What is the difference between kriek and ordinary fruit beer?

Krieken make a kriek: sour cherries that go into the beer and give it colour, acidity and stone-fruit aroma.

A fruit beer can be made with any fruit, from raspberry and peach to apple and elderberry. As soon as it concerns cherries, the beer is called kriek. The word therefore says something about the type of fruit, not about the brewing method.

What happens to it afterwards varies widely, from a sweetened fruit beer to a dry lambic blend.

Oude Kriek is a European protected designation with fixed requirements, whereas the word kriek on its own only says that there are cherries in the beer.

For Oude Kriek: 10 to 25 percent cherries, cherry juice or concentrated cherry juice by weight of the end product. The base is a lambic blend averaging at least one year, of which the oldest part has spent at least a year on wood. At least six months of refermentation in the bottle follows.

Protection runs through the Traditional Speciality Guaranteed scheme under Regulation (EU) 1151/2012.

The base determines the flavour: a kriek on lambic is dry and sour, a kriek on an ordinary beer with added fruit juice is usually sweet.

Lambic ferments spontaneously, with yeasts and bacteria from the surroundings of the Pajottenland and the Zenne valley. That fermentation makes the beer dry and sour, and the cherries add acidity and colour on top. A fruit beer on a blond base or on witbier starts out sweeter and often stays that way.

On the label you recognise it by words such as lambic, oude kriek or spontaneous fermentation.

In the style guidelines, fruit beer is not a flavour but a category: a base beer with fruit in it, which must remain recognisable as beer.

The BJCP states that the fruit should be noticeable but in balance with the beer, and that the whole must not taste like an artificial product. There are no fixed figures for alcohol and bitterness, because those follow the base beer.

For fruit lambic there is a range: 5 to 7 percent alcohol and 0 to 10 IBU.

Start with a sweetened kriek if you are used to sweet, and with an oude kriek if you like dry and sour.

There is a big distance between those two. A sweetened kriek is accessible and fruity; an old kriek takes getting used to and is more reminiscent of a dry wine with cherries. Anyone who wants to sit in between ends up with a kriek on a lambic base that is lightly sweetened.

Serve kriek well chilled in a tulip glass, so that the aroma is released.