are beers flavored with fruit rather than alcoholic drinks made from fruit. Thor Heyerdahl in his book Fatu Hiva describes people getting drunk on “orange beer” but drinks made from fruit are more properly described as wines. Beers are made from grain and require a conversion step in which fermentable sugar is produced from starch. Fruits themselves contain only fermentable sugars, usually as fructose, sucrose, or other fermentable sugars and so need only to be squeezed of their juice before yeast is added.

The addition of various non-grain materials, including fruit, to beer preceded the use of hops as both a flavoring and a preservative. Adding fruit to beer has always had a range of benefits. Traditionally, fruit added additional fermentable sugars to the beer, increasing its strength and nutritive value. The taste and aroma of the fruit can hide or ameliorate the flavor of beers that might otherwise be found less than ideal. When added properly by a skilled artisanal brewer, fruit can help create colors, flavors, and aromas unobtainable from grain alone.

The best known fruit beers are from Belgium, with most of them based on lambic beer. Lambic beers are spontaneously fermented by diverse organisms in the brewing environment and most are dry and acidic. See lambic. Traditionally, Kriek, from the Flemish word for cherry, is made by adding large amounts of black Schaerbeek cherries to 6-month old blended lambic beer or sour brown ale. The fruited beer continues its maturation in oak barrels for a year or more until the pulp is consumed by yeasts, and only the stones and skins remain. The beer is then refermented in the bottle. The resulting beer is often acidic and complex, with rosé coloring and attenuated fruit flavors. Hop bitterness and flavor are low due to the use of old hops that have lost their bittering and aromatic compounds; they are mostly there for their preservative value. For both good and ill, fruit beers have increased in popularity, resulting in many ersatz creations. Increased volumes of production, the sweet tooth of a public weaned on soft drinks, and a lack of the traditional cherries have resulted in the wide use of juices, purees, and sweeteners being widely used. Framboise, or frambozen in Flemish, is made in a similar fashion to Kriek, but with raspberries rather than cherries. It has been subjected to similar changes. Many modern fruit beers, even in Belgium, are extremely sweet with a strong taste and aroma of fruit. A whole range of other fruit beers are now being produced based on what are frequently poorer quality beers with added fruit juice or puree. This range includes cherries and raspberries but also peaches (peches), blackcurrants (cassis), and apples (pommes). The majority of these beers seem to have considerable amounts of added sweetener.

In the UK, during the 1970s, young people with a taste for sweet drinks would add blackcurrant cordial to their lager, and the practice would seem to continue today, but now back in the brewery. Some time spent on the Internet or in looking at supermarket shelves demonstrates that many UK brewers are producing fruit beers. The high price of fresh fruit such as raspberries and cherries leads the majority to use extracts, with the more discerning using frozen purees. A rapid survey of the fruit beers available shows that many of the beers produced have overwhelming fruit aromas and taste dominating the nose and palate. Some of these are no longer recognizable as beers.

In the United States, production of fruit beers is becoming popular, and craft brewers have approached fruit from both the modern and traditional angles. The best producers will age beers for months on whole fruit, often in oak barrels. Many of the beers will start off as sour ales and eventually gain much of the character of traditional lambic-based fruit beers. Others will blend in fruit purees or juices, either before fermentation or after. When added post-fermentation, fruit adds sweetness, color, and flavor, but little subtlety or traditional flavors. The least traditional, though the beers are often popular, will add “natural” extracts to their beer, giving them an instant boost of candy-like fruit flavor.

The production of excellent fruit beer undoubtedly requires more effort and time than many brewers wish to expend, but many of the most skilled craft brewers around the world are starting to take a keen interest. We can hopefully expect many fascinating and beguiling creations in years ahead.