Homebrew competition: Fruits & Vegetables (ended)

//update: The competition has ended and we’ve written a recap that can be found here. Please look forward to our future competitions and our monthly meetings.

For our next homebrew competition we get creative with greens! You have full creative freedom, as long as your beer uses fruit or vegetables (or both). As is common for our creative challenges that is the only limitation that you will receive.

Fruit beer have been pretty controversioal and really has no continuous lineage in the brewing histories. The use of fruits in Belgian traditional sours is thought to be less than 100 years old. Though some evidence was found that the earliest beer might have used fruits.

Apart from Belgian brewers carrying the torch – a lot of modern breweries dabble with fruits. Vegetables though? That’s a whole new frontier. If you want to study up on ingredients, what they do to the flavour, how much to add, when to add and what to combine it with I recommend reading Brewing Eclectic IPA. This book has some excellent takes on the less common additions.

A litte guidance for those wanting to participate: a good beer with fruit or vegetables should have noticeable character imparted by the fruit or vegetable. The aroma and flavour can range from delicate to aggressive, which should be guided by the underlying beer style. Another important characteristic is that the original beer style should be enhanced by the addition and not completely overshadowed. When brewing and judging we will be looking at the beer that best achieves a pleasing balance between components of the original style and the fruit or vegetable.

The beer shouldn’t have the slightest impression of a fruit or vegetal juice type drink, in artificiality or strength. Hops (both bitterness and flavour), alcohol, by-products of fermentation, and malt should remain within the realms of the base style and balance with the fruit or vegetable character.

The homebrew competition will take place at Foeders on Tuesday 14 January 2020

Our FOEBAR competition rules apply and can be found here.

Our advice is to start brewing early, split batches or make several brews. Experiment is key! Need to help getting started? have questions? or just want to show off your progress? Join our message board / mailing list!