Fruit purees have several benefits over whole fruit, but they have drawbacks. Learn the pros and cons of brewing with fruit puree.

Whether you’re making a beer, sparkling water, soda, or RTD cocktail, adding fruit flavors can create an entirely new taste experience. Fruit flavors can complement the natural esters in a variety of beer styles, they can appeal to consumers looking for innovative flavors, and they can be helpful masking tools when other ingredients have less appealing flavors.

Fruit purees are a common ingredient for adding fruit flavor to beverages. These are a creamy paste or liquid made from whole fruit that can be added to beverages to infuse them with the flavor of that fruit. So, are fruit purees right for your beverage? 

Ultimately, that will depend on your budget, facility, the beverage you intend to brew, and how much work you’re willing to do. Want help making that decision? Read on for the benefits and drawbacks of brewing with fruit purees.

Benefits of Brewing with Fruit Purees

First, being able to tell people that your beverage is made with real fruit is a big selling point for the growing number of consumers shopping for clean labels. These health-conscious consumers prefer products with labels containing only recognizable, “natural” ingredients and none of the ingredients they interpret as “unhealthy.” 

This is somewhat subjective, but both whole fruit and fruit purees fall into this category, and brewers can add appealing claims like “real fruit” to their labels. Compared to whole fruit, however, fruit purees offer several very important benefits. 

Whole fruit is perishable, requires intensive labor and processing, and it’s not always consistent. Imagine your most popular beverage uses real passion fruit. First, someone has to grow all of that fruit. Even during the best growing seasons, there can be variations in acidity, color, aroma, flavor, texture, etc. Now, add the instability of weather, pests, seasonal availability, and demand. That’s just the start.

All of that fruit must then be transported, processed, and tanks must be thoroughly cleaned afterward. Oh, and did we mention that passionfruit can only grow in a few places in the U.S.? For manufacturers that have to import passionfruit, it adds an entirely new level of complexity, not to mention a significantly larger carbon footprint. 

Fruit purees cut out many of the previously mentioned issues. Your fruit puree supplier will still need to source real fruit and manage all the hurdles that come with it, but for brewers, there’s less labor and less processing than using whole fruit. A top-tier fruit puree supplier will have strict standards for viscosity, color, acidity, etc., so there’s a greater likelihood of consistency year after year, but it’s not always perfect. 

Plus, aseptic fruit purees are safer than whole fruit. These purees have been cooked and commercially sterilized. Similar to canning food, perishable fruits undergo a processing technique that eliminates harmful germs. The puree is then placed in sterilized packaging to be shipped to breweries. This extends their shelf life, and they don’t require refrigeration for shipping or before opening. 

Compared to whole fruit, brewing with fruit purees offers some very appealing benefits for brewers. That doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t significant drawbacks. 

Drawbacks of Brewing with Fruit Puree

When it comes to formulating a beverage with particular fruit flavors, aseptic fruit purees aren’t always the best option. The process of creating aseptic fruit purees can “mute” the flavor since many of the aromatic compounds are altered or destroyed by heat and pressure. This can give them a jam-like quality that isn’t always desirable. And that’s just the start.

While there is significant overlap between health-conscious consumers and clean label consumers, they can still have different preferences. Fruit purees still add calories and sugar. Sure, seeing “real fruit” on an ingredient list has its perks, but the extra calories and sugar may deter consumers who prefer low-calorie and/or sugar-free beverages.

Fruit purees also add texture and haze, which, depending on the drink, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, for sparkling water beverages or simply for drinks that aren’t meant to have additional mouthfeel, this can be a tricky formulation issue to resolve. 

Additionally, some fruits, whether as whole fruit or fruit puree, come with unique brewing challenges. Watermelon and strawberries, for example, have delicate flavors that don’t always have a significant impact. Whole passionfruit and passionfruit purees can be pretty acidic and will naturally impact the pH of a beverage. Sometimes, using blended fruit purees can help balance out these characteristics, but it’s the kind of thing that takes a lot of trial and error. Plus, aseptic fruit purees ain’t cheap.

Let’s just say that the puree dosing game gets complicated fast. Fruit is usually added during the fermentation process so yeast can eat up the extra sugar. However, this process creates carbon dioxide, which has the potential to strip volatile aromatic compounds. Too much CO2, and you’ll cancel out the flavor you’re trying to add. Adding puree too early butchers the aromatics, and adding it too late runs the risk of extra sugar and possible refermentation. See what we mean? It’s complicated. 

Plus, since fruit purees come from real fruit, they’re still subject to price fluctuations from climate change, market conditions, etc. And while they’re generally more consistent than whole fruit, that doesn’t mean they’re immune to flavor and aroma inconsistencies.  

Oh, and once you’re done brewing with fruit purees… you’re not done. Fruit purees may have greater ease of use than whole fruit, but they still gunk up tanks and lines. That means hours of cleaning labor to rid them of fruit build-up. 

Brew Beverages With BIG Fruit Flavor

For manufacturers wanting to create fruit-flavored beverages, terpene brewing solutions like our Skyfarm Series provide all the desired fruit flavors and aromas without the drawbacks of whole fruit, fruit purees, or traditional fruit extracts.

Fruit extracts are designed to be shelf-stable, many are TTB-approved, provide consistent flavor, and require less storage than whole fruit and purees. That means greater scalability and ease of use, and they’re less expensive. They’re also more sustainable than real fruit, and since extracts can multiply fruity flavor and aroma, much less is needed to infuse drinks with concentrated flavor.

The Skyfarm Series takes these advantages to the next level. As an alternative to fruit purees, concentrates, and essences, Skyfarm has been built from the ground up using isolated terpenes. We extract, purify, and rebuild them into the brightest flavor expression possible. This precise control allows us to create repeatable natural flavors and aromas without the added sugar or calories. 

Each Skyfarm blend is TTB-approved, shelf-stable, and the flavor is ALWAYS consistent. But these blends go way, way further in terms of flavor, aroma, and handling.

• Strong, recognizable fruit flavors and aromas
• More potent than other fruit flavors and/or extracts
• No added sugars
• No added calories
• No additional haze or texture
• 100% utilization rate and ZERO yield loss
• Water-based emulsion
• No workflow modifications
• No risk of refermentation
• Use “Natural Flavors” on your ingredient list

Plus, for manufacturers looking to appeal to clean label and/or health-conscious consumers, Skyfarm still fits the bill. First, since you can simply add “natural flavors” to your ingredient list, you’re not adding anything that might deter clean-label shoppers. Second, regardless of the actual sugar and/or calorie content of a beverage, fruit-flavored drinks often appeal to health-conscious consumers. 

Beverages with certain flavors can cue associations with “healthy” ingredients (citrus and Vitamin C, melons and hydration, etc.). This association can occur with beverages that use whole fruit, fruit purees, and fruit extracts. 

If that wasn’t enough, Skyfarm requires zero tank cleanup. These water-soluble blends don’t leave a residue, so you can say goodbye to scrubbing fruit gunk from your tanks.

Abstrax Hops | Add Bold Fruit Flavors and Aromas with Skyfarm

At Abstrax Hops, we provide novel solutions for beverage manufacturers looking to streamline, innovate, and gain a competitive edge. With our knowledge, technology, and extensive resources, we’ve crafted our Skyfarm Series to make it easier than ever to add the most aromatic fruit flavor top notes to beverages.

We also recognize that creating a successful, consumer-friendly product sometimes means formulating custom flavors that have never been seen before. Want something high-intensity that fuses several tropical flavors? Want to tweak a traditional fruit flavor and create something entirely new?