It is a common complaint that fruit beers are somehow less than “real beers,” that the fact they are fruit-flavored and frequently sweet makes them some sort of “beer cooler” rather than true ales or lagers.
But consider this: Hops, the flowers that give beers their bitterness and a good deal of aroma and taste, have only been a popular part of brewing for about 1,500 years. Beer itself, however, has been around in one form or another for over 6,000 years, meaning that hops are relative newcomers to the brewing arts.
And before brewers used hops? Well, let’s just say King Tut thought fruit beers were just fine.
In 1996, British brewer Scottish & Newcastle released a very limited edition ale, the recipe for which had been developed over six years by a team of Egyptologists and archeobotanists excavating the remains of the ancient city of Akhetaten, now Tell el-Amarna, where Tut is thought to have been born. Their goal was to recreate the more than 3,000-year-old brew the child king might have enjoyed, and the ingredients they used were emmer wheat, coriander seed, juniper berries and a type of Egyptian fruit known as the Naback berry.
So if fruit beers were fit for a king, you might want to consider the possibility that they may be good enough for your customers. And this time of year, when most people are acutely aware of the ongoing harvest of farm-fresh fruits and vegetables, could be a perfect time to introduce a few fruit beers to your menu.
Although their origins date back thousands of years, we owe our modern fruit beer traditions to the Belgians, who have brewed cherry-flavored beers called krieks and raspberry-flavored framboises for centuries. Most of these beers, and the many other varieties of fruit beer bearing the word lambic on their labels, are based on a kind of spontaneously-fermented wheat beer brewed only in an area southwest of Brussels, called the Payottenland. Wonderfully dry, tart and complex in their natural and traditional form, most present day lambics are sweetened with either sugar, saccharin or unfermented fruit juice, and consequently are popular with patrons who do not normally drink beer.
Domestically, fruit beers come in varying strengths, styles and degrees of sweetness. Broadly speaking, they are made in one of two ways.
The simplest method for crafting a fruit beer is to first brew and fully ferment an ordinary wheat ale. Then the beer will have a fruit juice or extract blended into it before bottling or kegging, creating a beer that has a full and fruity aroma and some degree of fruit taste. Because wheat beers are light in both body and taste—and already vaguely fruity in character—they take to flavoring agents well.
The more challenging way is to ferment the beer with whole or crushed fruit, or significant amounts of fruit juice. Since most fruit sugars are highly fermentable, fruit beers made this way will generally have a drier character but more of a true fruit taste. At times, the fruit can be so fermented that its aroma and flavor is almost nonexistent.
While raspberry beers were all the rage a decade ago, today’s fruit beer might be flavored with anything from watermelon to blueberries, passion fruit to pomegranate, and built on almost any style from wheat beer to stout. Some may be sweet and others might be quite dry, but all will be true, legitimate beers.
And if you don’t believe me, just take it from King Tut.
Stephen Beaumont is a veteran beer writer and author of five books on the subject. His writing on beer, drinks, food and travel appears in a wide variety of national and international publications.
