Going North for a beer – the Bådin Beer Festival

The group of friends behind Bådin Brewery shows that in this age, you can run a successful brewery just about anywhere.

The town of Bodø is the second largest in Northern Norway, that means a population of 50.000. A group of childhood friends had the wild plan of setting up a brewery there back in 2012. The timing was close to perfect. They now have two full time brewers, with the other pitching in when needed. And it was all hands on deck when they arranged their second beer festival in the brewery last weekend.

A merry crow of breweries were invited, most of the Norwegian, but Ugly Duck (Denmark), Hawkshead (UK). Birra del Borgo (Italy) and De Glazen Toren (Belgium) contributed very well to the occasion.

Matt from Hawkshead serving his brews

Bådin has become a pride of the town, with their beers available in most supermarkets and bars. It should come as no surprise that their beers have a high drinkablility, the local market is too small for the more sour and wild end of the spectrum.

And this was what the festival was all about, too. Drinkable beers and good conversations, the brewers themselves serving their brews to a public still finding out what this beer trend is all about. There was a good mix of guests, the large majority of them local. Young and old, men and women.

A dozen breweries or so means you can get around the most interesting beers in a session; or maybe two.

I had the pleasure of interviewing most of the brewers from a small stage, an informal chat of around ten minutes each, which I felt worked very well.

The highlight of the weekend for me was having breakfast in the hotel with the amazing Jef Van den Steen from Glazen Toren with him telling anecdotes from the beer world, including his friendship with pioneering beer writer Michael Jackson.

Bodø is above the Arctic circle, meaning the sun was away for just a few hours in the night. It’s a great starting point for exploring the area, including the Lofoten islands. You can go on boat trips or hike in the mountains. I hope they will make the effort to have a festival next May as well.

There are good air connections, and the organizers can probably help you find moderately prized accommodation. See you in Bodø?

Jef explains what Belgian beers are all about

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The line up:

Bådin

Bryggeri 13

Voss Bryggeri

Ugly Duck

Hawkshead Brewery

Salikatt Bryggeri

Wettre Bryggeri

Qvart Ølkompani

Aja Bryggeri

De Glazen Toren

Grünerløkka Brygghus

Birra del Borgo

E.C. Dahls Bryggeri

 

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A beer for the hero

 

Back in 2013, beer historian Martyn Cornell told the fascinating story about The Flying Pubs. After the invasion in Normandy, the British soldiers grew tired of the local cider. The solution was to fly in beer from England.

One of the RAF pilots involved in this was a Norwegian, Rolf Arne Berg, who was killed in action in early 1945.

I briefly summarized the story in Norwegian some time ago, challenging the Norwegian breweries to make a beer to honor Berg. His 100th anniversary was last month.

I am happy to tell that this idea was picked up by Øystein Kvåle, who lives in Orkanger, Berg’s home town. Øystein is involved in several beer and aquavit projects, and he brewed this beer in cooperation with Røros Bryggeri.

The beer is an amber ale with 4.7% alcohol. It has a lovely amber color, malty sweetness and a discreet bitterness that gives a good balance.  Nutty flavor. This would not be out of place in an English pub – in England or Normandy! A fine homage for a hero – and it is his photo on the label.

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Advent Calendar #6 – Save the pub landlord!

Today I link to an article in the Spectator. Ted Goldsmith Points out that there is a good reason for many pub closures – they were dreadful.

A landlord can preside over civilised ambience — with proper beer, no fruit machines and chairs made for comfort — or he can pump dance music through the stereo and offer two-for-one shots of Jagermeister to punters seated on working recreations of medieval torture devices. Of course, some pub ‘managers’ are only obeying orders — but really good pubs are run by people who know what they are doing and can call the shots.

 

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Advent Calendar #3 -Pig’s Ear Beer Festival

I used to go to London in early December every year, and if you want a broad range of English beers at one place, including hard to find cask ales, this is the place to go. Good, inexpensive snack food, sale of books and memorabilia, obscure beers from the Continent and stronger beers to take home by the bottle.

This is organized by the East London and City branch of CAMRA, and is staffed by volunteers. Well worth a visit if you are in town.

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Advent Calendar #1 – The Empire of Booze

I aim to publish short daily pieces during December, let’s see how it works.

I haven’t read Henry Jeffreys Empire of Booze so far, but it is certainly on my own wish list. It was recommended on the BBC Food Programme (you should subscribe to their podcast)

As a side interest, this book was successfully crowd funded, but that should not distract you from the  contents. This is about how Britain created the first global drinks. The India Pale Ale is in it, obviously, and I don’t know how this retelling will hold up to the scrutiny of historians like Martyn.

But what caught my interest was the story about Sir Kenelm Digby, the inventor of the modern wine bottle. It made possible the production of champagne, but they started out as bottles strong enough for sparkling cider. The cold climate made it impossible to make domestic wine, and wars with France, Spain and the Netherlands put a stop to imports. Cider was then embraced as a substitute. You can read this fascinating chapter online.

From the book:

Other members of the Royal Society in London took an interest in apple growing, cider making and putting fizz in the bottles. The greatest minds in the country turned themselves to perfecting this home-grown product. It was soon noted that the bubbles would be all the more vigorous if extra sugar was added to fuel the secondary fermentation. John Beale from Herefordshire cider country and formerly of King’s College Cambridge read a paper to the Royal Society on 10^th December 1662 in which he describes putting a ‘walnut of sugar’ into bottled cider. This is about 20g of sugar, roughly the amount of sugar (‘dosage’) added to modern dry champagne.

You can buy this from amazon, but the authors Unbound page offers more alternatives.

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Not so cozy any longer at London Fields Brewery

A convicted cocaine smuggler who runs London Fields Brewery has been arrested on suspicion of tax evasion after a dawn raid at his home. Jules de Vere Whiteway-Wilkinson was detained after officers from HM Revenue and Customs arrived at his house in Stoke Newington to question him about allegations that he has been failing to pay VAT at the London Fields Brewery. This is according to the Propel Newsletter. Whiteway-Wilkinson has run the brewery since his release from a 12-year prison sentence imposed in 2004 for his role as the leader of a cocaine-smuggling gang that supplied drugs to celebrities and music industry figures.

I have to admit that when I was in London a year ago, the tap room at London Fields was one of the highlights of the weekend. Oh, well.

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A well deserved award

Congratulations to Boak & Bailey, who were named the Beer Writers of the Year by the British Guild of Beer Writers. If you haven’t bought their Brew Britannia book already, it’s time to do it. And follow their blog – lots of good beer writing, including good links to others.

 

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Brew Britannia – Boak and Bailey between covers

I don’t read many beer books. As a matter of fact, I buy slightly more beer books than I actually read. I interact a fair bit with other beer bloggers, but I don’t even read them as systematically as I did. The demise of Google reader is partly to blame.

A blogging duo which I have followed for years is an exception.Jessica Boak and Ray Bailey have a love of language as well as a love of beer, and, have a personal voice between them that is personal, not private.

They moved out of London and settled in South Western England some years ago, showing yet again that you dont have to be based in a major city to play a part in the beer writing community.

They have been open about their bigger projct for a long time, putting together a history of British beer over the last five decades, starting with the early beginnings of The Society for the Preservation of Beers in the Wood  (SPBW among friends) and CAMRA and ending up with the fantastic diversity of today.

They have researched this in depth, using a long list of printed and oral sources. Their blog has been used cleverly for crowd sourcing information.

The result, Brew Britannia,  is impressive. It is a story of businesses that thrive or fail, of consumer rebellion, of enthusiasm and organizational strife. And, given the topic, a story of English eccentricity told in such a way that a smile and a chuckle is never far away.

In addition to the well told main part of the book, there are appendixes and comprehensive notes, even an index, which you don’t find too often nowadays. (You’ll even find me in the index, which is, come to think of it, even rarer).

When you write a book like this, you have to choose what to include and what to leave out. I have followed the British beer scene for most of this period, and I did not find any omissions to point out.

Go ahead. This won’t end up on the shelf with the unread beer books. And it’s in paperback, meaning you can read it on the bus, which is more than you can say about the heavier tomes full of glossy photos.

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The Beatles and beer

There have been the occational discussion about the Beatles and their relation to beer in the blogsphere, but with rather meagre results. I’ll come back to this when I’ve finished the first volume of Mark Lewisohns comprehensive biography, where I belive there will be information about Liverpool beer and pubs.

Meanwhile, here is a photo from Sir Paul’s web site, one of many Linda McCarney photos featured in a new exhibition opening in France in February.

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The Gunmakers Arms and things to come

I told you I won’t give any proper coverage of our London visit, but I must mention this particularly.

We had spent the afternoon and early evening doing brief stops at a number of pubs. Some of them we knew beforehand, like Cask Pub and Kitchen and the Euston Tap. My aim was to end up fairly early in the evening at the Gunmakers Arms, where two of the early activists of the beer blogsphere are to be found, behind the bar, Jeff and Alessio.

I was welcomed warmly – I have met Jeff some time over the years, while I was in touch with Alessio during the time I visited Italy fairly frequently.

The Gunmakers is still doing very well, with a good range of well kept cask ales.

I’m happy to report that Jeff is also opening a new pub in Earls Court, or to be exact, if I got it right, reopening a pub that has been closed for quite some time, the Finsborough Arms. It will not be a brewpub, but in the beer range you’ll find  recreations of classic beers unearthed by the legendary Ron Pattison. Six keg beers, eight hand pumps.

Opening on 28 February. Jeff’s birthday.

Jeff even promised that he’ll start blogging again.

If you want updates, follow @FinboroughArms on twitter.

Thanks to Ole Richard for the photos.

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