Arthur (1922-2005) was Edward’s youngest brother, one of fourteen siblings who grew up on the land where Hill Farmstead Brewery currently stands. In later life, he maintained a dairy farm nearby in Greensboro, which is still run by his descendants to this day.

Arthur’s namesake beer is one of the earliest brewed at Hill Farmstead, the progenitor of the lineage of beers that we have come to call Farmstead® Ales. Vibrant, balanced, and elegantly tart, it represents the culmination of Shaun’s years-long pursuit of a rustic farmhouse ale that captures the pastoral beauty of his family’s land and all of the history contained therein. 

That journey started in the mid-2000s, when Shaun began pushing the boundaries of mixed-yeast fermentation through experiments with Brettanomyces. During this period, as he prepared to open Hill Farmstead, he produced a number of farmhouse ales that served as important stepping stones on the path that ultimately led to Arthur. These included an early version of a Farmstead® Ale that he called “Seraphim,” brewed in 2007 while Shaun was working at The Shed, as well as a beer called “Saison Lambic Pinot Noir,” blended in 2009 at Norrebro in Copenhagen. This latter beer was one of Shaun’s first attempts to age a wild-fermented ale in wine barrels and was made in part with 2-year 3 Fonteinen Lambic. 3 Fonteinen’s lambic would later serve as the cornerstone in the first of 3 Fonteinen cooperative Resonance Blend series in which Shaun participated.

Although we first brewed a beer bearing Arthur’s name in 2010, shortly after Hill Farmstead opened its doors, Arthur as we now know it really emerged in early 2012, when we began to condition that early ale in 500-liter oak barrels, imbuing it with the delicate acidity and elegant complexity that have made Arthur a standard bearer for the Farmstead® Ale style ever since.

Brewed with American malted barley, American and European hops, our distinctive farmhouse yeast, and water from our well, it remains one of the core Farmstead® Ales that we brew regularly and always have available at our bottle shop.