They may be light and fluffy confections, suited for a summer garden, or profound and brooding—worthy of, as the Italians say about their greatest red wines, meditatazione. Added casually for centuries, fruit has now come into its own in the family of contemporary craft beers.
Truly great examples can be found, but they are uncommon. People love fun and fruity beers—but because fruit is expensive, such beers are often a little short on flavor. The demand for super-intense, wine-like fruit beers has yet to reach the fever pitch of pastry stouts, so market support for them is restrained. Yet more than ever, fruit beers are worthwhile endeavors.
They are tricky to get right. Beer is already highly complex in its flavor, chemistry, and process; fruit adds another world of difficulty, merging two separate elements into a single glass, hopefully finding ways to bridge them and make sure that each plays nicely with the other. Fruit intensity inevitably takes a hit because a typical fruit beer contains maybe 10 percent fruit, meaning you’ll never quite match the mouth-tingling impact of real, whole fruit. Plus, some flavors and fruit colors are unstable in beer, changing or fading over time.