Drinking in Boston: Fruity Brews

Fruit beers: people either love them or steer away from them like they were wearing a Yankee’s jersey. We here at Bostonist wondered if there was any middle ground; any beers that both camps would like. So we swallowed our pride, put aside our prejudices, and sacrificed an evening to trying a mixed sixer of fruit beer. Here are the results:

As promised Great Divide’s Wild Raspberry Ale is ruby red. Its taste lives up to its color, with the tartness of the fruit coming through from their use of real black and red raspberries.

Newport Storm Rhode Island Blueberry is one of the best blueberry beers we’ve ever tried. We were told that the beer is flavored with 80% real blueberries as opposed to fruit flavoring, so perhaps this is the reason. When you open the bottle the blueberry smell floods the room, making its golden, not blue, color somewhat disappointing. But the taste isn’t. It’s blueberry in a bottle and the most palatable of all the fruit beers we tried. Though you may feel like the roly-poly blueberry girl of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when you’re done.

Okay, so beets aren’t really fruit, but we thought we’d include them in this list just for the sheer unorthodoxy of Magic Hat’s summer beer, Wacko. Flavored with beet sugar, this beer is bright red and fortunately, does not taste a bit like borscht. Rather it is just a pleasant, albeit bright red, refreshing summer beer.