For a brewery focused on Belgian styles, Artisan sure cover some ground. Perhaps it’s helpful to have a few hundred years of brewing and beer culture to draw from, and then bend as required – looking at you red witbier, but more on that later. If nothing else, it makes for a very entertaining tour.
Beginning with Bonafide Wit, a State Buildings exclusive collab, the Denmark brewers go full Fantome on a classic Belgian wit with native peach, otherwise known as quandong, and a blend of mountain pepper leaf and redback ginger botanicals. The result features bubblegum hints, light peach, herbal texture with woody base notes, subtle white pepper and a saline edge on a very moreish, white bready base. Though standalone delicious, food pairings from the State Buildings kitchens are likely to draw more out of each sip.
St Ruby returns perfectly timed for shortened daylight hours, yet with precious little rainfall on the west coast. The Belgian amber’s caramel malt base is flecked with darker notes, carrying just enough dried and dark fruit character to offer interest, but St Ruby really wants to be drunk, carefree, amongst falling leaves.
The opposite could be said for Unforbidden ’23, for “Autumn Red Witbier with Fig” barely captures what’s actually in the can. Instead, consider a complex amber sour that’s had a years conditioning: almost a lighter-bodied, less intense Liefmans’ Goudenband. As such, prune and fig compote dominates with wet leather tones weaving throughout. Caramels service the amber notion as subtle orange amaro notes and white balsamic character layer on intricacy.
And why stop there? Why not troll a local beer identity’s fruit allergy. Debuting in 2018 as draught only release, Walrus K!ller is a loving jibe at the Beer Walrus, AKA Amos Polglaze, a long-time supporter who told Artisan’s Brian Fitzgerald that he was going to drink every single Artisan beer at an event; for context, the brewery normally would arrive with around 30 different brews for any event. Making sure this would never happen, Brian improvised a pineapple variation to a guava sour hours before opening, knowing this was his Achilles heel, or perhaps in Amos’ case, flipper.
To this day, the highly allergic Amos has never enjoyed the now pineapple and passionfruit session sour that bears the warning: “Please don’t feed the Walrus”.
Guy Southern
Published April 24, 2024 2024-04-24 00:00:00
