Best Fruit Beer in the Nation

Ohio Brewery May Have the Best Fruit Beer in the Nation

Let's start with full disclosure: Fruit beers are generally near the bottom on my favorites list. 

Then I tasted a few fruit beers of Cincinnati's Urban Artifact and immediately felt compelled to vault them near the top.

Urban Artifact's fruit beers are full of fruit — not fruit flavoring. They're well-balanced, not overly sweet with just the right amount of sourness. Texture geeks, though, should be forewarned: Some of the Ohio brewery’s beers make you wonder whether you are drinking a fruity thick shake. Just get past this and enjoy the taste.

I'm not the only booster. 

"The fruit beers are next level," says Talia Shapiro, a certified cicerone and a content manager for the online craft beer store Tavour. "We hear the word 'smoothie' thrown around a lot in the industry, but Urban Artifact's beers toe the line between beer and straight fruit puree."

Craft breweries rarely fit the same mold, and Urban Artifact, which opened in 2015, doesn't buck that trend. It is based at a former Roman Catholic Church, offers live music nightly during non-covid-19 times and operates a streaming radio station, Radio Artifact, broadcasting 24 hours every day. 

The brewery also operates a "pizza kitchen" with a wood-fired oven from Italy, but beer, of course, remains the main focus. The specialty is tart and wild ales, particularly balanced, heavily fruited ales.

"We are not a traditional beer team," says Bret Kollmann Baker, the co-owner of Urban Artifact. "We only have two brewers on staff who were brewers before working here. We have a chef, a sommelier and a handful of brewers from non-production backgrounds. This varied brewer background has allowed us to create a team that isn't stuck in brewing tradition and doing things a certain way."

Urban Artifact uses only whole fruits in its beers — no flavorings, extracts or concentrates, Baker says. 

"There are plenty of brewers out there who make blueberry-flavored beers that are yellow in color and can be smelled across the bar," he says. "They aren't blueberry beers but rather blueberry-flavored beers. That is not what we do. Flavoring can be one note, aromatically heavy, and leave no room for depth and complexity of flavor."

All fruit in Urban Artifact beers is sourced directly from growers. 

"The beer is unpasteurized to preserve flavor, and the fruit is minimally processed to remove seeds," Baker says. “Skins, pulp and juice remain. Our berries come from the Pacific Northwest, our cherries from Michigan, our blueberries from Maine, our guava from South Africa. We spent the first five years of our brewery finding and cultivating supplier relationships, and it has paid off in the true flavor of each fruit."

Tavour's Shapiro loves Urban Artifact's fruity Squeezebox.

"The brewers add three pounds of strawberries per gallon — triple the amount used in typical fruit beers," Shapiro say. "It’s juicy and bright with a slight tartness from the berries and a thick mouthfeel."

Most importantly, Baker says, is Urban Artifact's focus on fermentation. 

"All our beers are co-fermented with the fruit through a three-fermentation monthlong process," he says. "This is far longer than most brewers' beers. Through this process we are able to create flavors in our beers akin to a dry fruit wine and sour beer hybrid, not a common thing in the beer world."

Urban Artifact, which brewed 5,818 barrels of beer last year, also produces many uncommon or extreme beers. They include Spicy Pickle, Extra Spicy Pickle, Arugula & Endive Salad and Bread & Butter. Bread & Butter is ale with cucumbers, sea salt, dill, coriander, mustard seed, celery seed, turmeric, black peppercorns, clove and red chili pepper. 

Urban Artifact's aims to "treat beer development working backwards," Baker says. 

"We come up with a flavor concept, a meal, a certain dish or flavor combo we like, or an experience we want to achieve, and work backwards to create a recipe to achieve those goals," he says. "That creation approach with our love for food spawned a line of epicurean beers that are all food-inspired. We’ve made beers with mushrooms, garlic, onions, asparagus, kale, pickles, oyster shells, nuts, spices and a litany of exotic ingredients."

Urban Artifact's best-selling beer is Keypunch, a key lime gose. 

"It is a beautiful blend of fresh key limes with the wheaty backbone of a gose and a hint of sea salt to balance it out," says Scotty Hunter, the brewery's other co-owner. "That balance makes it crisp and refreshing and incredibly sessionable at 4.3% ABV."

Urban Artifact and other Ohio beer makers are often overlooked in discussions about the nation's top craft breweries.

"People tend to either look to the coasts or to Denver, Colorado," Baker says. "But the beers that Ohio is putting out are world-class and truly spectacular. Our current hypothesis is that Ohioans are too busy drinking everything produced in this state for much of the hype to reach beyond our borders."

By Gary Stoller

Original Article