Brewing Hoppy Fruit Beers
I arrived home to find a re-taped cardboard box with a Florida return address. I used to occasionally trade beer so I could sample breweries that didn’t distribute to the Mid-Atlantic. I ripped off the bubble wrapping paper to reveal an assortment of weird and wonderful beers from Cigar City Brewing Co. (Tampa, Florida). Among the strong and intensely flavored ales, the one that stood out was an extra, a hand-bottle of Peach Jai Alai IPA. As the heavy snow began to drift beneath street lamps I settled in to drink this gem, marveling at the balance of citrusy-hops and fruity-fruit. Clearly the mantra of “no aroma hops in fruit beer” wasn’t absolute!
Cigar City wasn’t the first brewery to augment a hoppy beer with fruit; Dogfish Head Brewery (Milton, Delaware) has been brewing Aprihop with apricots and Amarillo® since 2004. I’m sure there were others even earlier, but Aprihop was the first to reach me. However, Cigar City’s masterful combination of juicy peach and fresh hoppiness was pure inspiration on that frozen evening: A ray of Florida sun shining on my tongue!
Base Beer
There are two distinct approaches to brewing hoppy fruit beers. You can blast an IPA with fruit, think Ballast Point Brewing Company (San Diego, California) Grapefruit Sculpin, or dry hop a fruited sour beer, like Grimm Artisanal Ales (Brooklyn, New York) Rainbow Dome. I have brewed delicious beers with both methods; two of my favorites have been an American pale ale with Cascade, Chinook, and grapefruit zest and a pale sour with Amarillo®, Citra®, and apricot.
For IPAs, I recommend steering clear of dank, resinous, 100+ IBU bitter-bombs. Fruit shines with a base beer that is softer and juicier (citrus zest can be an exception). An IBU-to-original gravity ratio of 1:1 is my ceiling (e.g., 60 IBUs for a 1.060 beer). The emerging New England IPA style is a perfect match: Allowing some fermentation in contact with the dry hops brings out fruitier flavors reducing the “green” herbaceous notes, and a higher chloride-than-sulfate water profile helps produce a pillowy mouthfeel.
For sours showcasing hops and fruit, I wouldn’t bother to age the beer for a year or longer. Why develop subtle notes of leather and damp oak only to obscure them with an onslaught of fruit and hops? A quick Lactobacillus souring followed by either a hardy ale yeast or 100% Brettanomyces fermentation will serve just as well in less time. If you find yourself in possession of an aged sour that isn’t aromatically exciting, try light touches of both fruit and dry hops.
If you don’t want either sour or bitter, typical fruit beer bases like American wheat and blonde can serve as appealing canvases for hop and fruit aromatics. Assertive yeast and malt are more challenging, but I could imagine a snappy tripel with tropical fruit and Southern Hemisphere hops, or an intriguing stout with citrus zest and piney hops.
In any case, before you start building with adjuncts make sure you have a solid foundation of malt, hops, yeast, and process!
Pairing Hops and Fruit
There are two systematic approaches to hop-fruit combination: Match and mix. To match, select fruit that imparts similar aromatics to the hop (e.g., tropical fruit with tropical-fruity hops). This synergistic approach will result in a more interesting flavor than loading fruit alone into a bland base beer, and a more specific fruit flavor than relying on hops that merely evoke.
To mix, pick a fruit to replace one of the hops in your favorite aroma combo. For example take, Amarillo® and Simcoe®, try apricot and Simcoe® or Amarillo® and mango. The goal here is to achieve a similar complement to the hops alone, but with fruit adding a livelier aroma.
Using the chart at the bottom of this page for guidance, consider pairing a hop with the fruit to its right for a match, or with the other fruit in the same row for a mix. This is only a starting point, if you prefer pairing Citra® with Galaxy® rather than MosaicTM, try mixing Citra® with passion fruit instead of blueberry!
There are fruits that don’t have a hop-equivalent, rather their flavors are created by a combination of ingredients and process. For example, 100% Brettanomyces IPAs can taste like pineapple juice. I especially get this effect from Modern Times Neverwhere, which is hopped with Citra®, Centennial, and Chinook and is now fermented with B. claussenii and B. bruxellensis var. Drie (a homebrew recipe uploaded by Modern Times can be found at: http://beersmithrecipes.com/viewrecipe/267175/neverwhere). Would adding actual pineapple be too much? Maybe, but I’d love to taste it!
The fruits that I find difficult to pair with hops are those that are jammy (e.g., raspberries, blackberries), or dried (e.g., raisins, dates). These fruits can enhance a variety of beers, but their aromatics don’t blend with hops as effortlessly as they do with malt or yeast. I’m sure one of you will email me about your favorite homebrew, a prune-infused Golding-hopped strong bitter, but I can’t imagine it!
Chili peppers are technically fruit. While I prefer the earthy-raisiny flavor of dried peppers like ancho and guajillo in stouts and porters, pale/hoppy beers call for bright-grassy fresh peppers. Just go easy on the Scoville units! For snappy pepper flavor without overwhelming heat, select milder chilies and remove the seeds and waxy ribs that hold the fiery capsaicin before adding the flesh to the boil or fermenter.
Timing and Process
My preference for hoppy fruit beers is to time each addition so that both hop and fruit aromas are freshest when I’m drinking the beer. While you can add fruit at the end of the boil, I have achieved brighter flavors by waiting to add fruit to the fermenter as primary fermentation wanes. This technique is easiest in a vessel with a wide opening, like a bucket.
The processing of the fruit is up to you. I find whole fruit (sliced if you wouldn’t eat it in a single bite) frozen and then defrosted to be the easiest to work with. While puree is easy to add, it is almost impossible to separate from the beer effectively without filtration. Puree doesn’t compact, so it takes up the bottom six inches (15 cm) of the fermenter, along with 20% of the beer! Juice is a better option, but only if extracted from a single type of fruit. Dose juice into a glass of hoppy beer for a flavor preview.
After a couple weeks when the yeast is almost finished with the fruit, dry hop using your standard approach. If you want to transfer the beer, do so into a carbon dioxide-purged vessel that already contains the hops. However, I prefer to toss the hops in while the beer is still on the fruit.
Fruit flavorings and extracts can be effective in combination with hops, although I prefer concentrates if I don’t want to dilute the beer. Highly processed ingredients can be one-note, but that might work with a backup band.
Many breweries add real fruit, and then provide an aromatic boost of citrus oil or natural flavorings before packaging. That original Cigar City Peach Jai Alai was flavored with peach tea. Teas are crafted to be water-soluble, so steeping in hot water and adding to taste at packaging is effective and controllable.
Dry hopping raises the pH of the beer slightly. While assertive sour and bitter are not a winning combination, a small amount of winemaker’s acid blend or lactic acid may improve the fruity-hoppy balance — especially with zest or flavorings. While your palate should be the arbiter, a final pH of 4.2–4.4 is usually what works for my fruit-IPAs. For sour beers, this adjustment is generally unnecessary.
Brewers are quickly running out of new ingredients to dump into their beer for anything but shock value. I hope more brewers focus on pairing ingredients in unique ways. Many recently released hop varieties have distinctly fruity flavors, so why not pair them with some actual fruit!
Hop & Fruit pairings
Consider pairing a hop with the fruit to its right for a match.
Amarillo® & Apricot
Calypso & Apple
Cascade & Grapefruit
Citra® & Papaya
Galaxy® & Passion Fruit
Huell Melon & Cantaloupe
Lemondrop & Lemon
