Brewery – Urban Artifact
Beer – Operation Plowshare
Style – Midwest Fruit Tart Ale
ABV – 7.7%
PH – 3.3

Operation Plowshare was the general term for refocusing the efforts of nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes.  We turned this sour bomb beer into a delicous jelly doughnut flavored ale.  This Midwest Fruit Tart is brewed with 2,600 lbs of blackberries and 60g of vanilla beans per 30bbl batch.

There’s no mistaking when you pick up a can of Operation Plowshare that this beer’s inspiration is a Blackberry doughnut.  The artwork features a cartoon doughnut with sprinkles… much like something you’d see in the hand of your favorite Simpsons character.

When the beer was first released in the fall of 2016, this city still didn’t know what they were in for with the sour program at Urban Artifact.  This beer, though, alongside The Gadget gave everyone a peek behind the curtain to what the brewery had planned for their line of Midwest Fruit Tart ales… and no ones seems to have looked back since.

When the beer was first canned in November of 2017, it flew off the shelves, much like all of their Midwest Fruit Tart Ales seem to be doing lately… and the beer was followed up in mid November during their Thanksgiving bottle release with a series of variants.

Variant Releases

  • Coffee and a Doughnut – (2017)
  • Black Walnut Cake – (2017)
  • Blackberry Praline – (2017,2019)
  • Blackberry Gin – (2017)
  • Blackberry Milkshake – (2017,2019)
  • Blackberry Lemonade – (2019)
  • PB & Blackberry Jam – (2019)

My Thoughts On Urban Artifact Operation Plowshare

The beer is a deep purple color, with a really thin pink-purple head.  It’s beautiful in the glass, almost the color of ink.

The aromas are berries, and some floral notes, sweet smelling if that’s possible.

The flavor is a fruity burst of flavor, lots of berries and a sweet, smooth vanilla note that comes across as icing.  It’s all packed into a full bodied beer, but the flavor doesn’t hang for too long, it punches and runs, punches and runs.  This beer is fantastic… it nails the theme that they were shooting for, and is an extremely welcome addition to their line of Midwest Fruit Tart Ales.

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