SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK
The perfectly named ARTISANAL BREW WORKS crafts a wide range of proprietary beers and pub cuisine at its spacious beige cement-fronted North Plaza mall space in Saratoga Springs. Opened 2016, the ‘mod’ prairie-styled, metal-furnished, glass-fronted bistro welcomes patrons to the main space thru a brown metal-awninged entrance.
A marble-topped eight-seat bar in the back of the green tavern services the barny community-tabled, yellow-walled dining room off to the left. A beautiful hop-designed barrel-crossed chandelier hangs from the ceiling while a covered side terrace provides more metal seating.
Former homebrewer Colin Quinn started at Olde Saratoga Brewing, then partnered with fellow Saratoga high school teacher, Kurt Borchardt, to begin Artisanal’s decade-long journey. Originally well known nationally for having created Warheads Extreme Sour candy ales and seltzers plus nifty Belgian-styled ales, the dynamic duo crave experimentation.
Burgers, pizza and salads were available on my April 2026 trip (alongside local wines, spirits and cocktails).
Easygoing golden bohemian pilsner, Hip Czech, sprayed Saaz-hopped herbal lemon zest upon popcorn-buttered cracked barley and bread crusted biscuity oats.
Another simple pleasure, casual dry-hopped Italian-styled pilsner, Intermezzo, matched raw-grained barnyard oats to floor-malted grains as its spritzy lemon pep gained minor floral herbage.
Perfectly centrist dry light lager, Artisanalager, let lemony orange fizz tickle pasty pale malts and mild hop astringency. Dryer variant, Artisanalager with Lime, was a limey offshoot for Mexican beer lovers.
Award-winning golden tripel, Trappist At The Track, utilized house Belgian yeast to guide its banana bubblegum sugaring, candied pineapple sway, light rum spicing, white-peppered coriander whim and slight butterscotch saucing over cereal grained pilsner malts.
St. Patrick’s Day ’26 Irish Red Ale, Rattlin’ Bog, snuck dewy peat into red and orange fruit spicing over tobacco-roasted amber grain toasting.
Flagship New England IPA, Saratoga Squeeze, sprayed lemon zest onto orange-peeled grapefruit bittering and peachy pineapple-guava-tangerine tanginess, leaving light pine hop resin upon contractive spicy pale malt sweetness.
Sharp West Coast IPA, Derailleur, spread floral-perfumed pine lacquer across lemony grapefruit bittering and sweet orange peel tanginess in an Amarillo-Cascade-Simcoe-hopped setting contrasted by less assertive caramel malting.
As for the dark ales, English-styled brown ale, BB Brown, plied light roast coffee and sweet chocolate to toasted rye graining while scattering Macadamia, almond and butternut snips across the dry mocha plain.
Milk-sugared coffee set up smooth oatmeal stout, Total Darkness, placing cocoa powdered tartness alongside oats-charred molasses sap.
Fudgy chocolate and Madagascar vanilla saturated the caramel coffee creaming of lactic milk stout, Multiple Infinities Vanilla Mocha, a decadent cacao-nibbed cold brew coffee alternative with espresso-laced cola nuttiness and black cherry tartness.
The soft-toned nitro Multiple Infinites version brought dewy earthen weediness to dark chocolate and medium roast coffee conflux, upping the dark-roast hop char.
As for the rich Irish Cream extract variant of Multiple Infinities, its cocoa nibs, vanilla and coffee adjuncts promoted milk chocolatey sweetness, picking up fudged Brownie and Neapolitan cookie illusions over oats-flaked mocha malting.