For those closely chronicling the beer offerings on shelves and draft have likely noticed yuzu infused ales and lagers coming on from time to time. The Japanese fruit offers flavors that go beyond the typical and have a bit of specialness behind them.
Fruited beers have been popular for centuries, but as more breweries have entered the industry and a consumer base has grown, there has been a race towards different kinds of fruits to capture drinker’s attention.
Winslow Sawyer, the brewer and founder of Pure Project Brewing in San Diego, California remembers being introduced to yuzu years ago.
“It must have been a culinary setting. I’m really a big fan of Japanese food, so that was my first introduction to it,” he says. “I draw a lot of my inspiration for beer from food and drink and palette sensory experience is always good inspiration with how to translate it into beer.”
He notes that citrus has always been a popular flavor in beers. The brewery uses a lot of oranges each year in its beers, but he is drawn to yuzu not just because it can grow in Southern California, but because it has a “nice acid profile compared to some of the sweeter citruses. And that’s really nice when you don’t want something that’s like lemon or lime, something that’s a little bit more interesting on the palette the classic Sprite flavors.”
Sawyer describes yuzu as being like Japanese lemons. It is featured in ponzu sauce, and he says it’s more closely related to a mandarin orange but is “not as orangey.” He calls it grapefruit with lemon and a little touch mandarin orange with really bright acidity.
Yuzu can be tough to find and it is often more expensive than other fruits on the market. For Sawyer, the brewery has found a local farmer that they have worked with for a few years now and worked to understand the harvest window, which is shorter than other citrus fruits like oranges and grapefruits. But it does have a longer shelf life, than say peaches, so the fruit can hang out in the brewery for a little bit after picking and before processing.
Pure Project uses a crusher, which Sawyer calls a “stainless woodchipper” to process its citrus.
“We put our whole citrus into there and make a puree out of it. I haven’t been able to find anything else in the market – at least organic – that can produce the same flavors,” he says. “It’s just pretty much grinding up whole citrus and putting it in. There is something about having the interaction of having the rind in there, where a lot of your oils are, and then also the juices. It just creates a different profile. I feel like the juice, you get a lot more flavor, and the oils are really what gives you that pop of aroma that people are looking for when they first experience a beer. You get the appearance, and then the aroma.”
After processing the yuzu is added post-fermentation. With most fruits the brewery was adding around a pound per gallon, but with citrus it’s more like a pound or two per barrel, because it has a lot more aroma and flavor than berries or tropical fruit. For the brewery’s Tropical Mist, which uses oranges, they recirculate the finished beer through bright tanks filled with orange puree.
With yuzu, Pure Project brewed a Japanese rice lager “which just made the most sense to us.” They were thinking about their Mexican lager made with lime, and how to riff off the same idea.
“So doing a Japanese lager with yuzu was kind of an analog to the Mexican lager with lime,” he says.
On the culinary aspect, as more Japanese lagers enter the U.S. drinking space, Sawyer says there is an opportunity for craft breweries to embrace flavors that pair well with sushi and Japanese meals.
“I’m interested to see what other how other people are using it,” he says. “Is it just like a juice that people are adding, or are they using whole fruit? It’s definitely a tough one to find, and when you do find it, it’s like 10 times the price of normal citrus. But the flavors are great.”