The 15 Best Fruit Beers To Sip This Summer

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One sip and you’ll taste three kinds of unique hops (Citra, Mosaic, and Chinook, for you brew nerds keeping track) and a quick smack of tart-sweet blood orange. It’s the kind of beer you’d bring to the beach but mask in a koozie just so that nobody undeserving pilfers one without your blessing.

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Trade date-night wine for this pick. It pours a deep, sultry red. “The cranberries, apples, and cherries blend with each other to offer slightly tart, fruity characteristics with just the right amount of oak,” says Alex Gutierrez, cice­rone and brand manager at J. Wakefield Brewery in Miami. Try it with dark chocolate. And roses.

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It’s a gose (pronounced GO-suh), which is a traditional German style of beer brewed with salt. Prickly-pear cactus, grapefruit, and a little coriander help balance the salinity. The low-end 4.5 percent alcohol by volume makes this a real easy-drinking beer. Grab one after mowing the lawn. You’ve earned it, dammit.

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Unlike Sierra Nevada’s Otra Vez, with its citrus notes, this gose takes on a pop of cherry. The PA-based brewery sources the juice from the venerated King Orchards of Michigan. The result? A light-bodied, not syrupy 4.7 percent ABV tart ale that tastes great with cheese or a grilled pork chop. It’s the right kind of tart.

The Denver-based brewery releases a different fruit-forward beer in this line every few seasons. The finished beers spend time in a secondary fermentation inside an oak cask, picking up wine-like notes, and are further accentuated by the use of whole fruit. This is a sipper, best reserved for a front porch after a long day of work.

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Back in 2016, this Delaware-based brewery debuted SeaQuench Ale, a wildly successful easy-drinking beer made with black limes and sea salt. SeaQuench clocked in at a surprisingly low 4.9% ABV considering its bright, bold tartness. Slightly Mighty outdoes SeaQuench, hitting a mere 4.0% ABV yet still running high on flavor. Credit monk fruit, which Dogfish works into the brew. The fruit lends the light beer a pleasant, refreshing sweetness.

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This 4.8% ABV gose tastes like a fruit basket punched you in the tongue. There’s guava. There’s passion fruit. There’s even a little salt to heighten the natural sweetness of the whole shebang. This is a great post-cookout dessert beer. While the fruit sugars shine through, it doesn’t leave you with the saccharine aftertaste that plagues mass-market shandies.

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Mmmmmmm pie beer. Cherries, blueberries, and raspberries all mash together in this fruited ale, which pairs well with lamb and pork. The ale pours a deep, lush ruby red that looks especially impressive when held up to the light.

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Out in L.A. fresh fruit carts hawk juicy seasonal produce. Pluck a mango from one of those stands and you’ll begin to understand what inspired the tropical aroma and taste of this 4.0% fruited wheat. Light, straightforward, and powerfully refreshing—this your new yardwork reward beer.

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If you love Blue Moon with a slice of fresh orange, you may switch your allegiance after a sip of this beer. This Massachusetts brewery tweaks a traditional German-style radler with blood oranges, which have a special tart-sweetness that enhances the refreshing factor. It’s a great picnic beer, served alongside a simple sandwich.

Many fruit-forward beers are missing one big flavor: hops. For IPA lovers who want a little something different, there's this beer, which tempers its hoppiness with (get this) peach and apricot fruit purees. It's smooth and sweet and refreshing and awesome.

There are fruit beers—and then there are beers with a hint of fruit. This wheat beer is a perfect example of the latter. At its core, Hell or High Watermelon is a really delicious 4.9% wheat beer. Then, coming in at the end, there's a quick bite of watermelon. Nothing crazy, which makes it a great introduction if you've never knocked back a fruit beer, period.

This beer, which is dry and puckered with lemon and lime and empowered with a salt, elevates everything to a level of ahhhhhhhhh now that’s the ticket. At 4% ABV, you could technically go back to working in the yard after you’re finished with a can. Or you could have another one.

Holy whoa is there a maelstrom of flavors going on in this beer. Hardywood, a Virginia-based brewery, stuffs this 6% ABV sour with dragonfruit, pineapple, blueberries, passionfruit, and something called "butterfly pea flowers," which we are pretty sure they just made up but tastes amazing regardless.