SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK
Inside the Old Saratogian building in downtown Saratoga Springs, impressively designed and family-owned WALT & WHITMAN BREWING COMPANY opened in 2020. A multi-tiered, multi-faceted operation with an exquisite lounge leading to a pristine coffeehouse and spacious brewpub section, its catacomb lower level features a glass-encased brewroom, benches, couches, wood tables and walled pop culture pix. A large caged patio offers further seating.
The main 20-seat slate-topped pub area offers 20 draughts (listed on the wood menu) plus two opposing TV’s and a refrigerator with cans to go. Several community tables fill out the room while exposed pipes, old wood columns and Edison lights give the wood-floored bar a rustic old Americana glaze.
Fine pub fare from the right side kitchen includes Detroit-styled pizza, wings and sandwiches.
During my sunny noon time visit in November ’22, I bought several brews for the road (in canned version listed below) and consumed a lovely milk stout at the corner of the bar.
A soothingly creamed confection, Written In The Dark plied coffee-dried dark cocoa to mildly hop-charred cola, walnut and Brazil nut illusions as well as peaty chocolate truffle snips.
In the can and bettering most lo-cal light lagers, dry aluminum yellowed Dick Murphy Lite placed mildly grained German pilsner malts alongside salted lemon fizziness and phenol hop astringency while avoiding some acridity.
Clear beige-yellowed, billowy cumulous-headed “American wheat,” Agrarian Society, let its rustic amber graining and hay-like acridity dig into its sour lemon wedging.
Rangy Oktoberfest lager, Festbier, secured a stylistically upscaled profile as unexpected spruce-tipped perfume musk seeped thru autumnal brown leafy astringency, straw-dried barnyard acridity, raspy lemon oiling and wispy basil herbage.
Crisply tart lime salting stays dry alongside sour lemon twist for easygoing Rough Day Gose, leaving lightly vinous white grape acidity upon mild coriander seeding and cologned agave nectar.
Rangy frail-headed pale golden farmhouse ale, Le Petit Poete, awakened the senses with mildly spiced orange tanginess, bruised banana sweetness and lemon custard tartness penetrating salted white pepper herbage and cellared mushroom fungi in a spritzy flow.
Murkily dense purplish Berliner Weiss, Now, Forager Blueberry rode tart blueberry pureed pomegranate essence thru sweet milk sugaring, picking up vodka-licked purple grape, cranberry and crabapple illusions as well as mild tobacco leaf crisping.
Briskly tropical IPA-like fruiting paced crisply clean moderate-medium-bodied pale ale, I’m So I’m So… Citra, serenading zestful lemony grapefruit-peeled pineapple bittering and navel orange sweetness with polite pale malt spicing contrasted by dry wood tones at its grassy hop stead.
Floral-spiced yellow grapefruit entry of The Infinite Nick IPA picked up mellow mandarin orange, peach and pineapple tanginess against dry herbage and hay-like acridity in clean mineral water setting.
‘Candied orange, mango and grapefruit’ spicing gained floral-bound mango, pineapple, papaya and tangerine fruiting for Big Kids Table NEIPA, leaving grassy hop resin upon the fizzy salted citric finish.
