Avista preview: Fruit beers/sours

This is the third in a series of posts exploring the beer lineup for this weekend’s Inland Northwest Craft Beer Festival.

Whether you like your fruit beers sweet or tart (or both), you’ll find plenty to choose from at this weekend’s Inland Northwest Craft Beer Festival.

Among the selections scheduled for Friday and Saturday at Avista Stadium:

– Hopped Up has both a watermelon cream ale and a pina colada-style Wicked Wahini version containing coconut and pineapple.

– No-Li’s Cucumber Honey Switch Hitter is an infused version of the brewery’s regular golden ale.

– Ten Pin uses both wheat and rye along with freshly squeezed pineapple in its Mosaic-hopped Groove Pineapple Wheat.

– Badass Backyard’s sweet-tart raspberry Daring Diva Razz Wheat is on the stronger side for the category at 6.5 percent ABV.

– Coeur d’Alene’s Daft Badger brings a Huckleberry Hound brewed with wild North Idaho berries.

– Big Barn’s Peach Wit is made with farm-fresh fruit, while Laht Neppur’s Flaming Peach is an amber ale brewed with a piquant combination of peach juice, ginger, cinnamon, jalapenos and cayenne pepper.

– Also on the spicy side is the Steam Plant’s Jalapeno Ale, with peppers pureed by the brewery/restaurant’s kitchen (and yes, they are technically a fruit).

– Other fruity ambers include Laht Neppur’s Strawberry Cream, with strawberry juice and milk sugar, and English Setter’s Belton Orange.

– Orlison’s Orangelicious Golden Ale combines lactose (milk sugar), vanilla and fresh orange zest to mimic a frozen Creamsicle.

– The Steam Plant’s Blood Orange is a pale ale brewed with Citra hops and infused with blood orange puree for a semisweet, lightly bitter flavor.

– From the barrel, Fish has a black lager aged in oak and “soured” with tart cherries (tapping at 1 p.m. Saturday), while River City is bringing both its wine barrel-aged huckleberry ale and a firkin of fruit-conditioned, dry-hopped Girlfriend Golden.

– Turning to true sours, Boundary Bay’s Citraweisse is a kettle-soured Berliner weisse with Citra hops and club wheat from Skagit Valley Malting.

– Also in the Berliner style are Fremont’s Cucumber Sour Weisse, Schooner Exact’s Jawja Peach and Paradise Creek’s popular Huckleberry Pucker.

– The crisp Sprinkles from Everybody’s Brewing is a sour red brewed with hibiscus flowers.

– Salt-spiked goses are coming from Twelve String, with its passionfruit version, and Young Buck with a Mimosa Gose using Cara Cara orange juice and zest.

– Young Buck also is bringing a barrel-aged sour saison, while Perry Street is pouring its tart saison aged on ripe blackberries.

– Waddell’s has its Black Berry Sour with hand-processed local berries and the Steam Plant its Wild Strawberry Sour (mixing the two became common practice at the recent Spokane Brewers Festival).

– Iron Goat is bringing both its Blackberry Apricot Sour and a Cherry Sour that will be served in the special tent for Washington Beer Lovers (WABL) members.