Fruit Monday

Since we won’t be together for this year’s International Fruit Day (July 1st), I hereby declare today Fruit Monday. So, to each and everyone of you, I heartily wish you a Happy Fruit Monday!

Brewing with fruit is fairly commonplace in today’s craft beer industry, with most brewers having at least one fruit beer in their arsenal. Aside from the rigid stipulation that it be a beer either brewed or flavored with fruit, fruit juices, or fruit extracts, there are no other rules whatsoever – the sky’s the limit, baby! The result is an endless array of diverse beers, from a tart and exceedingly funky Cantillon Framboise, to a sugar-soaked Lindemans Pêche “lambic”, to a Dark Horse Raspberry Ale or even a Bell’s Cherry Stout.

BEER: Sweetwater Blue

To be honest, the bulk of fruit beers available on the market today are brewed with light, refreshing, summertime drinking in mind. Plus, the ladies love’m! Even my friend Natalie admits fruit beers to being “a fun beer for ladies.” Sweetwater Blue follows the standard, unspoken template for such fruit beers:

• pale golden-yellow color
• lots of fruit and faint malt on the nose
• mild, lightly fruity flavor
• light, spritzy body that borders on being watery

With Blue, what you’ll get is mostly the essence of blueberries (through what I fully suspect to be use of an artificial extract), and not a dominating fruit flavor. Fruit aside, the beer is a light-bodied, well balanced blonde ale. You’ll taste the sweet pale maltiness, and each sip brings a slight hop bite and ends with a crisp finish. Sweetwater Blue is readily available year-round, and is a sure sight at many local outdoor events and concerts.

Thankfully, some brewers deflty utilize fruit to impart exciting, new complexities to their beers, for those times when you want a little some more.

BEER: New Glarus Belgian Red

Brewed with Montmorency Cherries (purportedly a pound of whole cherries per bottle), locally grown wheat, and Hallertau hops, the beer is then left to mature in 12 ft. tall oak tanks. Okay, great, let’s get to it. Murky ruby-hue capped by a flamingo-pink head appearance and harbors an aroma reeking of unabashed cherrynicity, there’s nothing fake or artificial about this beer. With a taste reminiscient of fruit leather, the flavor is certainly aggressive in it’s sheer determination to cram that pound of cherries down your damn throat. It deftly walks the fine line between sweet and tart and carries with it a jolt of juicy, cheek-pinching acidity. The malted wheat and hops definitely take a backseat to the deep, strong cherry fruitiness. God, I hope you like cherries. The high level of carbonation in the beer does well to bring a much-needed levity to what otherwise would be a thick, syrupy body. You do like cherries, right? Overall, a deliciously unique beverage, though I suspect some may be left angrily shouting the catchphrase “Where’s the Beer?”

To Fruit Monday!! To Jolt Country!!

Now if only I could find a fruit beer brewed with sweet, juicy nectarines…