Someone Put Fruit in My Beer!!!

Fruit in beer you say? Bad form Mr. Smee!

Blogger’s Note: I know it’s bad form to begin a blog post with administrivia, but we need to take a brief timeout before we even get started for this important announcement: Today marks the glorious and magnanimous return of the slowest growing blog sensation on these interwebs. After making you writhe in insecurity and misery for the past two weeks, I am back from my hiatus, full of energy, piss, and vinegar (full of something), and ready to bring craft-brewed enlightenment to your curious and thirsty souls. You don’t have to thank me. It’s the least I can do. Now, let’s get to it.

One of the most common complaints that I hear when enjoying craft beer with others is about fruit beers. For many people, the sweet and/or tart flavor profiles achieved through brewing with fruit are too much, and offensive. While I will admit that I have encountered fruit beers that were over the top and not as enjoyable as I would like, it is an absolute fallacy to say that all fruit beers are bad. You’ll find that like everything else in brewing, there are multitudes of factors that determine the end result, and by extension, whether said result is enjoyable or not.

Historically, brewing with fruit goes all the way back to the beginning. Brewers have always looked for ways to impart unique and enjoyable flavors into their beer, mainly because fermented malted barley by itself tastes incomplete. This is one of the reasons we use hops in beer today (not the only reason), as the bittering qualities of the hop flower add flavors that balance and pair well with the sweet malted barley. In the days before hops, brewers used a substance called gruit to flavor the beer. Gruit was quite literally whatever a brewer could find lying around that could be used to flavor beer, which often included fruit. In spite of what the Reinheitsgebot purists of Germany would profess, the reality is that fruit has been part of beer brewing since beer brewing became a thing.

You were so preoccupied with whether you could put fruit in
beer, you didn't stop to ask if you should.

Spin it forward to today and we find many different “fruit beers” available at your local craft beer retail establishment. Those who follow this blog know that I am meticulous about categorizing things, and spoiler alert – it’s about to happen again. Where is Ian Malcolm?

The first type of fruit beer that I am going to mention briefly and then dismiss completely is what I call “Commercial Fermented Fruit Brews” or CFFBs. CFFBs are your hard ciders and malted fruit juice drinks like Smirnoff Ice, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Bacardi Whatever, etc. I have no time for these, even if they are properly made and independently owned, which would qualify them for craft status. Some people like them; I do not. If you must drink them, I recommend drinking the Angry Orchard series as I know for a fact it is privately owned and properly operated. Check the label when you drink these as they are often made by Budweiser, Miller, Coors, or one of the other miscreants out there.

The second category of fruit beers are those that live on the opposite side of the spectrum from CFFBs, in which the brewer is using fruit as a balancing equal part of a larger equation. We’ll call these “Fruit as a Balancing Adjunct Brew” or FBABs. A good example of this is a properly made Belgian witbier, in which the brewer adds citrus zest to the boil in order to impart a slight citrus note into the finished product. The fruit flavor will not be dominant in the end, and it isn't meant to be. It will simply be part of the whole flavor profile that the finished product has. Most Christmas Ales will fit this category too as they are usually brewed with fruit, but that fruit is only part of the greater compliment of flavors like cinnamon, ginger, and allspice.

Let's make a witbier! Look at that lovely citrus!

The third and final category that I am creating here today in this blog (you’re reading history here folks) is the one that lies in the middle – the category that encompasses all fruit beers where the brewer has chosen to celebrate a particular fruit and make it the star of the show. In fact, let’s call them “Fruit as the Star of the Show Brews” or FSSBs. These will be easy to spot, as they will probably include the name of the fruit being showcased in the title or style of the brew. This is the category where Belgian lambics live. This is also the category where most of your “they went too far” reactions are going to live, mainly because brewing with fruit is tricky.

Why is fruit brewing tricky you ask? It’s tricky because fruits react differently under boiling temperatures, time exposures and fermenting. Some fruit, like citrus, react favorably to the brewing process, maintaining their flavors and aromas, balancing well with bittering hops, and making the final product quite delightful. Then again, grapefruit is a citrus, and it probably wouldn't balance by itself, so there goes that theory. Contrarily, fruits like pumpkins lose the bulk of their flavor and aroma when brewing, which is why most pumpkin ales are heavily laced with pumpkin pie spices to ensure that the desired pumpkin flavor isn't lost.

Sam Calgione of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery prepping strawberries for his Tweason Ale.

Strawberries are another example of a fruit that loses most of its flavor and aroma while boiling. In fact, if you’re a chef or baker, you already know this as it applies to cooking as well as brewing. If you are setting out to make a strawberry beer, you’re already fighting an uphill battle. Many brewers do one of two things to ensure their strawberry beer tastes like strawberries. They either over strawberry it, particularly after the boil during fermentation, or they use strawberry extract which is mostly sugar either in place of the berries or to prop up the berries, again after the boil. The problem with extract is that it is very easy for the end result to taste like cough syrup.

This extract problem doesn't just apply to strawberries, but it seems that strawberries, due to their particular lack of cooperation when brewing, are the most glaring example of “when fruit beers go wrong.” Of course, the key to brewing is balance, so perhaps it’s not the extract that makes the beer unbearable, but rather that the extract is unbalanced. In standard brewing, you balance malt and hops – as in, if you’re setting out to make a hop bomb, you need to add more grain proportionate to how bitter your brew is getting. On the other hand, if you’re making a strong ale and are plussing up the malt to drive your ABV up, you need to add more hops in order to balance the sweetness of the grain.

Good advice right there.

The same type of principle applies to fruit brewing – which is why that last category (FSSBs) is so problematic. When your mission is to highlight a particular fruit, you’re already setting out to unbalance it because you want it to be the star of the show. The trick is to find a way to balance the flavor type without balancing the flavor itself. In other words, balance the sweetness of the cherries without overwhelming the cherry flavor. The pumpkin ale example is a good model of this, though as the pumpkin already has a subtle sweet flavor that is all but lost in the boil anyways, perhaps it is too easy. In this brewer’s opinion, it all comes back to hops. Just like overhopping to compensate for sweet malt, you overhop to compensate for sweet fruit. You could also go with spices to balance out the flavor, but that can be tricky too; if you use uncomplimentary spices, the whole thing could get weird quickly.

The best advice I can give for the drinker is to keep an open mind and try to appreciate and understand the beer you’re drinking for what it is. When you drink a fruit beer that is “not good,” try to dissect it and think about what went wrong. Perhaps now that you have a 101-level understanding of brewing with fruit, you can troubleshoot the brew and come up with ideas of how you would've done things differently. Then again, you could go to the other extreme and post a picture of yourself pouring it out on Untappd. Whatever you need to do.

Here’s to craft-brewed happiness… Cheers!