Today, I want to introduce you to the person doing the messiest job at our brewery: Kevin O'Malley, the brewer behind most of what pours out of the taproom on a Wednesday afternoon.
Kevin has been at Urban Artifact since 2021. At UA, we're all fruit people. Not sure how Kevin became the one in charge of Freshies, though.
The Work. When a pallet of fruit shows up at the brewery, Kevin inspects every container before a single pound hits a tank. Fresh Fruit Tarts are a different project, though. Instead of the large-batch purees we use in our bigger brews, Freshies get fresh, whole fruit processed by hand. If it's heading into a Freshie for the taproom, that's when the peeling, dicing, slicing, smashing, blending, mushing, and straining starts. By the end of the day his shirt looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. Processing fruit by hand is monotonous, laborious, and a big part of what makes a Freshie actually taste like fruit.
The Experiments. Kevin runs the strangest test kitchen in Cincinnati. This April, he decided to put together a liquified April Fools' joke and ended up with two Freshies: a Gazpacho (tomato, bell peppers, cucumber, garlic) and a Spinach and Beet with cranberries and orange. Neither was a unanimous success. Weird stuff rarely is. Both went over great with the small group of adventurous drinkers who showed up for them that Wednesday. But everything we do here is a learning process, too. A lot of the reason we intentionally push the boundaries is to learn more about fruit, how it interacts and blends, and what sort of adjuncts work best.
The Hit. Recently, at the request of a few customers, Kevin made two Marshmallow Freshies. Both were incredible.
The Wishlist. The beer Kevin has been trying to make for years is based on his mother's pretzel salad: strawberry Jell-O, pretzels, whipped topping. A holiday dessert from his childhood. He says he hasn't done it justice yet. The other one on his list is a Yubari King Melon fresh fruit tart. Yubari King Melons run around $10,000 per melon. Slightly out of the weekly fruit budget.
The Honest Part. The thing Kevin will tell you about brewing with fruit is that the prettiest fruit can make an awful beer. Some of his best Freshies went into the tank looking like swamp water. A few of his favorite ideas on paper came out pouring like wet cement. Harvests move year to year. The window for fruit freshness is shorter than for hops and malt. When the fruit is ready, he's ready.
If you want to taste what he's working on, Fresh Fruit Tart Wednesday is the weekly proof. Every Wednesday, 4 to 10 pm in our taproom.
Real Fruit. No Shortcuts.
