression was exactly where we wanted it to be. The aroma jumped out of the glass. The bitterness was restrained but present. Most importantly, the balance was spot on.
As someone who typically enjoys more bitterness in my beer, what impressed me wasn't the intensity , it was how approachable the beer felt while still retaining all the character we wanted from the hops. It was the kind of beer that could satisfy a hop lover while also appealing to someone who would normally reach for a wheat beer.
For a brief moment, we looked at the beer and had the same thought.
Do we really want to add mango to this? The base beer was that good.
Fortunately, the mango was already waiting, and the collaboration had been planned around it. So we stuck to the plan. Looking back, I'm glad we did.
One Beer Becomes Two
Rather than committing the entire batch to fruit, we decided to split it. This allowed drinkers to experience both beers side by side and understand exactly what the mango was contributing.
Same base beer.
Same hops.
Same fermentation.
One with mango.
One without.
As brewers, we found that comparison fascinating. For customers, it offered a rare opportunity to see how a single ingredient can completely change a beer's aroma, flavour and overall drinking experience.
Brewing Reality
Of course, brewing with real fruit is never as simple as adding it and hoping for the best.
Mangoes bring flavour, aroma and complexity. They also bring fibre.
The fruit pulp created some carbonation-related challenges initially. Nothing catastrophic, but enough to remind us that working with fresh ingredients always comes with variables. Fortunately, with a little patience and time for the beer to settle, those issues largely resolved themselves.
The mango affected head retention though. The base NEIPA poured with beautiful foam, helped by the grist and the hop profile. Once the fruit was added, some of that foam stability disappeared. The flavour remained exactly where we wanted it. The aroma was fantastic. The beer still drank beautifully.But brewers are perfectionists.
And if there was one thing we'd continue tweaking if we brewed the beer again, it would probably be that.
That's part of the fun of brewing. Every beer leaves you with a few lessons for next time.
Enter Pulped Fiction
The beer still needed a name.
That happened during a Google Meet call involving both breweries and the marketing teams. As with most naming sessions, there were some genuinely good ideas!
One contender was Mango No. 5!
Then Flying Fox team threw out Pulped Fiction. The reaction was immediate. Everyone loved it.
It referenced the mango pulp. It referenced one of the most iconic films ever made. Most importantly, it opened up an entire creative direction for the beer.
From that moment onward, the project took on a life of its own.
More Than Just a Label
One of the things I enjoyed most about this collaboration was how much effort went into the experience surrounding the Pulped fiction NEIPA.
The Flying Fox team really leaned into the theme. On brew day, while the beer quietly did its thing in the background, we spent time creating content inspired by Quentin Tarantino's classic film. Instead of guns, we posed with mangoes. There were plenty of laughs, plenty of questionable acting performances, and more mango-related photos than I ever thought I'd be part of.
The creativity didn't stop there.
One of my favourites featured a beer glass attached with velcro that guests could physically open to reveal the beer details underneath. In an age where most beer information lives on digital menus and Instagram posts, it was refreshing to see something tactile, playful and memorable.
It was the kind of small detail that shows how much thought had gone into the project.
The Verdict
When the beer finally launched, the answer arrived pretty quickly.
People loved the mango version. To be fair, mango beers have become something of a seasonal tradition. As soon as summer arrives, people actively start looking for them. There's something nostalgic about seeing mango appear in a beer, particularly when it's paired with a style that already lends itself so naturally to tropical fruit flavours.
But even with those expectations, the response exceeded what we had anticipated.
Within days of the launch, consumption numbers were telling us the same story. We needed another batch.
I remember discussions about brewing it again happening barely three days after release. By the end of the first week, the initial batch had essentially disappeared.
For a seasonal collaboration beer, that's always a satisfying outcome.
Why Collaborations Matter
Looking back, what I enjoy most about Pulped Fiction isn't just the beer itself but what it represented for us at BLR Brewing Co., the chance to create something together.
Collaborations allow brewers to exchange ideas, challenge assumptions and learn from each other's approaches. More importantly, they give people who genuinely love beer an excuse to spend a day creating something together.
Not bad for a collaboration that started with a simple sentence.
"We should brew something together sometime."
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