It’s tempting to think, from time to time, that there’s nothing new under the sun in the beer world—that it’s all been done, and now it’s just a matter of recycling and reinvention. Then you hear about something that truly never has been done before, not as far as you’ve ever heard.
When it comes to monk fruit—an Asian fruit whose extract is used for zero-calorie, artificial sweeteners—we are still in the earliest days. But a few brewers are using it as an ostensibly natural way to balance out lighter, bone-dry beers. We have learned what we could.
What Is Monk Fruit?
Monk fruit is a gourd, basically. Its Chinese name is luo han go. It is said to be incredibly sweet-tasting, and anywhere from a quarter to a third of it is sugar (mainly fructose and glucose). That sweetness is somehow intensified by mogrosides—molecules that bind sugars and can be extracted to make artificial sweeteners. During the extraction process, those mogrosides are separated from the sugars, but they remain sweet themselves. It has become a fashionable option in natural-food circles, propelled by the popularity of low-carb diets.