Fruit beer gets around. The Belgians invented it, French poet Baudelaire hated it and, in its latest incarnation, Texans love it.
The beverage originated 800 years ago, when a Benedictine monk named Arnold perfected a method of making lambic, a harsh beer that combines regional yeast, bacteria, wheat and barley hops. By the Middle Ages, farmers around Brussels were selling their cherry and raspberry crops to local brew- eries, which fermented the fruits to create a variation on the basic lambic beer.
Until recently, fruit lambic remained a specialty confined for the most part to Belgium, Paris and a few specialty outlets in the United States. But in the last few years, fruit beer has experienced a surge of popularity among American beer drinkers.
According to Jean-Xavier Guinard’s book “Lambic” (Brewers Publications, $11.99) traditional Belgian fruit lambic was concocted by adding crushed whole fruit into a brew of unmalted wheat and barley malt. A sequence of yeasts and bacteria unique to the region is added over several months, producing a beer characterized by its high lactic-acid content. Hence the sour flavor.
The beers, especially popular as a summer treat in Belgium, come in five basic varieties: kriek, made from cherries; framboise (raspberry); cassis (black currant); peche (peach); and muscat (grape).
Because of its sour taste, traditional Belgian fruit lambic is not for everyone. Baudelaire, for example, wrote a diatribe against lambic, comparing the pride of Belgian brewing techniques to sewage water. On the other hand, great Flemish artists including Bruegel, Rubens and Jan Steen depicted the joys of imbibing lambic beer in many of their paintings.
Until recently, fruit beer was not commonly available in the United States. But in the last couple of years, several fruit beers more palatable to American tastes have emerged. There’s malt beverage mixed with apple juice, a seasonal cranberry beer produced by Samuel Adams, and apricot ale intended for consumption with Thai food and chutney-flavored dishes.
The domestic beer most similar to authentic Belgian fruit lambic is pro- duced by Celis Brewery. Owned by Belgian brewers who emigrated from Brussels to Austin,. Texas, in 1991, the company introduced Celis Raspberry Beer in October 1994.
Vice president Peter Camps says the fruit beer was a natural development. “Being Belgian brewers, it was a question that came up frequently from cus- tomers: ‘When do you guys release a fruit beer?’ So we worked for over a year experimenting with different fruits, had some blind tastings, and the raspberry was the favorite.”
Camps readily acknowledges that the traditional lambic brewing process was modified for the American market.
“To produce that type of lambic would be very time-consuming, and quite sour for the American public.” Raspberry beer has quickly become a mainstay of Celis’ product line, accounting for about 20 percent of sales. Camps says even the famously cantankerous Texas beer drinkers have taken to the raspberry Celis.
Brew pubs have gotten into the act as well. For example, Taylor Brewing Co. 200 E. 5th Ave. in Naperville, found itself with a hit on its hands last September when it debuted a home-grown raspberry beer.
“It’s become our most popular beer,” says owner Glenn Taylor. Fans “run the full gamut from people who come in and say ‘I’m not a beer drinker,’ the sit down with a raspberry and say, ‘This is delicious,’ to the construction people who work across the street and come over every day and drink it.”
Dow Scoggins, whose Friends Brewing Co. in Atlanta makes a fruit beer called Georgia Peach, can attest to the keen interest in fruit-flavored beers.
“We’d made up a test batch of a peach fruit beer four years ago for the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, and it went over real well,” he says, “but we didn’t have the money to make it a full line.
“Then last year we happened to mention it as a total lark to a distributor, and he immediately said, ‘When can I order it?’ It’s now our No. 1 seller.”
