August
3
2007

The Session: Fruit Beer

Lindemans Peche

A celebration!
As late Summer fruit dances
In joyous rapture

Dogfish Head Aprihop

This fruit rides a hog,
has tattoos, carries a knife.
Ain’t no sissy beer.

fruit beer
Pay no attention to the inappropriate glassware. I’m just a simple man.

Written by Captain Hops.

the Session Fruit Beer

References: It’s Beer Blogging Day, a.k.a. The Session. This month’s session is hosted by Beer, Beats & Bites and the theme is Fruit Beer. All are welcome to participate. Simply publish a post on your blog about a beer brewed with fruit and notify Greg Clow by email or through the comments on his site.

I have to admit I wasn’t terribly excited about this month’s theme. There were a lot of bad fruit beers made during the nineties and I had completely written them off. However, in my full embrace of the spirit of the Session, I decided to give them another chance. Frankly, I am glad I did.

I wanted to go with something old world and something new world. My pick for the old was Peach Lambic (Peche) by Lindemans from Belgium. Just understanding the craft and time that goes into making this stuff shows that it is a very different beast than the fruit extract based stuff I remember from a decade ago. Wow! This tasted more like champagne than beer, but unlike champagne which always tastes a little empty and aloof to me, this was very complex and simply riveting to drink. The peach was front and center, but like a good soloist in an orchestra, it didn’t drown out the rest of the instruments. I should have poured this in a champagne flute and I should have waited for dessert to drink it, but it really was good and I would highly recommend it for any type of celebration.

The new world brew I tried was Dogfish Head’s Aprihop. I love what the guys at Dogfish Head do generally and I was intrigued by their description of this beer as a “serious IPA brewed with real apricots”. I wouldn’t call this beer sweet by any stretch and the sweetness it did have it held mostly in the nose. There was very little sweetness, if any, in the tongue. It was a lot like drinking a regular beer. In fact it was a fine companion to the steak I ate for dinner, holding its own quite well. As the beer warmed and settled it developed a tartness from the apricots reminding me they were there and giving the beer a sort of dried fruit leather taste and feel. Aprihop is not a wimpy fruity beer, far from it. However, if I am going to drink an IPA, I think I prefer it sans fruit.

Here’s the round up of all postings for this Session.

Technorati Tags: beer, haiku, fruit beer, Session
Thing of the Day: Wild Brews: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition

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3 Comments on “The Session: Fruit Beer”

  • #1  Danny

    Just discovered your site–this is pretty fun stuff! The Aprihop one is especially good.

    You might be interested in a collaborative art project called Haiku for You: http://haikuforyou.org

  • #2  Captain Hops

    Thanks for stopping by, Danny. I added a link to your site in my sidebar. Good luck on your haiku quest.

  • #3  The Session #6: Round-Up « Beer, Beats & Bites

    [...] Hops at Beer Haiku Daily gives a couple of his patented 5-7-5 tributes to Lindemans PĂȘche and Dogfish Head [...]

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