“Can I put figs into this helles?” That’s a real question I got from a homebrewer. My answer was the same as always when brewers ask me what’s possible: “Sure. Why would you want to?”
My answering a question with a question isn’t meant as smart-assery—it’s meant to be taken seriously. Brewers tend to do things because they can or because they never have before. If that’s the way you want to roll, cool—we all like to experiment. Another approach, though, is to make deliberate choices in brewing, with a specific goal in mind, for a specific reason. And that brings us back to my reply.
“Can” doesn’t equal “should,” and this is all the more true in specialty beers. When it comes to adding fruit to beer, we would be wasting a huge range of excellent and interesting flavors if we didn’t canvass the countryside (or at least the produce section) for great flavor additions. I’m simply arguing that we should start with the why.