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Photo: Provided by Urban Artifact
Urban Artifact’s Strawberry Astronaut Food
Northside brewery Urban Artifact is again releasing “the world’s most expensive beer to brew,” in 2024, but this time in a whole new flavor. The freeze-dried fruit tart Astronaut Food will launch into orbit Monday, this time in strawberry.
This is the fourth iteration of Astronaut Food. The brew first hit shelves in 2021 as a blackberry and raspberry iteration, followed by blueberry and blackberry in 2022 and peach in 2023.
The strawberry Astronaut Food, which clocks in at 15% ABV, was crafted with subfreezing-vacuum fruit dehydration technology, using over 1,000 pounds of freeze-dried strawberries — the equivalent of over 9,200 pounds of whole strawberries, or 16 whole strawberries per 8-ounce can. The result is a smooth and velvety texture reminiscent of strawberry wine, says Urban Artifact.
“Enjoy after a nice meal, with a good book, or the next time you get the urge to fire up old episodes of Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos,’” the brewery says.
Urban Artifact said their freeze-dried fruit tarts were born out of natural curiosity.
“We’ve long pushed past traditional boundaries for fruit beers, and continually ask big questions like: ‘How could we possibly put any more fruit into our beers?’ It became a personal challenge for our team to crack this puzzle,” the brewery said in a press release.
The problem lay in not wanting to add so much water content from the fruit that it would dilute the flavor. But because freeze-dried fruit has the water squeezed from it, it would add that fruitiness without liquid. They spent two years in research and development before releasing Astronaut Food.
Astronaut Food, the Strawberry Era, will be available in limited quantities wherever Urban Artifact products are sold. The beer comes in a four-pack for $32.99.
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