Yes, I know—Dante only discovered nine circles of hell. That’s because the heathens at Amoretti had yet to practice their foul dark arts. What, you may ask, is their horrible crime? People have been befouling beer with innocent fruit for quite a while. That is, sadly, most true. And have no fear, the Tenth Circle has plenty of room for the likes of the miscreants at Corona and Blue Moon. Don’t be fooled, though, what Amoretti is doing takes the sin of fruiting the beer to whole new level—they want to industrialize it!
Somehow—and this is a complaint I’ll certainly address—the keepers of the GABF allowed Amoretti to set up a booth of their vile wares to temp and seduce unwary beer drinkers. Right there—in the middle of the Meet the Brewer section, no less—20 some odd evil poisons threatened—what? Oh—fruit extracts. Did you hear that? Fruit extracts! The horror…
Knowing I had to do my part to stave off this potential apocalypse, I mustered up all my courage and cautiously approached. A very helpful and cheerful young woman offered to answer all my questions. I fear she had been possessed by the demon of fruited beer. Being nothing if not fair-minded and impartial (ahem), I bravely challenged her to convince me that I needed to fruit my beer. Her sales pitch almost unmanned me, but I somehow persevered.
Amoretti, it turns out, makes Craft Purees so you can customize the flavor or your beer to your own personal preference (to be fair, they also try to foist this curse on to wine drinkers, too; don’t fruit the wine is in the offing…). It is literally designed “for people who don’t really like beer” according to the marketing rep. Breweries and taprooms can keep these in stock so the non-beer enthusiasts in the crowd (read: women) can have something they like. Never mind the insult to the taste of women beer drinkers. The insult to the intelligence of all their customers is staggering. If you don’t like beer, doesn’t drinking something else make the most sense? Surely this must be the work of the devil to be so bold in its deceit.
Nonetheless, like Sir Galahad braving the peril at Castle Anthrax, I steeled myself and pressed onward. I challenged her to fruit my beer! Now, you might expect Amoretti to at least do us the courtesy of recommending which vile potion matches best with which style of beer. Nope. You simply choose what you like. The off-the-cuff nature of this whole enterprise is another affront to taste.
Faced with the unholy array of demonic elixirs, I opted for…passion fruit. I don’t know—it seemed as harmless as anything else and—hopefully—at least less sweet than some. My own personal Circe squirted a very small dose of the puree into a plastic cup (1 pump treats an entire pint) and stirred it in to my beer—surprisingly without any chants of double, double, toil and trouble…
The taste, as it turns out, was worse than I expected. The beer flavor was mostly gone, but enough of the hops shone through (this was a dry-hopped pale ale—another affront to nature, but that’s a tale for another time) to make each mouthful a truly miserable mishmash of bitter passion fruit.
Somehow I resisted the urge to smash the table and its satanic tributes to bad taste and stagger off to the nearest dump bucket. Fortunately, Surly Brewing was close at hand, and their Furious IPA restored order to both my palate and my senses. The experience scarred me, though. This cannot be allowed. We must stand together against this evil scourge of fruit purees. We must stand now before it’s too late!