It’s been a rollercoaster of a couple years for Artisanal Brew Works (ABW), a nationally known craft brewery that’s been serving Saratoga since 2016. (The brewery’s located in the Spa City, but distributes brews—including its popular Warheads® Extreme Sours, a collaboration with the sour candy brand—all over the country.) Upon leaving its original Geyser Road location in December 2020, ABW moved into a small space next to a car dealership on Maple Ave. And by January 2022, they’d moved again—this time into a space at the back of the same plaza. “Moving into this building has always been our plan, ever since we left our original location,” ABW’s Kelley Lanham says. “The new taproom is much larger than both our original location and our temporary space.”
While ABW is finished with moving trucks for the foreseeable future, there are other big things on the horizon for the brewery. “We have plans to expand and utilize the rest of the 10,000-square-foot building by opening a full restaurant and having a large outdoor biergarten that will be surrounded on the backside by the Palmertown Range,” Lanham says. “We’re hoping to have more details and a concrete timeline on our expansion in the next couple of months.”
The opening of the new restaurant may be a ways away, but ABW has already made its first step beyond the beer world: This February, Bloody Marys made with Albany Distilling Co. Vodka hit the menu. In a recent Instagram post, ABW called its new Bloody the brewery’s “first” cocktail….In other words, there’s more—much more—where that came from.
