Bob Malone spent weeks perfecting Great Divide Brewing’s newest beer, the Roadie Grapefruit Radler, but don’t expect to see the veteran brewer drinking it.
“I like beer-flavored beer,” he said.
Made with loads of grapefruit puree, the roadie is a take on a shandy, a beer blended with juice or soda. And the Denver brewery’s concoction is the latest example of how fruit is invading craft beer. The trend is blurring the lines and generating plenty of debate at the bar stools.
Once limited to certain styles, such as wheats and sours, fruit additions are now ubiquitous in the craft beer market, dominating even pale ales and IPAs as the industry strives to capture more consumers’ attention.
The idea of an orange slice on the rim of a glass or a lemon stuffed down the neck of a bottle seems quaint now — and the snide remarks about Bud Light Lime maybe a little insincere.
“There are certain styles that are always going to have (fruit),” said Ross Koenigs, an innovations brewer at New Belgium in Fort Collins. “But we seem to be whipped up into a bit of a frenzy right now.”
Fruit’s role in beer is steeped in history and it is becoming more sophisticated. Two decades ago, raspberry beer became so popular that it received its own category for the Great American Beer Festival.
Brian Faivre, the brewmaster at Deschutes Brewery in Oregon, recalled at a recent Breckenridge beer event how “it was a little gimmicky and overwhelming” at the time. Now, he said, “a lot of brewers are taking it as an opportunity to find … a way to blend all these ingredients and flavors to get that touch of special-ness.”
The most dominant fruit flavors are tropical — oranges, mangoes and papayas — while other popular additions include peaches, strawberries and cherries. Many fruit notes are easy to pull from the luscious modern hops, but the addition of whole fruits, puree and extracts to the brewing process only amplifies the flavor.
Renegade Brewing in Denver recently debuted a grapefruit version of its Endpoint Triple IPA. The beer “is single-hopped with Summit hops, which have a notable grapefruit characteristic to them. So, with the popularity of fruit IPAs, it was a natural choice to add grapefruit to that beer to accentuate the characteristic of the hop,” said brewer Brian O’Connell.
For many brewers, fruit beers are a logical extension of the craft industry’s focus on innovation.
“It’s part of the endless pursuit of new and endless flavors,” Koenigs said.
New Belgium just released its Juicy Watermelon Lime Ale for the summer season, and this year debuted a new version of its Citradelic featuring Persian lime and fresh coriander.
“No one is trying to do really anything interesting with lime,” Koenigs explained of Citradelic Exotic Lime Ale, adding that the brewery wanted to put “a craft flag in the ground on lime.”
The “craft flag” moniker is no accident. Fruit is a ticklish topic after Budweiser mocked craft beer in a 2015 Super Bowl advertisement for “their pumpkin peach ale” — only to later buy more craft breweries.
The mega beer companies are not shy about using fruit but often draw criticism for watering down or masking beer with these flavors. If the craft beer industry is pushing close to that line, Koenigs doesn’t mind.
“We are borrowing a bit from the big brewers as well, and I see nothing wrong with that,” he said.
He sees the fruit beers as a way to recruit new consumers to craft beer, and New Belgium has asked stores to position some of its brews next to the Budweisers of the world.
“I think we are trying to provide a credible path for them to come into craft,” he said of the brewery’s fruit beers. “They are curious, but with all the variety and all of the styles, they don’t quite want to engage on that nerdy craft level. So providing a ladder for them on a very tangible flavor … helps to broaden the tent, so to speak.”
Great Divide’s new Roadie Radler is not the only example of where craft breweries and macro-beer players are seeing overlap. So far, Malone said, consumers are enjoying the new beer.
His personal opinion is that some fruit beers can be “almost an abomination,” but at the same time, he said the experimentation is part of the craft culture.
“I love that people are willing to put anything into any style, it’s so fun,” he said. “It’s never going to work if you don’t try something new.”
