About This Beer
Vault City Bake Off Matcha Mochi 44cl 7.4% is a Tropical Fruit & Green Tea Ice Cream Sour brewed in collaboration with Uchu Brewing from Japan.
Created as part of Vault City's Bake Off series, Matcha Mochi takes inspiration from the flavours and texture of Japanese mochi and reimagines them as a modern sour beer. Vault City combines delicate matcha green tea with ripe peach, tart passionfruit and juicy pineapple, before bringing in rice and light vanilla ice cream character to create the soft, dessert-inspired profile.
The collaboration came about after Vault City tried one of Uchu Brewing's matcha beers. The Edinburgh brewery was particularly drawn to matcha's earthy complexity, vibrant colour and distinctive flavour, making the Japanese brewery a natural partner for a beer inspired by matcha mochi.
Fruit provides the brighter side of the beer. Peach adds ripe sweetness, passionfruit brings a sharper tropical edge and pineapple contributes juicy acidity. Against this, matcha introduces an earthy green tea character that prevents the beer from becoming simply another tropical fruit sour.
Rice is another important part of the recipe. Flaked rice is used to help evoke the soft, pillowy quality of mochi, while vanilla adds the final ice cream-inspired element.
At 7.4% ABV, Matcha Mochi has considerably more strength than its playful dessert inspiration might initially suggest. Vault City gives it a rating of 3 on its sour scale, placing noticeable tartness alongside the tropical fruit, matcha, rice and vanilla.
For anyone exploring contemporary Sour & Lambic beers, this is a particularly unusual example of the experimental direction modern sour brewing can take.
Tasting Notes
- Appearance: Vibrant and distinctive, with matcha contributing to its unusual colour.
- Aroma: Ripe peach, passionfruit and pineapple alongside earthy matcha and soft vanilla.
- Flavour: Juicy tropical fruit comes first, combining sweet peach and pineapple with sharper passionfruit. Matcha follows with an earthy green tea character, while rice and vanilla provide a softer, dessert-like counterpoint.
- Mouthfeel: Smooth and full with a soft, pillowy character.
- Finish: Tart tropical fruit gives way to lingering matcha, vanilla and gentle sweetness.
The matcha is particularly important to the overall balance. Its earthy character provides contrast to the sweeter peach and pineapple, while tart passionfruit reinforces the sour side of the beer.
Despite the ice cream inspiration, Matcha Mochi contains no lactose and Vault City confirms that the beer is suitable for vegans.
About the Brewery
Vault City Brewing is based in Portobello, Edinburgh and specialises in modern sour beer. Founded in 2018, the brewery has become particularly associated with heavily fruited sours, unusual ingredients and beers inspired by desserts, sweets and cocktails.
Vault City uses mixed fermentation and its own house culture as the foundation for its sour beers, before building additional flavours through real fruit and other ingredients.
For Matcha Mochi, Vault City collaborated with Uchu Brewing from Japan. Uchu is known for flavour-forward modern craft beer, and it was the Japanese brewery's previous work with matcha that originally caught Vault City's attention.
The collaboration forms part of the wider Bake Off project, which pairs Vault City with breweries from around the world to create beers inspired by well-known desserts. Matcha Mochi represents the Japanese entry in the series, translating the distinctive combination of matcha and mochi into a 7.4% sour beer.
It's an approach that neatly captures what makes Vault City distinctive: taking a recognisable flavour idea and pushing it through the lens of modern sour brewing.
Food Pairings
Matcha Mochi's combination of tropical fruit, green tea and vanilla makes desserts an obvious place to begin.
Mochi ice cream is the most direct pairing, particularly vanilla, mango or matcha varieties. The soft rice character in the beer complements the mochi while its sour fruit provides contrast to the sweetness.
Japanese cheesecake is another excellent option. Its relatively light texture won't overpower the beer, while the vanilla and creamy flavours work alongside Matcha Mochi's dessert character.
Fresh tropical fruit also works particularly well. Try mango, pineapple or passionfruit, allowing the fruit in the food to echo the peach, pineapple and passionfruit already present in the beer.
For something less sweet, matcha's earthy character makes this an interesting partner for mildly salty snacks or creamy cheeses. The beer's acidity can cut through richer textures while its fruit provides contrast.
Alternatively, serve Matcha Mochi by itself as a dessert beer, where its combination of tropical fruit, green tea, rice and vanilla can take centre stage.
Try More Like This
If you enjoy the unusual combination of fruit, acidity and dessert flavours in Matcha Mochi, explore our Sour & Lambic collection for more modern fruit sours and traditional sour beer styles.
This is particularly relevant to how customers are already finding TheCru.ie: searches for sour beer, sour beers, sour beer Ireland and even Vault City smoothie sour are generating Google Search impressions, making our Sour & Lambic range the natural place to discover similar releases.
You can also explore the full Craft Beer & Craft Cider range for new and limited beers across IPA, stout, lager, Belgian beer, sour beer and other styles.
Vault City Bake Off Matcha Mochi is one of the more unusual releases in the series, combining peach, passionfruit and pineapple with earthy matcha, pillowy rice and light vanilla ice cream character in a 7.4% sour created with Japan's Uchu Brewing.
Shop the best of craft beer Ireland and from around the world online with TheCru.ie or in our Dublin craft beer store, Carry Out Tyrrelstown in Dublin 15.