Fruit Beers

[edenman]

Brewed for springtime, this is obviously the perfect beer for the Cherry Blossom Festival. Why no local brewers thought of something like this earlier is beyond me.

Fruit beers are typically very expensive to produce (and you generally can't charge that much more for them), which is why they're made so infrequently.

I wonder what (if any) effect there would be from adding the blossoms themselves to a brew. Might have to do a little homebrew experiment with that, maybe in the fermenter: "dry blossoming" as opposed to "dry hopping"...

[ManekiNeko]

Fruit beers are typically very expensive to produce (and you generally can't charge that much more for them), which is why they're made so infrequently.

I wonder what (if any) effect there would be from adding the blossoms themselves to a brew. Might have to do a little homebrew experiment with that, maybe in the fermenter: "dry blossoming" as opposed to "dry hopping"...

I dunno, I see fruit beers at brewpubs on a fairly regular basis. Unfortunately, they are normally of the "insert fruit flavor into crappy bland American wheat beer" stripe and are not anything worth getting excited about. The local exception to this was the Prickly Pear beer from John Harvards (RIP). Maybe a loss leader or something.

Cherry blossoms aren't all that fragrant, so I doubt there'd be much of a flavor addition.

I forgot to mention what Hanami means earlier, though I figured DC denizens might have had a good guess.

[Ilaine]

Fruit beers are typically very expensive to produce (and you generally can't charge that much more for them), which is why they're made so infrequently.

I wonder what (if any) effect there would be from adding the blossoms themselves to a brew. Might have to do a little homebrew experiment with that, maybe in the fermenter: "dry blossoming" as opposed to "dry hopping"...

I'd guess that you'd want to use the blossoms from fruiting cherry trees, rather than ornamental cherries which are the focus of the Cherry Blossom festival.

It's too late in the year to try this but I wouldn't have given you mine regardless. The blossoms are almost gone now but it's plain to see that they were pollinated because the bases are swelling with hundreds of little cherries.

Which is why (I think) people don't use flowers for wine or beer unless the fruit isn't worth eating, see, e.g., dandelions. There's a lot more solid mass to a fruit than a flower.

Now, as to the question of using flowers in beer - - it is my perception that aromatic blossoms have been used in beer for millenia. It is also my perception that fruiting cherry blossoms, while pretty, aren't all that aromatic. Plum blossoms are aromatic. Apple blossoms are aromatic. Apples, which are related to roses, are so aromatic that you'll stop in your tracks as you walk by them.