Pandemic-era supply chains have not been kind to fruit-focused breweries, and Urban Artifact is no exception. The brewery pasteurizes fruit purée in-house rather than purchasing aseptic purée, which gives them more control over the flavor of the fruit and varieties of fruit they can use. “That’s hard to do when you focus on only one style.”
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“Even though they are niche and not everyone loves sours, Urban Artifact is always mentioned as one of the best breweries in Cincinnati,” says Jason Parnes, co-owner of Higher Gravity Crafthaus, a bottle shop and bar across the street from the brewery. So far, drinkers have been enthusiastically along for the ride. … We’re moving toward a refinement stage of what balanced fruit beers taste like and are presented as.” “We are still exploring the boundaries of the niche that we set. Untappd “is usually a very quick measure of how well we managed expectations of the flavor profile,” Hand says. Because Urban Artifact’s success is based on its ability to deliver both exciting and familiar flavors in beer form, the lines of communication need to be clear. “From a marketing perspective, we’ve basically pivoted entirely away from the use of ‘sour’ at all in any of our communications, branding, marketing, and it’s all ‘tart’ now.”įor chief brand officer Scott Hand, feedback tools such as Untappd are a way to gauge whether the brewers’ intent in creating a specific beer translates to the final product. “What we’ve come to learn is that if you say ‘sour,’ people expect a higher intensity level, whereas if you say ‘tart,’ they expect more balance, and people are usually more willing to give it a shot,” Kollman Baker says. Sometimes they describe the perception of a lot of fruit flavor as sour, even if it’s actually adding sweetness to the beer. Drinkers sometimes describe a beer as sweet, when in fact they’re just picking up on the use of vanilla, for instance. Yet reading direct customer feedback has taught the brewery not only what customers rate highly, but also how they describe it.Īcidic beers are still uncharted territory for many drinkers, both in terms of flavor and the language attached to the sensory experience. The Urban Artifact team jokes that Kollman Baker spends an unhealthy amount of time with Untappd reviews. The decision to lead with fruit flavors and tartness was partially informed by sales numbers, partially from taproom feedback, and partially from every brewer’s frenemy: Untappd reviews. So this barrier to entry is a lot lower, which helps.” Peach, Love, and Understanding You’ve got to know what a Munich helles is, and what those words mean, to know what that taste experience is going to be like. “You don’t need to know what a raspberry sour ale is to know what it’s going to taste like. “It’s ease of flavor and understanding,” Kollman Baker says.
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Because the beers are so fruit-forward, they appeal to more people in a way that cocktails, kombuchas, or even juices might. However, somewhat counterintuitively, zeroing in on one beer specialty has expanded Urban Artifact’s customer base to drinkers who wouldn’t otherwise be beer fans. “They are being very strategic with positioning … to where they aren’t dependent only on beer geeks to like their beer.”īecause of this stylistic focus, the Urban Artifact taproom isn’t necessarily the kind of place where the whole neighborhood gathers to watch a baseball game. “That popularity certainly extends beyond just a cult following,” says David Nilsen, a beer writer, observer of the Ohio beer scene, and certified Cicerone who lives near Dayton. Distributed around Ohio, the beer also ships directly to fruit-beer enthusiasts in 10 states, building the brewery’s national reputation. Honing this specialty has propelled the brewery to more than quadrupling its production between 20, finishing last year at 10,200 barrels. Today, Urban Artifact is one of the country’s best-known producers of heavily fruited, kettle-soured beers-and better yet, they’re the kind that don’t explode on shelves because the fruit ferments out fully. Instead, the brewery doubled down on what drinkers were excited about: fruit. We spent a long time perfecting using Brett in our brewery, and now we don’t do any of it.” “People didn’t like Brett beers,” says Bret Kollmann Baker, cofounder and COO of Urban Artifact. In fact, those beers were hardly connecting with drinkers at all.
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Not long after opening in 2015, the brewery’s leadership learned that the long-fermented, barrel- aged, mixed-culture beers on which they had based their business just weren’t selling the way they’d hoped. Cincinnati’s Urban Artifact learned the art of the pivot years before the rest of the world was forced to do it.