O’zapft is!

The beer lover’s calendar has many highlights throughout the year: Christmas beer tasting, the release of the Maibock, the long summer evenings in the beer gardens, the dark winter-warmers by a log fire in the middle of winter. However, the highlight, at least for drinkers lucky enough to live in Germany, kicks off in the middle of September. I’m obviously referring to the Oktoberfest.

These days, there are many such fests in many parts of the world, but the original one is the one in Munich. First celebrated in 1810 to mark the wedding of one of the many Prince Ludwigs to the one and only Therese of Saxe-Hildeburghausen, it quickly became a tradition to gather at the Theresienwiese in central Munich to drink as many litre-glasses (known as a Maß) as possible before passing out. Today, the festival attracts about 6 million happy drinkers from all over Australia as well as some Europeans and Americans. It’s a very jolly affair, with lots of drinking, singing and thigh-slapping by people in traditional costumes such as the lederhosen worn mainly by the manly men, and the cleavage-friendly dirndl dresses donned by women, some of which are employed as waitresses able to simultaneously carry six full litre-glasses in each hand whilst taking payments from one table and throwing out bottom-pinching drunks from another.

An author and a Maß, both to scale

Personally, I’ve only been once, a couple of years ago. We turned up what we thought was suitably early, at 10am, and tried to get into one of the massive Festzelts. Not a chance – they were already packed. We ended up strolling around the festival grounds for an hour or so, just admiring the craziness of the place – a massive fun-fair with roller coasters, ghost trains and the normal fairground activities, but interspersed with enormous drinking “tents” (actually enormous structures resembling mobile sport halls with fancy facades) that accommodate up to 8500 drinkers each. We eventually managed to squeeze onto a table outside the Hacker tent, and having achieved such a success we remained there for the next 10 hours or so. The litre-glasses of beer kept coming, the Euro-notes kept vanishing, and we made friends with a merry bunch of Germans, Australians, Norwegians, Croatians and a wannabe Scot who defended his ancestral claim on his ability to say “it’s aboot fook’n time”. The atmosphere was extremely friendly, everyone simply just wanted to drink beer and have a laugh, and everyone proceeded to do exactly that.

I've certainly fallen asleep in smaller tents than this one!

Apparently, the atmosphere changes as last orders approaches at 11pm, and tends to get a bit less friendly and more overtly drunken. We therefore decided to leave the grounds around 10pm to catch a train back to the town where we stayed. My girl friend at the time carried me to the train station, put me on the right train back to the town where our hotel was, and then proceeded to marry me as soon as I had sobered up about a year later. It would have been an unforgettable day if only I had remembered a bit more of it.

What’s the beer like, I hear you cry. Well, the Oktoberfest beer is strong – about 6% - even though I’ve heard claims that it’s watered down in some of the tents (I don’t actually believe this, based on experience). We were sat at the Hacker tent, and they served the most amber version, which was malty, full-bodied and very good. The other tents have paler, but still strong, malty-sweet beers on offer. I’ve tried Paulaner and Hacker-Pschorr this year, the latter is by far the best of the two.

One of the Oktoberfest traditions is that only the “big six” Munich breweries are allowed to sell their beers at the Oktoberfest: Spaten-Franziskaner, Löwenbräu, Paulaner, Augustiner, Hofbräuhaus (HB) and Hacker-Pschorr. Nowadays, Spaten-Franziskaner and Löwenbräu are brewed in the same place and owned by the monstrously big Belgian-based InBev group. The same is true for Paulaner and Hacker-Pschorr, except that they are owned by the almost as massive Heineken group, based in the Netherlands. Therefore, if you want to drink proper German beer, you only have the choice of HB and Augustiner, the latter of which is my favourite Munich brewery.

If the Munich fest is a bit too much or a bit too far away for you – and it is, by a considerable margin, the biggest party in the world – then there are hundreds of local copies. Canada’s biggest Oktoberfest takes place in Kitchener-Waterloo in October (!), and it looks like a North American full-on celebration of every German stereotype that exists, plus some they’ve invented just for fun. I might go this year, though I suspect that Molson Canadian won’t be as satisfying a beer as the ones in Germany.

Ah, doesn't that make you thirsty?

Regardless of whether you’re planning to go to an Oktoberfest or not, this is a great time of year to pour yourself double the usual amount of beer into a massive glass, assuming you have such a glass, and if you don’t you can use a vase, and toast the Bavarians and their royal ancestors who came up with such a fine tradition. I can almost hear the crowds singing “ein Prosit, ein Prosit, in Gemütlichkeit”, which means something like “a toast, a toast, in pleasant togetherness”, something which makes a lot more sense once you’ve magically started speaking fluent German after a few Maß. Das ist alles, folks!

Summertime – and the drinking is easy

I’m looking out the window and it’s as dark as a serious porter. A few weeks ago it would have been more pils-coloured out there at this time of day. This can mean only one thing: it’s time for another blog post.

Today I thought it’d be a great idea to review the summer of 2011, in other words the very season which still hasn’t quite finished. The less said about the weather, the better, so I shan’t bore you with statistics about record levels of rainfall and the fact that even though it’s felt like a coldish summer, it’s actually been warmer than the long term average. The topic of this blog is, after all, beer.

One question which causes much debate, serious disagreements and perhaps a minor war or two every year is: what is the ultimate beery refreshment on a hot summer’s day? There are many candidates, but most people will agree that a summer beer should be light in colour, very cold, and perhaps also light in body and taste - perhaps a bit like making love in a canoe, to quote a famous Monty Python sketch. Personally, I disagree. The most refreshing summer beers are not necessarily light in colour and most certainly not light in taste, though I concede that I prefer them coldish. Another aspect of summer beers is that they probably shouldn’t be monster strong in alcohol terms, so that you can have “a few” without necessarily needing the entire autumn to recuperate. This, unfortunately, excludes most beers from Belgium, though the Belgian will no doubt disagree, albeit somewhat drunkenly.

Sometimes, a dark beer in summer is just right

Personally, I find that the Germans, as per usual when it comes to beer, have got everything about right. Their Pilsners are mostly well brewed, and a fair number of them are quite heavily hopped, at least if you compare to the average “global brands” (I’m sure you know which ones I’m talking about and if not I promise to write a severe post where I slag them off properly sometime). The hop presence in the German pilsners is very refreshing and tends to make you fancy just one more before you meander home from the warm evening in the beer garden.

Of course, there’s also the wheat beers. Nobody brews these better than the Bavarians, which probably explains why these people are so fond of their beer gardens. These are so omnipresent that it sometimes comes as a surprise to find pointless things like buildings, parks, roads and tomatoes between them. In fact, quite a few Bavarians live in the beer garden pretty much all summer, having a reserved table called a “Stammtisch” where nobody else is allowed to sit. There they quench their thirsts with the best wheat beers, most of which are wonderfully tart and über-refreshing even though they’re sometimes not particularly light in colour.

The Berlin version of the wheat beer also deserves a mention. This beer is so sour it makes lemons taste like lollipops in comparison, but with a bit of practice and some patience, you should be able to enjoy its taste even if your face may suggest otherwise. An added benefit is its surprisingly low alcohol content – at only 3% or so you can have quite a few before you lose control of your legs, though what it would do to your stomach is a different question.

Bavarian beer gardens are great places to live in summer

Less traditionally associated with summer, but nevertheless refreshing, are other well-hopped beers such as Pale Ales. You won’t find many of these in Germany, but adventurous brewers in North America and lately also in Europe, are brewing some really good examples. What could be better than watching the sunset from your terrace on a warm evening whilst enjoying a chilled pale ale?

In summary (or should that be summery?), I think it’s safe to conclude that beer, without a shadow of doubt, is the best summer drink available. Sure, beer is also the best autumn, winter and spring drink, but that’s not the point. Assuming the weather is half-decent, summer gives you great flexibility since you can be inside, outside, poolside, seaside, offside, backside, countryside or even ribonucleoside and still enjoy a cold brew. For this reason, I have no hesitation in placing the summer firmly amongst my top four favourite seasons, and encourage you all to raise a glass to the last few warm days remaining before, conveniently, the Oktoberfest kicks off.

The best things in life are free!

As many of the regular readers of this blog already know, I am quite fond of the noble drink we commonly refer to as beer. There are many types of beer – golden, amber, dark, black, white, wheat, great and crap. However, without a shadow of a doubt, my favourite type of beer is... free.

Some wise idiot once said something along the lines of “there’s no such thing as free beer”. Well, he – or she – was wrong. Apparently, this blog is now so popular and well-liked that people have started giving me free beer, presumably so that I can subsequently write about it. It’s happened twice so far. But let me say this: I am fairly corrupt as long as it benefits me. I will write about beers that are given to me, assuming they come from breweries that aren’t owned by multinational conglomerates, and that the beers are at least worth trying.

The first lot of free beers I got was from some friends who had been on holiday to other parts of Germany and very thoughtfully brought back three beers from a brewery they were sure I’d never heard of. Of course, they were wrong about that. Nevertheless, I gratefully accepted three beers from the Klosterbrauerei Neuzelle in Brandenburg: a kirsch, a porter and a schwarzbier (black beer). A kirsch? Isn’t this Germany? What about the Reinheitsgebot? Clearly, the Germans are increasingly less conservative, if you catch my drift. For those who wonder: a kirsch is a beer where cherries have been added either before or after the fermentation of the beer. It usually makes the beer taste awful, but it can sometimes be quite tart and refreshing. In this case it was kind of halfway between – I neither liked nor disliked it. No wonder they say Norwegians are born diplomats.

The porter was good. I like porters as long as they’re dry, which they are usually not. But this one was well-balanced and had strong notes of the things you expect in a good porter: coffee, chocolate and burnt toast. The schwarzbier, though, was diabolical. Someone had clearly accidentally dropped about a million tonnes of sugar into the mix, because this was undrinkably sweet and I was forced to give it to my wife, who actually drank it. I guess I still don’t understand women.

You won't find many better dark beers than this one.

A couple of weeks later, a colleague of my wife’s, also apparently a devoted reader of this blog, did the only sensible thing he could do: he brought in a massive litre-bottle of lovely dark beer and gave it to my wife so that she could share it with me. This time, I had actually NOT heard about the brewery before. It’s called “Bräuhaus in Ummendorf” – which is 81.6km north of Konstanz – and the beer was called no less than “Placidus Cobaldus”. You’ve got to have pretty big balls to name your beer in such a way, and I was very much hoping that these would also extend to the taste of the beer. I was not disappointed. It was a great example of a well-balanced dunkles (dark) beer: not too dry, not too sweet, not too malty, not too hoppy – simply very good. I wish I had another.

I must end this post by apologizing. I have received another free beer, but this was before I started blogging. A friend from Norway came to visit about 4 years ago, and this guy is a genius. He brought perhaps the finest beer that has ever been brewed in Norway: Dark Horizon, from the brewery Nøgne Ø. I was so overwhelmed that I kept this beer in my cupboard for 4 long years, frequently eyeing it up, wondering what taste sensations were hidden within. However, last week I abruptly decided that the waiting was over and cracked it open. Again, I was not disappointed. This beer had such a complexity and depth of flavour (as well as a respectable 16% alcohol) it made me feel all fuzzy, warm and very, very happy. When mankind is capable of brewing beer like that, then there’s no limit to what we can achieve, I thought.

Anyway, obviously the take-home message from this blog post is: send me beer. I promise to drink it, and if it’s worth writing about it’ll be mentioned on this blog. And then you’ll be indirectly world famous, because this blog has readers on all three continents. Just remember to write “fragile” on the box.

A Fjord Fiesta

Last week in Norway had something of everything. The bombing and shootings were some of the most appalling events ever witnessed in my usually quite peaceful home country. On the other end of the spectrum, I personally had the pleasure of travelling from the very north to the very south, first by boat and then by car, experiencing the best Norway has to offer: magnificent mountains, fjords and valleys. However, great scenery looks even better when enjoyed together with a lovely beer or two, so here's a summary of what Norway has to offer the beer lover.

The northernmost brewery in the world is, according to fact or legend, Mack in Tromsø, and this happens to be where we started our voyage. This brewery is so far north that you probably wonder how they source the raw ingredients necessary for brewing. The water should be frozen, the barley shouldn't grow and the hops should be snatched up by breweries further south long before it got this far into the Arctic. However, due to the magical current we call the Gulf Stream, Tromsø isn't actually that freezing, at least if you're wearing lots of clothes. There wasn't much snow there in the middle of summer, anyway.

Two of the more drinkable beers from Mack

The brewery isn't hard to find. You walk up or down the single main street, and if you've walked 5 minutes in one direction without finding it, turn around and you'll be there no more than 10 minutes later. It's got a splendid tap called "Ølhallen" (which simply means "beer hall"), where they serve all their beers on tap until it closes ridiculously early at 6pm. The main disappointment is their standard industrial pilsner, which is no doubt their best selling beer for some unfathomable reason. Well, it's rubbish. Served at arctic temperatures it's probably not that bad as a thirst quencher, but as soon as it's above zero degrees and your taste buds start working, an unpleasant sweetness starts dominating. Luckily, it wasn't their only choice. Much better were a high-strength lager called GullMack, a Bavarian-style dark beer called Bayer, and a tasty golden lager called Haakon. Rumour has it that they've also experimented with small-volume microbrew-style beers, but we had already forked out 10 euros for every half litre several times by then and decided to prioritize having a little pocket money left for the rest of our holiday.

Then started our long journey southwards, and what a dreadful journey it was - seen through the bottom of a beer glass, at least. The scenery was unbelievable and we even had good weather, but it was depressing to have the same conversation with the bartender every time we went for a drink:

- Hi, I'd like a beer please! What do you have on tap?
- We've got pils, pils, pils, pils and pils.
- Ah. And what do you have in bottles?
- We've got Carlsberg, Corona and Budweiser.
- I see. And why don't you have anything worth drinking?
- Mainly to annoy people like you.

I don't understand why it's seemingly impossible to stock a few bottles of interesting ales, for example from Nøgne Ø or Haandbryggeriet. These have an almost infinite shelf-life, and though they take up a little bit of space they can also be sold at higher prices than the standard stuff, believe it or not. Norway's beer scene reminds me of what the US would have been like 25 or 30 years ago.

The scenery is infinitely better than the beer in this part of Norway.

There are some exceptions, of course. I've already written about Drammen and the Aass brewery which manages to brew a good pils as well as many other styles, and Oslo has a few pubs where the selection is excellent. But by and large I'm sad to report that even in 2011, Norway has very little to offer a serious beer lover except prices that are so eye-wateringly high that you actually end up enjoying the beer more simply because it was so bloody expensive. I can't say that I blame the Germans who fill up their huge campervans (or motorhomes or RVs or whatever you call them) with beer and head up to Norway for a few weeks every summer.

The holiday ended on a high though. I gathered a bunch of friends in exceptionally nice weather last Saturday and we sat down with a huge amount of beer and some nice food. I had bought loads of pils from Aass, of course, but I had also managed to find a couple of really good pale ales from Haandbryggeriet. These were so tasty I felt like inviting them to spend the rest of the summer with me, but by the time I thought of that they had mysteriously disappeared. Anyway, lubricated with splendid beers we had a fantastic evening and the spirits were high. We solved most of the current problems in the world, and we laughed constantly doing it - another proof that good beer is, well, a good thing. At least from time to time.

I've now returned to Germany to try and earn enough money to take another holiday one day, so the focus for the next post will switch back to the Fatherland. Auf wiedersehen, pets!

Wheat the heck is going on?

It’s summertime here in southern Germany, and though the thermometer has gone up and down like a schizophrenic yo-yo so far, we’ve had a few nice days. This is a great thing for beer lovers, since it provides yet another excuse to drink beer. Today's a really nasty, cold and rainy day, which is also a nice excuse to drink a beer. The only thing you have to worry about at this time of year is what style of beer you should choose.

A few weeks ago, a smallish group consisting of two family members, whose genes I have been fortunate to inherit, came to visit. As we went out for a drink after a nice dinner I suddenly fancied a wheat beer (known either as "weizen" meaning "wheat" or "weisse" meaning "white" in German). I have to admit that wheat beers are not near the top of my favourite beer style list, so this was somewhat unusual. However, they had Schneider Weisse on tap, and I thought that was an opportunity too good to avoid not missing. A few minutes later, as I was merrily sipping away, one of the two visitors asked if he could try a sip, and fearing that he would refuse to pay the bill otherwise, I reluctantly let him. Anyway, the comment afterwards was very typical: “This doesn’t taste like beer”.

Now let’s look at this comment in more detail. First of all, there’s no doubt that the beverage in the glass was beer – and a very good one at that, brewed according to the Bavarian purity law and celebrated by connoisseurs and popes of all ages. So how can it be that a beer doesn’t taste like beer? The answer, most definitely, is: probably because it doesn’t taste like pils. Would anyone, ever, have a sip of white wine and complain that it doesn’t taste of wine, meaning that it doesn’t taste of red? Unlikely. Why, then, are such comments so common when it comes to beer?

A fancy glass of Dunkelweizen

I shan’t speculate on the answer to this, except that I have a vague suspicion that pils may be to blame, as always. Instead, I’ll write a little bit about the beer in question, namely the Schneider. As mentioned, I am not a great fan of wheat beers. I drink them now and again, but most often I find them a bit predictable and boring. Not so with the Schneider on tap: this was a true taste sensation, fantastically fruity and tantalizingly tart on the palate. It had plenty of grapefruit on the nose and about half a litre's worth of enjoyment in the glass. It was simply superb. It was also very unlike the other wheat beer I tried recently, which was the standard variety of the very substandard (but for some reason very famous) Erdinger: a beverage which lacks everything Schneider has in abundance, namely taste, character, beauty and balls. Erdinger is for kids, Schneider for grown-ups.

The other great thing about wheat beer is that, at least in Germany, they are always served in half-litre glasses. I have no idea why this is the only beer to be allowed this great honour, but the fact is that the half litre is the second finest amount of beer that can fit inside a single glass, narrowly beaten by its big brother, the classic British pint (not to be confused with its American namesake which is actually smaller than a half litre).

The German wheat beers originated in the southern state of Bavaria, where it remained popular for hundreds of years. Then, suddenly, its popularity sank dramatically in the first half of the 20^th century, mainly because of the popularity of pils, and by the time the 1960s came around it was allegedly brewed by only a handful of breweries and drunk mostly by elderly ladies. Luckily, just as the elderly ladies were about to become too old or dead to drink more beer, the style was rescued by a new generation which took to drinking it with both hands, often with a slice of lemon gently floating in the glass. Since then the style has gone from strength to strength, and nowadays most Bavarian breweries have at least one, and often several, wheat beers on the menu.

Three Hefeweizen ganging up on one pils.

There are several varieties: Kristallweizen is filtered and therefore clear, Hefeweizen is unfiltered and cloudy with yeast sediments, Dunkelweizen is the darker variety, and Weizenbock gets you drunk quicker. The taste is often described as fruity and spicy, with hints of banana, clove and bubble gum. In Berlin they brew another variety called Berliner Weisse which is one of the sourest beers you’re ever likely to taste, unless you drink it like the Germans do – with a shot of green or red syrup stirred in. For some unfathomable reason, the Germans seem to love mixing various sweet rubbish into their world-class beers, such as lemonade, banana juice, cherries or coca-cola. Such concoctions should be avoided at all cost. Actually, since these diabolical mixtures cost nothing when you don’t order them you could easily avoid them at no cost! That’s the tip of the day, folks.

My lovely wife and I have decided to go to Norway for the summer holiday this year, travelling down the coast on some kind of cruise ship called "Hurtigruten". I am not expecting this to be a great experience from a beer drinking point of view, but hopefully more rewarding from a "looking for the pretty landscape through the thick fog" point of view. However, should we stumble upon some good brews whilst trying to figure out how to turn the daylight off, I'll be sure to report back. Until then, have a nice summer and please consider not having a pils now and again.

What did the Belgians ever do for us?

Belgium is a strange country. For some reason it seems just the right size to be the basis for a myriad of comparisons such as the commonly seen “An area of rainforest the size of Belgium has been mowed down in the Amazon”, the perhaps not very accurate “The arctic sea ice has shrunk by an area several times the size of Belgium”, and the somewhat exaggerated “That woman has an arse roughly the size of Belgium”. 

Furthermore, its strategic location between the old arch-enemies France and Germany has resulted in the country repeatedly being used as a convenient shortcut for the Germans when they fancied occupying a bit of France for whatever reason. I'm not sure if the ease of travelling through Belgium by tank is related to the fact that it happens to be the country on Earth with the greatest variety of beer styles and the highest concentration of alcohol in its beers, but it sounds kind of plausible.

I’ve been to Belgium a few times, and I always look forward to going there with the anticipation of a child about to enter Disneyland for the first time. There are about 125 breweries dotted around this tiny country (which, incidentally, is roughly the size of Belgium), brewing at least 20 clearly distinguishable styles, from the standard, boring pilsner copies that you get everywhere in the world to the wonderful Lambic style which is only brewed by a handful of producers around Brussels.

The Lambic ales are the most remarkable I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. It is, in fact, something of a miracle that this ale can still be legally made since its fermentation is based on wild yeasts entering the fermentation vat from the air, very unlike the rest of the brewing world which uses strictly controlled yeast strains. For this reason, the vats are usually found in the attic of the brewery, where the air flowing in through the windows and cracks brings in loads of insects, pollen, spiders, perhaps a fortunate parachutist or two, as well as the magical wild yeasts. Everything goes into the beer, and if the conditions are right – as they happen to be in Senne valley where Brussels lies – the brew wort starts to ferment.

A €25 bottle of Geuze in Antwerp

I first came across Lambic when I visited the Cantillon brewery in Brussels more than a decade ago. This is one of just a few breweries that stick to the old-school way of making Lambic, which involves storing it for about three years and then blending the mature beer with some fresh beer to spark a second fermentation in the bottle. The bottles can then be laid down for several more years to mature and mellow. Such Lambics are called “Geuze”, and are highly regarded among connoisseurs. For the uninitiated the taste will probably come as a shock, because it is deliciously dry and will probably remind you more of a lemon than “normal” beer. Note that a number of blasphemic Lambic producers have started adding sugar or fruity mixtures to sweeten the beer. Such beers should be avoided at all cost. You have been warned.

Belgium has much more to offer, though. There’s the ale called “Duvel”, for example, which translates as “devil” and in this case, one in disguise. It’s a tasty, very drinkable ale which you can easily imagine accidentally drinking a six-pack of on a sunny afternoon whilst watching the cricket or some butterflies or something. However, since the beer clocks in at a respectable 8.5%, you may find yourself asleep well before sunset. I had the pleasure of visiting the brewery during my last trip, which is situated in a sleepy village called Breendonk, half an hour’s drive north of the crazy Brussels traffic. It’s a massive site which has expanded rapidly in the last few years, but they claim that they still stick to their old commitments to quality, and based on my own taste tests I chose to believe them. I can be very gullible went I want to.

Beer is served with style in Belgium

Then there are the famous Trappist beers. These much-copied but seldom-bettered beers are brewed – or at least “supervised” – by monks from the Trappist order. These monks must be very happy indeed, because the beers they brew – and presumably enjoy with their meals at regular intervals – are among the very best in the world. There are only seven Trappist breweries, six of which are in Belgium and one just across the border in the Netherlands. Most of their beers are easy enough to get hold of, but if you fancy a bottle or six from the Sint-Sixtusabdij in Westvleteren you have to phone in your order and turn up in person to pick up your allowed crate. The reward is worth it though, as the Westvleteren 12 is recognized as arguably the world’s greatest beer, with a complexity and richness of flavour that most other breweries can only dream of.

Trappist beer ages well - this one was brewed in 2002

Apart from beer drinking, Belgium also has some quirky things on offer such as a fabulous Tintin museum, a really big atom, a magnificent square, a massive all-European government and a complete lack of national government. It’s a must-visit country for any beer lover worth his or her malt, and since it’s conveniently flat and slightly smaller than Moldova, it should be about right for a week’s cycling holiday too. Perhaps I'll go and pump up my tyres. I also have some souvebeers in my fridge. I'm off. See ya!

Kiss my Aass!

Today is a very special day. Not because it’s sunny, because it isn’t even though it’s Sunday, or because it’s the birthday of Pat Buttram, which it is, though since I’ve never heard of him despite his splendid surname I won’t bother celebrating. No, folks. It’s way better than that. It’s the 200^th birthday of my home town Drammen. For this splendid reason, today’s blog post won’t be about Germany and her beers and breweries. Instead, I’ll venture down memory lane and become a bit nostalgic whilst crying homesick tears into my keyboard. If this sounds boring, rest assured that the topic of beer will also feature heavily.

Drammen was, as the sharpest amongst you have already figured out, founded on the 19^th of June 1811 by joining the small hamlets Bragernes and Strømsø, situated north and south of the mighty Drammen river, into one large metropolis. Strategically placed where the river meets the cunningly named Drammen fjord, Drammen soon prospered, mainly due to the thousands of tonnes of timber being floated down the river every year and then loaded onto – or made into – ships in the local harbour, unsurprisingly known as the Drammen harbour.

The Drammen fjord in the foreground with the city behind

A decade or five later the industrial revolution hit the country, and some clever chaps realized that the wood could be turned into paper before leaving the city, thereby substantially increasing its value. Drammen therefore turned itself into an industrial city with dozens of paper mills lining the river and a substantial number of shipping companies that exported the paper to most corners of the globe. The workers employed at the factories were obviously very thirsty after a day of hard labour, so a handful of breweries also sprang up to provide relief for dry throats.

One of these breweries was started in 1834, and eventually evolved into the wonderful Aass Brewery we know today (note that “Aass” is pronounced to rhyme with “laws”, at least if you have a Britishish accent). The last paper mill has long since closed, and the city has gone through the usual post-industrial decline followed by an urban regeneration programme resulting in a myriad of prizes and an improved reputation, but the brewery has – so far – remained a stable presence throughout the ups and downs. Known for its quality products and dedication to brewing good beer, it is one of the few things in Drammen which has always been a source of pride for the city’s inhabitants. As such, the brewery enjoys a tremendous local loyalty. More than once have the big multinational brewery giants such as Carlsberg tried to enter the market in Drammen with their carbonated piss, and every time have the people of Drammen voted with their feet. The latest incident happened just a few weeks ago, and it will be interesting to see what will happen to the two bars concerned once they start serving Carlsberg in September. One thing is certain: they won’t be dispensing a lot of beer to people who grew up in Drammen.

The Aass brewery sitting prettily by the river

My own experience of growing up in Drammen in the 80s was very positive. I guess parents were a bit less paranoid back then, so my friends and I were allowed to play unsupervised from age nine or so, which we enjoyed tremendously whether it involved skiing in the woods, climbing the shipping cranes at the harbour or playing football in the schoolyard. Moreover, since I always knew that it was my patriotic duty to support the local brewery, I also made sure that I taught myself to like beer as soon as I was not yet old enough to drink legally.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridges than join the two halves of Drammen together since then, and I have had the pleasure of living in cities such as Trondheim, Brisbane, Oxford and Konstanz. Nice cities, sure, but none of them have a brewery to compare with Drammen’s. Now don’t get me wrong, even I realise that there are more important things in life than drinking beer, but I still think that a great brewery loved by the locals is one of the finest features of a city. Sadly, I am not in Drammen to celebrate this weekend, and neither do I have a beer from the Aass brewery to celebrate with. Nevertheless, I will toast my home town in an appropriate manner today, and wish everyone back there a very happy birthday.

My keyboard is now completely soaked with tears, and I am in grave danger of crossing the line between being boringly nostalgic and annoyingly soppy, so perhaps it’s time to stop writing. Besides, the sun has just made an appearance, and there are some cold drinks in the fridge awaiting my attention. I therefore say cheers, skål, slainte, iechyd da, prost, terviseks, kippis and kampai to Drammen, and round off with a slightly modified quote from Shakespeare: “An Aass! An Aass! My kingdom for an Aass!”.