Creativity and innovation in craft beer are pushing change at an incredibly rapid pace, but that change isn’t always visible in our day-to-day brewing and drinking. We polled some industry pros for thoughts on whether or not these recent trends have staying power.
Fruit Beer
Background: Fruit beer once meant oversweetened lambic or berries thrown into a wheat beer, but this trend hit critical mass when fruit started appearing in hoppy beers. Now we’re seeing grapefruit, pineapple, habanero peppers, watermelon, mango, strawberry, and more in commercially released IPAs, and there’s no sign of letting up.
Expert Opinion: We give this trend another 18–24 months before it implodes under the weight of ten thousand extra retail SKUs. While there is, and always will be, a place for fruit in certain beer styles, the concept of pushing nonstop novelty to sell craft beer will ultimately produce consumer fatigue.