Think fresh coffee with fresh fruit for breakfast, or a chocolate-covered cherry, strawberry, or orange slice—flavors that contrast yet work together beautifully.
Maybe it’s easier to imagine than to brew. Straight-up fruit stouts are relatively scarce these days compared to those that lean into more dessert-like adjuncts, such as vanilla, chocolate, and coconut. Yet the enduring popularity of big, flavored stouts means that brewers are still tinkering with all kinds of variations—including fruit.
Dead and Berried
One of the best fruit stouts we’ve tasted lately is a blackberry imperial stout—Dead and Berried, from Foothills Brewing in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (and reviewed by our blind panel for this issue, see page 90). This is a big, characterful beer of 10.5 percent ABV and 62 IBUs, aged in bourbon barrels for about six months after getting a load of blackberry puree.