Untitled Art

Untitled Art was launched in December 2016 by Isaac Showaki, founder of Octopi Brewing in Waunakee, Wisconsin, together with Levi Funk of Funk Factory Geuzeria. It began as a vehicle for collaborations and experimental releases — heavily fruited sours and seltzers, high-concept pastry stouts — and has become one of the largest and most widely distributed non-alcoholic beer ranges in the United States.

The production method is what separates it. The beer is brewed and fermented completely, in the ordinary way, and the ethanol is only removed afterwards using reverse osmosis membrane filtration — a cold physical separation that leaves the hop oils, malt sugars and fermentation-derived esters developed during brewing largely intact. The cheaper routes to a non-alcoholic beer, arresting fermentation before alcohol forms or boiling the alcohol off, produce something closer to sweet wort or to cooked beer respectively, which is the reason so much of the category tastes thin or bready.

That technical choice is why Untitled Art can attempt styles other non-alcoholic producers do not. Rather than stopping at a lager and a pale ale, the range runs to west coast and hazy IPAs with real resinous bitterness, dark chocolate peanut butter stouts, Italian pilsners and intensely fruited Florida Weisse-style sours. The beers are brewed at Octopi in Waunakee, fifteen minutes north of Madison, whose taproom pours the line on site.