Post by Mothy
Musashi Urawa has a craft beer bar! This is not a drill! Musashi Urawa finally has a craft beer bar!
As you may be able to tell from my opening, I have been anxiously awaiting the day when someone would recognize the gap in the market and put a good place for beers near this station. Of course, it would have been more appreciated if it had opened a few years ago when my son attended a preschool nearby, but as they say – better late than never.
Now on to Creative ArTwork Brewing. A few weird choices going on with the name. They often stylize themselves C.AT (pronounced as the names of the letters, C-A-T) which explains the capital T in ArTwork. Secondly, they call themselves “brewing” but do not do any, although they do have collab beers, both on tap and in the works. So it’s not exactly false advertisement in the name, but it could be called misleading. But with how many breweries are out there now, maybe that’s a good thing they aren’t brewing. At a certain point, maybe we need good bars to just serve up the good breweries’ beers more than yet another new brewery.
How about some details to the bar itself? Well, it’s not a big place, but I think big enough for what it is. The counter can fit maybe eight comfortably and a couple more if we’re squeezing in. There are a few tables as well. Things are well spaced so I think they could fit quite a few standing customers as well if they wanted to draw in a larger crowd.
The atmosphere was quite unique. I felt like they were going for a small art gallery display vibe when I was in there the first time. A lot of white and black, and a series of ink drawings of cats, (along with, strangely, Guinness World Record certificates) were roped off and displayed on one wall. Now, when you go, you may not find them there. The next time I went in, they were not on the wall as the owner came in one morning to find them all on the floor as whatever method he had used to hang them had failed. So he’ll need to fix that issue before he’s got his little art gallery back again. But there’s still a touch of artistry as instead of a regular menu naming the drinks, there are playing cards with a cat drawing on the back and one of the beers on tap on the front. Of course, ideally, there would then be 52 beers on tap, but sadly there are only 8. So you could say they are a few cards shy of a full deck.
So let’s talk about the eight taps. They serve two sizes (kind of. More on “sizes” later) 420 ml and 300 ml. The prices were different depending on the beer and went ¥770 – ¥990 for the smaller size and 1100-1320 for the larger size. Not a great deal, but in the current craft beer price environment, not so bad either. Now, to the promised “size” issue, which makes it sound like a bad thing, but I don’t mean it to. It’s just a bit odd. So, actually, rather than two sizes of glasses there are multiple sizes of glasses and rather than have a certain spot on the glass he fills them to, he weighs them to see if he’s put enough beer in them. Perhaps later he will get uniform sized glasses and this will go away, but it’s another thing that stood out to me about this place.
A few more stray observations:
– As of now, it’s a staff of one person, so at times service could be a bit slow. Especially as I don’t think he was 100% used to the system yet. But he’s really nice, even if a bit quiet.
– My mobile service provider was terrible in there for some reason. But they do have free wifi, so wasn’t really an issue.
– They plan to provide cans for takeout, but as of my last visit, had not started yet.
– They have no food but allow outside food to be brought in.
– The music volume is set extremely low, so much so I had to strain to notice there was any being played. Which isn’t really a bad thing, but is another way in which the atmosphere of the place felt different.
In conclusion, it’s unique enough that I think it’s worth checking out even if it’s not super conveniently located for you. And if you live or work close by, it should become a regular stop in my opinion.
Japanese breweries on tap when I visited:
Outsider
Hifumiyo
Rough & Laugh
Kakitagawa (Numazu)
Grow Brew House
Opening Hours:
Tuesday, Thursday & Friday, 17:00-23:00
Saturday & Sunday, 15:00-23:00
Closed Monday & Wednesday
Location/map:
7-10-12 別所, Minami-ku, Saitama-shi Saitama-ken
Telephone:
None
Links:
Instagram