10 Best Fruity Beers For Late Summer Sipping

Wachusett Blueberry
Wachusett Brewing
Westminster, Mass.

There are brewers who'll argue that their beer is closer to the blueberry source and others who'll use a teaspoon of frozen blueberries to perform parlor tricks in your pint glass, but none of their blueberry ales are as consistently light and refreshing on a hot day as Wachusett's. The blueberry flavor isn't super sweet or overstated and its malty finish makes it easy to have more than one in a sitting. Its relatively low 4.5% ABV won't punish drinkers for reaching for another.

Pomegranate Wheat Ale
Moylan's Brewery and Restaurant
Novato, Calif.

Brendan Moylan's been brewing since 1995 and built his reputation in Novato by making enjoyable, flavorful brews that fit in quite well with his California neighbors. The Pomegranate Wheat that Moylan brought to the Oregon Brewers Festival last month strays from that template a bit by taking a mild, lightly hopped wheat beer and brewing it with Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice. The result is a tangy 5% ABV dream of a beer that's slightly more flavorful than Moylan's standard boysenberry wheat brew while far more fizzy and light than straight pomegranate juice. It's a fun little experiment that's an excellent fit for a stiflingly hot summer.

Raspberry Crush
10 Barrel Brewery
Bend, Ore.

The Belgian fruit beers don't hold much back in flavor or in punch. This offering from 10 Barrel strays from that formula and puts the puckeringly tart raspberry upfront while keeping the beer's boozy bite down to 5.2% ABV. With almost no hop presence to throw off the taste and just the right combination of the wheat and bacteria Belgians love so well, the Raspberry Crush is as close to a pure fruit beer as a brew this mild can get.