Fruit Beer

Cheeno · Post by **Cheeno** » Tuesday Nov 07, 2006 11:54 am

At the bottlo the the other day I discovered a beer from Belgium called Floris "Ninkeberry" (I kid you not) which had drawing of some fruit on the label one of which was a passionfruit. It described itself on the back as a fruitbeer based on a wheatbeer.
Naturally I had to give it a go and ripped the top off as soon as I got home. It was quite pale in colour and certainly was fruity but not in a cloying way. It is relatively low alcohol (3.9%) which is probably a good thing because anything over a 22C day could you see you polish off 4 cold ones pretty quick.
It really does taste like tropical fuit juice mixed with beer, which sounds awful but actually works quite well. The reason it tastes like this is because it is made with fruit juices (mango,apricot,peach,passionfruit), water, malt, hops and yeast and something they call "aroma". Does anyone have any recipes for something like this? I did a quick search but found nothing for using juice. Any ideas on how much juice to use? When to add (into the boil? after racking?) All tips greatly appreciated.

NTRabbit · Post by **NTRabbit** » Tuesday Nov 07, 2006 3:07 pm

I believe that to get the most flavour, its recommended that you rack the beer onto the fruit and leave it in secondary for a while.

Best beer to make for it would likely be a very pale ale, perhaps a coopers canadian blonde with an S-33 or T-58 yeast

BierMeister · Post by **BierMeister** » Tuesday Nov 07, 2006 5:13 pm

Germans add fruit juice (particularly banna juice) to some of the German Wheats (the sour ones). I've only heard of adding fruit to the initial boil or in racking, but you could try adding fruit juice to the boil and see how it goes. Let us know how it goes if you do.

derfly · Post by **derfly** » Tuesday Nov 07, 2006 9:21 pm

Yeah, German girls drink Weissbier mit Bananensaft, bloody awful and close to criminal.

A far better proposition is a Radler or Weizen-Radler (shandy made with beer or Weissbier), preferably by the liter for that big thirst.

If adventurous, try a "Diesel" or "Ein Dreckiges" (A dirty one) which is a shandy made with Coke instead of lemonade, again either with beer or Weissbier, which tastes a LOT better than it sounds.