BeerBlog Part 4: Fruli
This one was suggested by 2 people (thanks to Heather and Chelsea for it!) so I had to get it rather early on.
I have tried various fruit beer over the years: Garrison, Pumphouse, Cannery Blackberry Porter (amazing), Cannery Apricot (good not not as amazing as the blackberry), St Ambroise Apricot, Pyramid Apricot, Swans Berry, GIB Raspberry, and now Fruli.
Fruit beer, or at least the ones I’ve had, tend to go in several directions. They can be an incredible balance of beer and fruit flavor, they can be fruity drinks that kind of taste like they might have beer in them, or they can be utter, total, shit. Most of the ones I’ve listed up there are a great balance of beer/fruit. Garrison and Cannery are the better ones. Swans was good, but it was a tad on the sweet side. Granville Island should just stop making their raspberry all together. That shit is offensive to beer drinkers. Think Corona-style, but almost neon pink and with the most offensively grossly sweet taste that left a rather odd film in my mouth.
So when I poured the Fruli, I was glad that it at least looked like a wheat beer. It was pink, yes, but it was at least cloudy. Huzzah! It could be good!
The aroma was incredible. Sweet, but not overpoweringly so and it still had that underlying “yes, this is definitely a beer” scent that GIB lacks. It WAS sweet. Sweet to the point where one is enough, but I still liked it very much. I don’t think I’ll be getting it on a regular basis, but I’ll definitely be picking it up as a bit of a treat in the future. This was the first strawberry beer I’ve had and I must say, it’s set a bar for other strawberry beer out there.
For some reason WordPress isn’t letting the resized picture show up. So sorry about that and blame the website.
Here’s Chloe’s take on it.
I was a bit hesistant going into this beer, as fruit beers can either be tasty and nuanced or sugary dreck (I’m looking at you, Granville Island Raspberry!). If a fruit beer pours almost see-through it’s probably going to suck. Fruli pours a cloudy pink and has just the right amount of carbonation. Its strawberry flavour is front-and-centre without being cloying, though I imagine it would start feeling that way after more than one bottle. It’s definitely not a beer I would drink multiples of in one sitting; by the time I’d finished my small bottle, I’d felt I’d had enough. If that sounds like a harsh criticism, I don’t mean it to be: think of Fruli as the dessert wine of beers.
I wouldn’t quite put Fruli in the league of the absolute best fruit beers I’ve had (Garrison’s Raspberry, Cannery’s Blackberry Porter and St. Ambroise’s Apricot Wheat Ale take that cake) but again, my sweet tooth isn’t very well developed. If I’m going to go for junk food, I’ll take chips over chocolate four times out of five. I love the other fruits beers I listed for their tartness and freshness. I didn’t quite get that with this beer, but considering that strawberry juice generally tends to be a little on the sweet side, I can’t imagine a better strawberry beer than Fruli.
In conclusion: Fruli=good.
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