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Fruited Beers

Discover the style of the month: Fruited Beers

Adventure seekers, take note: There’s never been a better time to savour the flavours, thanks to craft brewers who have fully embraced fruited beers. Adding fruit to beer was once considered a faux pas, but the fine art of fruiting beer has lately been rediscovered and championed as a fresh way to make more complex, flavour-forward and lively beers. 

Ready to explore?
Although it might seem like a fresh invention, fruited beer is really more of a comeback kid. A lot of ancient beer would have been flavoured with added fruit—a practice that was literally outlawed in Germany about 500 years ago when it was ruled that beer could only be made from barley, water and hops. Anything with fruit was either a cider or a wine. Thankfully, about 100 years ago, Belgian brewers brought back the forbidden fruit and started blurring the lines when they started adding sour cherries to lambic beer. Fast-forward to today, which enjoys a craft beer scene driven by a “rules were made to be broken” sensibility. Between that maverick mentality and our unprecedented access to both tropical fruits and local seasonal bounty, a new golden age of fruited beer has finally arrived. 

You may taste
Since brewers can add any fruit to literally any style of beer, the flavour profiles run the full gamut from light and refreshing pineapple to robust cherry. Overall, though, fruited beers tend to be juicy, tart and a touch sweeter than traditional grain beers. And, as a general rule, these are flavour-forward beers.

Sip them with
One of the best things about fruited sours is that they’re exceptionally food-friendly. With fresh flavours like watermelon, apricot and raspberry, they’re practically born to be paired with things like slow-cooked smoky ribs, decadent burgers or seafood tacos served up with a side of fried corn. Darker fruited stouts, porters and brown ales work brilliantly with all things cheese, from fondue to a simple cheese board.

Serving tips
It's traditional to serve fruited lambics in a tall beer flute, which is also really fun to drink from. After that, it's a little complicated, because you should take cues from the base beer style as opposed to the fruit. So if it's a fruited stout, it should still be in a pint glass. If it's a fruited dark harvest ale, it would probably do well in a snifter. A fruited hazy IPA or sour would be best in a tulip glass. Since fruited beers are all about the flavour, the complex notes open up better when served a little warmer than you would serve a lager, so it's a good idea to take it out of the refrigerator and let it warm up for ten to fifteen minutes.  


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Beer FAQs

Your Top Questions Answered

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What is craft beer?

Craft beer is made by small-scale breweries, often independently owned, that practise traditional artisanal brewing techniques to create authentic and uniquely flavourful beers. These craft brewers may focus on either classic or lesser-known styles of traditional beer, or create innovative new modern brews. 

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How many calories are in a beer?

A standard 340-millilitre or 12-ounce beer that has five per cent alcohol by volume has about 150 calories. Styles of beer that contain more alcohol, such as IPAs, have more calories — up to 170. Light beers, which have less alcohol, have around 100 calories. While darker beers sometimes have a higher alcohol content and therefore more calories, that’s not always the case: consider Guinness Draught, a dark stout, which has just over four per cent alcohol by volume and 125 calories per 12 ounces. 

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How many beers are in a keg?

Most standard North American kegs hold 58.7 litres: in terms of standard 340-millilitre or 12-ounce bottles or cans, that’s 165 servings; if you’re counting by 16-ounce pints, its 124 servings. European beers often come in 50-litre kegs, yielding 140 340-millilitre glasses or 105 pints. Smaller 30-litre kegs (sometimes called “pony kegs”) give 82 standard beers or 62 pints. Mini-kegs (Heineken, for example) hold five litres: that’s about 10 pints or 14 glasses. 

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How is beer made?

All beer is made with four key ingredients: barley (or other grains), water, hops and yeast. First, barley is malted (meaning the grains are sprouted and then kiln-dried) to get ready for brewing. The malt is then mashed, or cooked with warm water, to create a sugary liquid called wort. The wort is boiled with flavouring hops, and then in the final step, it’s fermented with yeast, which creates the alcohol and finished beer.

There are many different styles and regional traditions of brewing, but to simplify, they basically fall into two categories: for ale, the beer is stored at room temperature while the yeast feeds on the sugar in the wort and produces CO2 and alcohol as by-products; for lager, fermentation is the same, but it happens at cooler temperatures so the process takes a little longer

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How long does beer last?

Check for an expiry or best-before date on bottles and cans: “best” is best when consumed fresh. Bottles and cans stored at room temperature are safe to drink for at least four months after purchase and up to eight months when it’s stored in the refrigerator or a cool place. Draft or craft beer stored in a glass bottle keeps for two or three days in the refrigerator when tightly capped. And remember, keep beer away from light: it can develop a “skunky” flavour from a chemical reaction to UV light, which is why it’s usually packaged in cans or dark glass bottles.

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What is beer made of?

Most beer is made from just barley, water, hops and yeast. That’s all! Each ingredient contributes to the beer’s flavour, as do the specifics of the production process. Some brewers may use other grains, such as corn, rye, rice, wheat or even oats, to produce different types of beer. Some styles even incorporate additional flavouring ingredients, including fruits and herbs.