Have we moved beyond fruit infused IPAs?

^^^ That would be 2.5 cases this year. The Mrs tends to be a hop head as well. About 5 years ago I just stopped buying bud light for her. Went to sam lager, harpoon ipa, then SN torpedo, Then bigfoot and beyond. Hosted an 18 yr vertical of SN bigfoot I had in January. All good except the 2006. Not a bad track record there.

 

Yup, that means "BIG"!

I am in a similar boat but my wife is a BIGGER hop head than me. I homebrew a minimum of 5 batches of IPA/DIPA a year and boy, those beers go fast!! I have an Equinox IPA fermenting right now.

Cheers!

 

But no fruit in it?

 

I have yet to brew with fruit in an IPA.

But I have brewed with fruit in other beer styles:

• Grapefruit Tripel
• Cranberry Belgian Pale Ale

Any suggestion on which fruit I should use in homebrewing an IPA?

I am very confident you will not say Grapefruit!

Cheers!

P.S. I have thought about using some spruce tips while brewing IPAs since I am a fan of piney type flavors but you need to use fresh growth from certain type of spruce tree(s) so a little tricky.

 

Oh, another idea! Have you ever brewed an IPA with some new/fresh spruce tips? Maybe a seasonal IPA for you next variety box (e.g., 4-way IPA box)?

Maybe you could think of an old time historical name for this beer since spruce was used by Colonial American brewers.

Cheers!

 

Food evolves, beer evolves. It's all about creativity and craft. There's no shame in producing things that taste good and that lots of people enjoy. I happen to like IPA's that are brewed with fruit / fruit juices. Citrus and tropical fruit flavors are natural complements to those of many different types of hops. (For that matter, so are sage and rosemary.) I salute the brewers who have recognized this and who have applied their knowledge of the craft to produce world-class examples of fruited / herbed beers, and I don't believe for a second that "we've" moved beyond them.

 

The two fruited beers that I can honestly say that I enjoy are Lost Coast Tangerine Wheat and Stiegl Radler. Stiegl Radler is especially well done. Once on the golf course at about 95 degrees we had gotten to the last of the beers in the cooler. There were about 6 Lost Coast Tangerine Wheats floating around. They made "real" men very happy indeed! I learned a nice real life lesson playing a game! I like the fruit tones imparted by many modern hops, but adding juice for my tastes is a waste of a possibly good IPA.

 

We actually have done that, albeit on the small scale. It would be tough to get enough spruce tips to do a 10,000Bbl back of variety pack beer, though.

 

It's my pleasure, really. The ultimate irony here is that most of our brewers brewers, myself included, are total beer geeks. I love a kolsch and an ESB and a doppelbock...unfiltered kellerbier is probably my favorite beer style of all time. The draught-only beers we make for our taprooms and the Torpedo Room in Berkeley are probably the truest representations of what we (who are making the beer) like to drink. Occasionally, one of the non-IPA styles we love to drink does super-well in those venues and we get to take a chance in the larger scale (typically in a variety pack setting) and that's where those recipes are dreamed up.

 

Yeah, I didn't think of the amount issue (I often times think like a homebrewer )

Is there any good sources of spruce essence available in commercial scale quantities?

Cheers!

@LeRose

 

SN Tropical is a great take on the "style". I hope it becomes a year round offering.

 

There is a kind of beer poured over spruce, some farmhouse Finnish beer? Sahti maybe?

 

Sahti is similar, below is the BA description:

“Sahti

Description:

Said to be one of the only primitive beers to survive in Western Europe, Sahti is a farmhouse ale with roots in Finland. First brewed by peasants in the 1500s, mashing (steeping of grains) went down in wooden barrels, and then that mash would be scooped into a hand-carved wooden trough (a kuurna) with a bed of juniper twigs that acted as a filter. The bung at the bottom of the kuurna would be pulled to allow the sweet wort (liquid infusion from the mash) to pass through the twig filter, followed by wort recirculation and a hot water sparge (rinsing of the grains), all of which created a juniper infusion of sorts.”

Dogfish Head made a beer of this sort (Sah’tea) but I never drank it.

Cheers

 

I do like SN... I'm a particular fan of their Octoberfest collabs, Celebration, and Kellerweis, and I usually give most new seasonals a shot. There's just a lot of competition out there these days though... I just mean I'll try to make an extra purchase of SN.

 

Not something we would normally look for (and I don't work with the formulations at that stage of the game much) but I would bet the major flavor houses probably have something but it might be artificial or "natural-like" - whatever that other weird classification is nowadays. If they don't, I'm thinking it would be a perfect ingredient to make by supercritical carbon dioxide extraction.

Edited to add: Well I shoulda Googled first. There's small quantities from home brew shops and on Bell's website - made by Rainbow Flavors (not one of our suppliers), and apparently there is "spruce essence" used pretty widely in cosmetics. Apparently it also potentially maybe possibly has some prebiotic potential, so the herbal med folks are looking at it.

https://bellsbeer.com/store/product...2-fl-oz.html?gclid=CIuexqmn7dICFQowaQodlfgC0A

 

That is a fact, Jack!

Randy, as per our previous thread discussions it sounds like you have better luck with your local retailers but more often than not when I go into my local beer retailers the Sierra Nevada beers are sitting on the shelf (or floor) and many months old. In the past year (or so) the only Sierra Nevada beers I have purchased have been seasonals (e.g., Celebration 12-packs) since those beers have not been many months old.

Cheers!

P.S. I have not seen a non-old Kellerweis in years.

 

Larry,

As a homebrewer in the past I have considered buying this: http://www.eckraus.com/2-oz-spruce-essence.html

I have not used this product so I can't vouch for how 'natural' the flavor is.

Needless to say but the quantity of this product is not tenable for a large(r) commercial brew.

Cheers!

 

That describes me to a T yet I'm willing to cheer from the sidelines because,

Your marketing data is correct, people like these beers. I like people and this offers my non craft guests an IPA alternative they will enjoy.

 

Good point. I drank a ton of BlackBeary Wheat (as well as Pete's Wicked Strawberry Blonde and Wachusetts Blueberry) back in the day. The Long Trail and Wachusetts ones are still around years later, though haven't had either in ages.

 

How about a truckload of those pine tree air fresheners people hang on their car rearview mirrors and soak them in the beer?

Long Trail recently released a mix case of IPAs with the Evergreen Blaze IPA... I know they aren't a Sierra Nevada size brewery, but they aren't tiny either, so, I assume their spruce flavor source was rather large... probably... ( @LeRose )

But, personally, beers with spruce have no appeal to me. I've tried a few of them over the years, and while I appreciate the historical aspect of using spruce to supplement or substitute for hops, I'll just say I'm glad I live in a modern world.