Flavoured Beer, Fruit

Fruit Beers are a very wide range of style of beer where fruit is added to a base beer either during or after fermentation. The base beer can be anything from a light pale ale through to a heavy stout. The type of fruit being added can be just about anything, cherry, plum and raspberry are common additions. This fruit can be added as whole fruit or processed in some way such as juices or concentrates. So with the variety of base beer, the additional ingredient bring used and how it is applied it soon becomes clear that there are lots of possibilities. The end beer is hugely variable in taste and appearance, such as bitter Bergamot IPAs, sour lemon pales, sweet cherry stouts or just about anything you can imagine.

To classify a beer as a Fruit Beer the additional fruit needs to dominate the end product in terms of appearance, aroma or taste. Those beers where there is only a slight presence will be classified as whatever the base beer is.

Although it appears that fruit beer in cask ale is a recent invention it does in fact it dates back many years, certainly to the 17th century. There is a long history of Fruit Beer in Belgium who have a many different examples including Framboise (Raspberry) and Kriek (Cherry) being added to either brown ale or wheat beer bases.