479: Building Better Fruit and Spice Character in Your Beer

479: Building Better Fruit and Spice Character in Your Beer

From Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast by Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine

May 12, 2026 · 1h 22m · Episode 479

About this episode

This episode explores best practices for enhancing fruit and spice character in craft beer, featuring insights from industry experts.

From the very earliest days of what we now know as craft beer, flavor has been a defining factor and a guiding mantra for brewers casting themselves against the monolith of light macro lager that dominated American brewing for so many decades. If you track it back, fruits and spices have been ingredients in beer for as long as beer has been made, so this modern era of craft brewing is more rediscovery than revolution. But there’s no denying that familiar and enticing, or even exotic and intriguing, flavors have been an incredible draw in bringing people into the fold who might never have considered themselves beer drinkers. Of course, the ways we can add those fruit and spice flavors to beer have evolved significantly from the earliest days of craft brewing, and brewers now have tools to target and dial in fruit and spice notes with incredible precision—something that is increasingly important as brewers explore low-ABV and nonalcoholic beers and beverages. In this episode, produced in partnership with Amoretti, we explore best practices for delivering flavor impact that’s noticeable, authentic, seamless, and artful, but that also works to support the bottom line for breweries…

People in this episode

Guests: Michael Lalli, Micah Rush, Nic Bortolin

Topics covered

Keywords

Sponsors

Amoretti

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Krebs Brewing, Prairie Artisan Ales, The Bruery, Offshoot Beer

Places: Krebs, Oklahoma, Placentia, California

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