Fruit in beer evokes a number of associations: the lemon that is sometimes put in your glass of Hoegaarden, Radler, or a Belle-Vue Kriek that has been on the menu for many years. But with the growth of the number of brewers in the Netherlands, creativity is also growing and different types of fruit are increasingly being added to the beer. Traditionally people often think of Kriek and Radler. These are also very good examples for beers containing fruit. The fruit that is added to these beers does a lot with the taste and color. Fortunately, there are many more types of beer where fruit is an important part of the ingredient list, such as IPA, Berliner Weiße and Sours, which often work with a member of the citrus family, for example.
By using various hop varieties, beautiful citrus notes can be given to beer, but unfortunately this is also accompanied by a high bitterness. Sometimes a brewer wants to omit that bitterness a bit more. Then you can work very well with fruit, which you often see with Pastry Stouts or Sours. The beers with a lower alcohol percentage, which often have a somewhat watery taste, can also give the beer a lot of taste, depth and body.
You can't just add fruit like you buy at the greengrocer or supermarket to your brew. That fruit can have quite an impact on the quality of your beer, which you can hardly or not keep under control. Fruit is often sprayed and contains wild yeasts, as a brewer you do not want this in your brewing installation or beer. There are also brewers who process loose rolling fruit in their brewing process, which requires the necessary specialist knowledge. Breweries that make wild beers usually choose loose rolling fruit because they make beers with wild fermentation. These are the so-called Brettanomyces (Brett) beers.
Brewers who want fruit in the beer, but do not want wild fermentation, use heated (pasteurized) fruit purees. Even then, as a brewer, you still have to look carefully at the label. Fruit puree is also widely used by ice cream makers and pastry chefs, who would like sweetened fruit puree for, among other things, the taste, structure and better freezing of the end product. Fruitlife's sugar-free fruit puree that we sell to brewers contains only natural sugars, no extra sugar has been added. No extra sugar has been added here. As a result, adding the Fruitlife fruit puree has less influence on the fermentation, resulting in a positive influence on the taste, alcohol percentage and amount of carbon dioxide.
View the overview below and find out which fruit goes best with which hop variety.