Everything you need to know about... fruit

In the latest in our series Nigel Huddleston looks at the role fruit can play in the production of quality beers from around the world

Why do brewers use fruit?

Normally we’d kick-off with ‘what are hops?’ (or whatever it is you need to know everything about this month), but if we do that with fruit it’s going to end up like one of those soul-sapping pub conversations along the lines of “but is the tomato a fruit?” and we could probably all do without that.

Let’s just agree that we’re talking about the fleshy, seed-bearing bits of plants that are commonly consumed as foodstuffs. Good.

To answer our alternative question, it’s pretty straightforward, really. Fruit is added to beer by brewers in some parts of the world to enhance the flavour.

The country most closely associated with fruit beers is Belgium, where they are most commonly based them on the lambic style of beer. This is classically a base beer with unmalted wheat as well as malted barley in the cereal content, a high hop count and using spontaneous fermentation with wild yeast from the brewery’s natural surrounding environment.

Lambic beers are bottled and sold in their right, and sometimes young and old lambics are blended to make a style known as gueuze.

The sweetness and flavour that can be provided by the addition of fruit acts as a counter to what can be rather challenging sourness and cheesiness of some lambic beer in its natural state, particularly when it is relatively young.

That’s not to say that all fruit beers are sweet – far from it. The style can run from juicy sweetness to very dry, with the sweetness generally tending to dimin.....

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By Nigel Huddleston

Section : Beer Production

Page number : 28