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Archive for January, 2013

P1030065

English summary at the end

Et steinkast fra Nidarosdomen, i en trebygning fra 1853, som tidligere har vært blant annet bispebolig og kommunal musikkskole, holder Trondheim kunstforening til. En naturlig samboer for en slik institusjon er en café som tilbyr vått og tørt i de hyggelige gamle stuene innredet med designmøbler – og i en hyggelig have på baksiden der man kan sitte de årene sommeren finner det for godt å avlegge besøk.

(Bloggeren er klimaflykting i Oslo).

Og i denne hjemmekoselige caféen finner man en breddfull kakedisk, salater, brødmat og enkle varmretter. Og et bra ølutvalg med Brooklyn, Nøgne Ø og Kinn godt representert. I tillegg brygger de sitt eget øl, i samarbeid med hjemmebryggere fra regionen, skal vi tro etiketten.

Ni Muser IPA har en litt slørete kobberfarve, som viser at denne ikke har vært gjennom noen filtrering. En innbydende aroma med urtepreget humle og en bittersøt duft som innbyr til den første slurken.

Maltpreget smak, et snev av spearmint, clementiner.

En litt kort avslutning, kanskje, men for en bryggerivirksomhet som nok er mindre enn det mange hjemmebryggere driver, er dette godkjent med god margin. Ikke minst er det positivt at det brygges noe annet enn pils.

Håper ølet blir tatt godt imot av gjestene på Café Ni Muser. Og brygg gjerne flere typer. En saison eller en porter, kanskje?

http://nimuser.no

Café Ni Muser shares a house with an art gallery, and is situated in an old wooden house close to the landmark Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. The café has the usual selection of ciabattas, cakes and coffee drinks as well as a hand picked list of beers.

Among these beers is the Ni Muser IPA, brewed on the premises and bottle conditioned. A pleasant and well balanced beer, well wort seeking out if you are in town. Brewed in very small batches, so they tend to run out at times.

P1030067

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I’m on my way to Stockholm. A city I used to visit several times a year. A beautiful place, both summer and winter. And a city that has a number of beer pubs with a splendid reputation. I have hardly visited since I started blogging, and not at all since I moved over to the WordPress platform.

A train journey this time around. Then I finally have the time to read Pete Brown’s book.

The blog homebru net Scandinavia has counted 400 new Swedish beers in 2012. (Check out their blog. A great resource for documentation on new breweries).

Add that to the figures for Norway and Denmark, and we end up with about 1400 new Scandinavian beers last year.

Who’s gonna drink it all?

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The lineup for this year’s event in Drammen (30 minutes from Oslo) is more or less ready.

This year it takes place on Friday, May 24 (16-22) and  Saturday, May 25,  (12-22).

Confirmed participants so far:

  • Aass Bryggeri (N)
  • Bierbrouwerij Emelisse (NL) @Rest_emelisse
  • Birrificio Toccalmatto (IT) @Toccalmatto
  • Brouwerij de Molen (NL) @molenbier
  • De Struise Brouwers (B)
  • Haand (N)
  • Lervig Aktiebryggeri (N)
  • LoverBeer (IT) @LoverBeerBrewer
  • Magic Rock (UK) @MagicRockBrewCo
  • Monks, Stockholm (SE) @Monksevent
  • Naparbier (ES) @Naparbier
  • Närke Kulturbryggeri (SE)
  • Partizan (UK) @partizanbrewing
  • Picobrouwerij Alvinne (B) @alvinnebeer
  • S:t Eriks Bryggeri (SE)
  • Ægir Bryggeri (N)

I particularly look forward to the return of Magic Rock, the new London brewery Partizan and Lervig from Stavanger, Norway. Not to mention Alvinne, Emelisse, de Molen and the rest of the stellar lineup.

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In Norway. In a way. It’s a matter of reading the statistics.

Lars Marius Garshol, who puts more of an effort into his not too frequent blog posts than I do, has looked at the beer sales at  the Norwegian state Wine Monopoly for 2012. The figures show that craft beer is overtaking the industrial beers, with 49 % of the sales.

These figures, however, only reflect beers with more than 4.75% alcohol by volume. But they are impressive anyway.

Read the whole story at Lars’ blog.

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English summary at the end.

Det er en utfordring å finne alle nye bryggerier – men det skyldes først og fremst at det er mindre om og men knyttet til å etablere seg nå enn før. Skal man brygge i liten skala og bare skjenke direkte til stedets gjester er det tilstrekkelig med en kommunal tillatelse. Og de fleste kommuner er positive til dette, særlig når det er snakk om bedrifter der ølet bare er én brikke i et større konsept som omfatter kortreist mat, overnatting, turisme og naturopplevelser.

Og det vil jeg tro gjelder det bryggeriet jeg presenterer denne uken, et av dem jeg gjerne vil besøke, men som krever litt langsiktig planlegging, Tinja bryggeri.

Tinja Fjellgård ligger 23 km fra Narvik , 61 km fra Harstad/Narvik Lufthavn Evenes og 96 km fra Harstad. Det går rutebusser og flybusser 5 km unna, og det lar seg gjøre å bestille henting også.

Bryggemester Shea-Arne Engevik forteller meg følgende i en e-post:

Vi er fortsatt i planleggingsfasen, men planlegger å brygge med et 200 l system når den tiden kommer. Tinja restaurant er en gourmetrestaurant litt utenfor Narvik. Per nå brygger vi 50 l batcher på en speidel og dette får vi selge til våre kunder. Responsen har vært positiv og vi gleder oss å ta steget opp. Vi har ikke bestemt oss på noen faste øltyper enda, men til nå har vi brygget og servert pale ale, blonde, porter, stout, chiliøl og en winter warmer.

Du er velkommen opp til oss for en fantastisk kveld med flott mat og drikke, omringet av rå nordnorsk natur.

Gode nettsider, der det er gode veibeskrivelser og mange tips til hva man kan foreta seg i området.

Tinja Fjellgård is situated 25 minutes drive from Narvik in the direction of the Swedish border.

Don’t know Narvik? You should have stayed awake in history class. 

They offer hiking, skiing, hunting, mountain climbing and fishing as well as gourmet food, accommodation – and a micro brewery.  So far they have brewed 50 liter batches, but hope to expand to 200 liters soon.  The list of brews so far: pale ale, blonde, porter, stout, chili beer and a winter warmer.

If you are driving the length of Norway towards the North Cape, this is obviously a pit stop for beer enhusiasts.

They only have a licence from the local aouthority, meaning their beer is not available for takeaway. You’d better stay the night, then.

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I am sure there are experts on riders in the entertainment industry, and while the survivors of the more hedonistic days of rock ’n’roll nowadays ask for wheat grass juice and decaf skinny soy latte, I am sure there are performers who demand craft beer as well. That’s for someone else to find out.

But these documents may also be opening the door to beer history. Who would have thought that world-famous Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad (1895-1962) asked for beer instead of vintage champagne?

In 1950, the singer agreed to perform in Purcell’s opera «Dido og Aeneas» at The Mermaid Theatre in London. The rather humourous contract obliges her to be obedient, tractable, sweet-tempered and helpful in every possible way, and not to brag about the Vikings.
The management, on the other hand, was to supply her with two pints of oatmeal stout per diem at the follow-ing times and in the following quantities, viz. lunch one half pint, dinner one half pint, and one pint following each performance.
The whole story is nicked from the online beer column in the Norwegian provincial daily Østlendingen, written by Bjørn-Frode Løvlund. He has even published a copy of the original agreement.

Soprano stout

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756 new Danish beers in 2012 is an all time high. But 220 new Norwegian beers ain’t half bad, either. Lots of them only on sale locally, so there are strong incentives for Norwegian beer tourism.

And this is just the start. There are a number of new breweries starting up over the coming months. My prediction is that we will see one hundred Norwegian breweries before the wave peaks.

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I don’t cover the European beer scene as comprehensively as I used to. There are several reasons for this – I don’t travel as much as before, there are others out there with local knowledge which does the job nowadays, and I don’t have the time to keep up with it all.

On the other hand, much of the best brews of the world are now available at my doorstep (Well, here in Oslo). The new wave of brewpubs are not afraid of letting the competition in, meaning we get access to Swedish, Danish, British and Italian beers along with their own offerings.

One of the relatively new stars on the European beer map is the Italian Revelation Cat. I first encountered them at the Copenhagen Beer Festival a few years ago, and their beers are now often available at Schouskjelleren in Oslo. They specialize in lambics, brewed in Belgium, barrel aged, blended and bottled in Rome. Lambics is perhaps using a term that is a bit too narrow, we are talking barrel aging a wide spectrum of beers, using barrels previously storing wines and spirits from around the globe.

Revelation Cat has so far been a contract/phantom brewery, meaning they don’t own their own plant, apart from a small pilot brewery in Italy. Their beers have been brewed in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK.

They have recently bought brewing equipment in England, and they are currently launching a range of hoppy beers more inspired by American and British styles. When I was asked by owner Alex Liberati if I would be interested in sampling some of the beers from the new range, I did not hesitate.

To make  a long story short, a box of beers has been spending Christmas in the warehouse of FedEx, but yesterday it was delivered to my office. The box was not that big, but it was crammed full of beers. No possibilities of opening them this week – but I’ll tell you when I do.

The customs fees did not ruin me, either.

P1030031

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