New year – more beer!

January’s one of those months that seem to just zoom by in some kind of a blur. It always tends to start off on a great note – together with old friends for a great party, good food and beer, and a superb atmosphere as the clock strikes midnight. Unfortunately, the rest of January usually doesn’t follow up in the same vein, so the fact that we’re already in February is quite OK – the days are getting longer and what the Germans call the 5^th season – carnival time – is just around the corner. Loads of opportunities to drink good beer, in other words.

The reason I sit down here feeling inspired to write a blog entry is something that did happen in January, though: together with a couple of old friends from university, I went skiing in the Austrian Alps. This was very nice in its own right, but these great chaps had also thought further ahead and bought a few great beers from the duty free store as a gift for yours truly. And therefore, since the beer blogger always tries to acknowledge free beer by posting some ramblings on the internet about it, I will acknowledge the generosity of my friends by posting some ramblings on the internet about it.

One of the first and also most successful micro-breweries in Norway is called “Nøgne Ø”. You may think that this name has a lot of zeroes or other strange characters in it, but the letter “ø” is actually the 28^th one in the Norwegian alphabet. It’s quite simple: you take an “o” and you slash through it, and you get something that’s pronounced more or less the same as the vowel in “turd”. The brewery’s name translates simply as “naked island”, presumably a nudist's paradise, and their slogan is “the brewery that does not compromise”, presumably by refusing to wear clothes even in winter. These days their "no compromise" attitude rings a little bit hollow since they allowed themselves to be bought out by a big brewery multinational, but their beers are still very drinkable even though the brewery is situated in a place called “Grimstad” which means simply “ugly town” in Norwegian - a corresponding name in the English-speaking world may be "Shitville" or "Crapton". They don’t lie when they say that Norwegians tend to get straight to the point.

Once you go black....

Today’s beer was the “Imperial Stout”. Imperial, no less! Defined by the internet as “relating to an empire” – I guess only “global”, “solar systemal”, “milky wayal” and “universal” would trump that. It is also interesting since Norway is one of the few countries that have never been part of an empire, even though the empire did strike back in Norway when they filmed it up in the freezing mountains back in 1980. This beer is black. In fact, it’s so black that it seems that it sucks the light out of the room, like a black hole. It’s also very thick – like crude oil with a head, only much more expensive and, hopefully, better tasting. And tasty it was – a full frontal assault on the taste buds, delivering massive amounts of firepower to make you instantly forget whatever else you had been tasting that day. In fact, it’s got notes of every single taste you’ve ever come across except apricots and aardvark droppings, so even though the beer was great there’s clearly room for improvement. I hereby confidently predict that they will release a “Universal Stout” later this year that will have notes of every single taste known to man and/or woman (and/or his/her dog).

So, what else is going on? Germans have a great way of saying this: “was ist los?” Which just goes to show that not all German words have 17 or more letters in them, unlike “Dampfbierbrauerei” which is a great little brewery in Oberstdorf, way down south in the Bavarian Alps. We went there to do some skiing, but since it got dark conveniently early we also managed to fit in a couple of hours in this fantastic place where you can sit at the bar and look at the staff dispensing huge amounts of beer that has been brewed in the kettle situated just behind the bar. The brewery is right next to the train station, so if you’re somewhere in Europe you can always think of these great beers as just a train ride away.

Well, the effects of the Imperial Stout are slowly wearing off, so inspiration is turning to tiredness, which means that I better wrap this post up before I start yakking on about things that nobody really cares about, like trees. Don’t get me wrong, I love trees, especially oak, which is one of the most suitable trees for making oak barrels in which you can mature beer. But you see my point, this is a beer blog and not a tree blog, so I’ll try to stick to that. Finally, I wish you all a great beery 2015, or at least what’s left of it. As they say in large parts of East Africa: Maisha marefu!

Size matters!

The world had not heard the word “microbrewery” until a couple of dozen years ago. Then, all of a sudden, there were thirteen to the dozen of these things. Nowadays, even obscure villages that nobody’s ever heard of, including the people living there, are sporting microbreweries. What the heck happened?

There was a time when big breweries thought they could rule the world – in particular, there was one very evil, big brewery – let's call it SauronBrew – that kept buying out all the other ones, using the One Recipe (crap lager) to bind them all into the idea that mediocre beers that could be brewed cheaply but sold reassuringly expensively was all you needed in order to be successful.

Then, just as it looked as if SauronBrew would indeed conquer the entire brewing world, one or two enterprising individuals – let’s for simplicity’s sake call them FrodoBeer and SamAle – came along and started to brew on an experimental basis, creating new (or re-creating old) brews that actually tasted like proper beer, or at least tasted like something other than branded industrial crap lager. Scholars disagree exactly where FrodoBeer and SamAle started their fight against SauronBrew, but what is quite clear is that their fight has been crowned by some success, even though the One Recipe has still not been destroyed, but continues to cast its spell over way too many Gollum-ible individuals throughout the drinking world.

OK, enough references to that famous trilogy. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please use either Google or (preferably) your local pub to seek wisdom. An undisputable fact is that during the last 20 or 30 years, several thousand microbreweries have sprung up in most countries in this world, including Iceland, and in the last couple of months I have had the pleasure of tasting the brews from no less than five of these countries: Poland, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

It started off with Poland. A country I have written about before, more known for its particularly terrible history than for its brewing heritage, but nevertheless able to brew some decent beers. A good friend of mine, who happens to come from this place, brought back no fewer than four lovely bottles of absolutely superb beer from his latest trip back to his homeland. These were all from breweries I had never heard of or had any chance of pronouncing correctly, yet they had everything a beer lover loves: plenty of taste, a refined balance and a lingering aftertaste – without losing the ability to be refreshing. Poland, be warned: I am coming to visit again – my last visit was almost 10 years ago and I’ve clearly missed some important events in my absence.

Great Polish beer, but try to order it at the bar and see what you get...

Next my lovely wife and I flew to Canada to see the family. Canada is a country more known for its massive size and its abundance of tundra, nothingness and arctic cold than for its brewing heritage. Nevertheless, the revolution that has spawned the creation of several thousand breweries south of the world’s longest unguarded border has also spilled across the very same border, perhaps due to it not being guarded. Microbreweries are popping up everywhere, and nowhere is this more visible than in one of the cutest towns in Canada – Niagara on the Lake – which happens to be my favourite place in Canada because it has no less than 3 breweries and because I got married there (in no particular order).

My mother-in-law does not conform to the stereotypical one that would hate my guts – on the contrary she clearly thinks very highly of my liver since she bought me a brewery tour for Christmas. So we packed into the car (this is, after all, Canada, so there are no buses or trains), and headed off to the Oast Brewery in Niagara-on-the-Lake. This brewery resides in an old barn or something, and despite opening only 18 months ago is astonishingly well run. A knowledgeable and pleasant young lady gave us plenty of samples and showed us the bowels of the brewery where we also got to chat to the Brewmaster, who despite (or perhaps because of) his young age had conjured up a few memorable brews, including a Belgian-inspired Saison and a very nice Pale Ale. Needless to say, we bought both souvebeers and souvenirs.

My Christmas present!

The next brewery was called Silversmith, located in an old church just down the road from Oast. Although the beers were also very drinkable, they lacked some of the subtlety of the Oast ones, and the reception at the brewery was also much less friendly – no brewery tour, only tasting – so it wasn’t quite the same. Still, if you have a few hours to spare in the Niagara region, and you’re not desperate for a wine tour, you could do much worse than coming to Niagara-on-the-Lake to check out its various breweries. There is a third bonus one too.

Later during Christmas I made my way to Norway, a country more known for its fjords, northern lights and astronomical prices than for its brewing heritage. As I have repeatedly commented on this blog, the politicians in this country have done their utmost to eradicate what little brewing heritage there is, but despite this there are a dozen or so microbreweries operating around the country, One of them, Haandbryggeriet, is located in my home town, and I take no small amount of pride in declaring that this is also Norway’s best micro. I had the pleasure of tasting their full range of Christmas beers as well as their “Dark Force”, which is no less than a Russian Imperial Wheat Stout packed with an unbelievable amount of taste, and their “Dobbel Dose”, which is a seriously hoppy beer designed to make you outrageously happy.

The only problem with these lovely beers is that they are very expensive, which means that a lot of bars don’t actually stock them because there are cheaper alternatives from abroad. And so it came to pass that when I went skiing in a fashionable ski resort, I was forced to order brews from Sweden in my own native land. The only alternative was industrial pilsner, and since the actual brews were in fact quite good, I didn’t mind so much – though I forget exactly what I drank. The point is... when a local Norwegian microbrewery is rejected in favour of a Swedish microbrewery situated several hundred kilometres away because the Norwegian one is simply too expensive (this was what the bartender told me), there’s something seriously wrong. I can solve this problem, but I am sadly lacking in dictatorial powers.

Happy blogger with hoppy beer

Finally I was in Denmark, a country known for its brewing heritage, and could once again confirm that the Danes, as with most things, are way ahead of their Scandinavian brethren, both in terms of making their industrial lagers taste of nothing and in terms of making their microbrews taste amazing. I happened to be in Odense, the biggest city on a small island called Fyn, but regardless of where you are in this small, flat country you'll find yourself fairly close to good beers, despite the terrible things the best-known Danish brand has done to the world.

Amazing Danish beer number six-and-half-five-score

In conclusion: I love microbreweries. I love what they’ve done to increase the choices I have, I love the fact that they’re not afraid of experimenting with new recipes, and I love the fact that they're making their brews taste like real beer. Not all of them are equally good, and eventually the lesser ones will disappear, but as long as the good ones keep supplying my fridge and the bars I go to when I travel, I don't mind. So let's all adopt the following new year's resolution in time for the Chinese New Year: next time you're in a fancy restaurant or bar and have the choice of a hundred fantastic wines and one crappy beer, demand justice and a microbrew. On this challenging note I shall say farewell and wish you all a very beery 2014. Sjabbeduings!

Oh Canada! We stand on guard for beer!

Canada, for those who haven’t heard of it, is a rather large country conveniently situated where most people would rather not live. The vast majority of its landmass is practically uninhabitable, and therefore extremely sparsely populated, whereas the rest of the country is uncomfortably jammed up against the world’s only remaining superpower, and therefore dominated by the culture and politics south of the border. No wonder that the Canadians, many of whom stubbornly remain in their home and native land, are a fiercely proud people, refusing to pronounce the letter Z “zee”, spelling colour with a “u” and measuring their distances in kilometres rather than miles. Basically, the main defining feature of a Canadian is that he or she is not American.

Things to do in Toronto: take a trip up to the top of the tower.

I have been lucky enough to marry one of Canada’s many fine womenfolk, and I therefore get to visit this vast country regularly in order to visit the in-laws and drink beer in no particular order. The beer scene in Canada resembles the one in the USA. Until 20 or so years ago, the market was completely dominated by a few big brands which sold their bland, industrial lager beer to the great masses. These behemoths still supply the vast majority of what Canadians knock back in their pubs, and not unlike similar breweries in the rest of the world they seem to take pride in inventing new and trendy concoctions that taste almost, but not entirely unlike beer.

Luckily, the beer revolution that hit the US has also spilled into Canada, though perhaps on a slightly lesser scale. This means that it is nowadays generally possible to find at least one microbrewery or brewpub in every major city, and some of the bigger micros (as it were) are sold in the Norwegian-inspired state-controlled alcohol shops, which in Ontario come in two flavours: the LCBO, and the ingeniously named “Beer Store”. There is, in other words, plenty of good beer to be enjoyed if you know what to look for.

The area around Kitchener-Waterloo (about 100km southwest of Toronto) seems to have more than their fair share of microbreweries, so if you’re desperately searching for something more exciting than Molson Canadian or Labatt’s Blue, you may want to head in this direction. Just outside of Waterloo is the city of Guelph, surely the only city in the world which name resembles the sound of having had one beer too many. There’s a splendid pub near downtown called the Woolwich Arrow with a very long beer menu dominated by local breweries. I spent a happy lunchtime there in glorious sunshine a couple of weeks ago, and I can only recommend that you pop in for a swift half or an all-night drinking session or something in between.

Another personal recommendation is the Shepherd’s Pub in the tiny hamlet of Elora, about 30km north from Waterloo. It’s an extremely cosy little place, with live music and great beer. If you’re really lucky you can experience an Irish-style session where local people playing flutes, fiddles, banjos and other dodgy instruments will accidentally sit at the corner table and then equally accidentally start playing tunes that everyone happens to know. It’s excellent fun listening to such shenanigans whilst knocking back a few pints carefully selected from the extensive beer menu.

Kitchener-Waterloo also has its own version of the Oktoberfest, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post. I only had time for a brief visit, and I was able to confirm with some dismay that the main beer on offer was Molson Canadian served in rather small plastic glasses. They did have a selection of more interesting bottled beers sold at Norwegian-inspired prices, also poured into unlovely plastic glasses. Are Canadians so wild that they cannot be trusted with proper glassware, or is it simply a cost saving measure? In either case, I strongly disapprove.

The K-W Oktoberfest at 3pm on opening day. Not the best time to go.

I am also very happy to report that my request for free beer in a previous post has been fruitful. A very friendly Canadian sent me two lovely bottles from the Unibrue Brasserie in Quebec. This is the French-speaking part of Canada, so the beers had the suspiciously foreign-sounding names “Trois Pistoles” and “La Fin du Monde”. The former is dark and has a rich, vinous and full-bodied taste whereas the latter is light, cloudy and also very rich – a bit like a Belgian golden ale (such as the famous Duvel) on steroids. In fact, it had so much taste that I had to numb my taste buds with liquid nitrogen just to get it down. Or perhaps I was exaggerating a little bit just there. Anyway, both of these beers are strong (9%), tasty and very well brewed.

A little bit of Canadia in our living room.

So, what’s the conclusion? Canada is a huge country inhabited by friendly people that don’t tend to shoot you, and there are lots of things to see and do, at least if you think ice hockey is the main reason to live. As for the beer, well, there’s plenty of good stuff to be found, but it’s not a country I would recommend visiting just for this reason. Just like the country itself, many of the new breweries are a bit wild and untamed, brewing stuff full of taste and adventure, but perhaps lacking the mature subtleness of their more established counterparts in Europe. That's it folks. Have a great day!