Arpus DDH Motueka x Nelson Sauvin AF IPA

Ārpus are one of the breweries that completely changed perceptions around Baltic craft beer over the last few years. Founded in Latvia in 2017 by a group of self-described craft beer geeks, the brewery started with a very simple idea: brew the sort of beers they genuinely wanted to drink themselves rather than following local expectations or traditional lager-heavy brewing culture. The name “Ārpus” roughly translates as “outside” or “beyond”, which pretty much sums up the whole philosophy behind the project from the beginning.

The brewery is based just outside Riga and quickly built a huge international reputation for intensely hop-forward IPAs, thick smoothie-style sour beers, and massive imperial stouts. What’s impressive though is how quickly they went from being a small local brewery to becoming one of the highest-rated breweries in the Baltic states on Untappd and one of the most sought-after modern European craft breweries generally. Their beers now regularly appear in collaborations and specialist bottle shops all over Europe.

What makes Ārpus especially interesting is that despite how modern and hype-driven some of the styles can seem on paper, the brewery still feels genuinely enthusiastic and quite grounded underneath it all. There’s no sense of corporate branding or carefully manufactured craft beer image. The whole thing still feels like a group of beer obsessives brewing with huge enthusiasm and curiosity. Collaborations, experimental hop combinations, absurd smoothie sours, barrel-aged projects, they seem genuinely excited by all of it.

They’ve also become a big part of putting Latvia onto the wider international craft beer map. Before breweries like Ārpus emerged, a lot of drinkers outside the region probably weren’t paying much attention to Baltic craft beer at all. Now the brewery sits comfortably alongside some of the biggest modern European names in terms of reputation and demand, while still keeping that slightly chaotic, fun-first energy that made people fall for the beers in the first place.