Fruit Addition Popularity

I'm relatively new to brewing with around 15 batches under my belt. One thing I have noticed on these forums is that many people seem to want to put fruit in their beer. Maybe I'm obtuse, but I don't get the popularity. I haven't really had a "fruit" beer that really sang to me. Am I just in the dark? If there is some fruit beer that any of you have found amazing, could you point me in that direction?

The beers I've added fruit to have been mostly out of curiosity - one of the great things about brewing, to me, is that I can try all sorts of things that aren't commercially available. I've got a pale ale fermenting right now that I'm going to rack onto mango and habanero in a week. To my knowledge, the only commercially available mango habanero beer in the US is Cigar City's mango habanero IPA, which I don't have access to.

Fruit beers are usually either very good or very bad. I think it's easy to have either an artificial flavor (like when using flavoring extracts) or an overpowering flavor (so that it's hard to remember that it's beer).

I recently made a strawberry wheat that has a noticeable strawberry flavor, but it's still a refreshing beer. I'm thrilled that I struck this balance.

A good commercial example is Sweetwater's Blue, which you definitely get some good, but balanced, blueberry flavor.

With that said, I rarely drink fruit beers. It's almost always for SWMBO and her friends, but sometimes they really do hit the spot.

I wasn't and still am not a huge fruit beer fan but I did have the Apricot Hefe from Wasatch Brewing Co. And completely enjoyed it. You gotta find something that's balanced and enjoyable.

I just polished off my last bottle of the Northern brewer Paragon Apricot ale pro kit I brewed in April. Yum.

I'm not to much for fruit beers either. But every month or two I crave a Sam Adams cherry wheat.

I brew with fruit occasionally because sometimes I get bored of the more traditional flavors and want something light and fruity. The wife sometimes drinks them too.

I have brewed a couple 6bbl batches of fruit beer this summer, first was a Blackberry Hefe and recently a Strawberry Blonde. Honestly the Blonde I like a lot flavorwise (and I am not a fan of fruit beers), the BB Hefe was meh IMO.

I will say this though, brewing these at that scale is a huge hassle and if I never brew another of these fruit beers I will be happy...but I know that I will.