Now is winter. Not the Yule of six weeks ago or the date on the calendar when the sun sat lowest in the sky. Now is the darkness greatest...because the Super Bowl has been won but pitchers and catchers have yet report.In order to get me through to the first games of spring training at the end of the month, I ordered a set of DVDs and a book by Andreas Viestad on Norwegian cooking. Norway. Land of Knut. Being a Canadian son of Scots immigrants, much of the food is familiar but formed as if made by that crazy aunt who spend a year studying in Oslo. Potatoes and fish but oddly few internal organs of mammals. Mussels and buttered heavy bread but dill and juniper, too. Berries and cream. Then I remembered the beer.
This beer was found at Bello Vino for 6.99, smoked ale flavoured with juniper. The only juniper ale I've tried was Rogue's Yellow Snow, since renamed merely Juniper Pale Ale. What - they thought a beer named after dog urine had branding issues? The hand of the Shelti are upon this bottle as I see no actual Norwegian name for this brew. Not so much as a "norsk øl"! Would it not cost less to just ship me the beer as labeled locally? I feel like I just got marketed to.
Chestnut ale with a thick meringue head of tan, this stuff smells like smoked fish across the room. In the mouth, much less of a cold ember than Bamburg rauchbier but it is still smoked. And the effect is not as one dimensional as out of the haze pops the drying evergreen note of the juniper, like a couple of well placed drops of gin. The balance makes each much more, well, bearable and gives one visions of hard cheese and cured fish. Malty support with a bit of brown sugar and date. How is it that my Nova Scotia - land of venison and oysters, kippered and pickled herring, blood pudding and haggis, sauerkraut and Lunenburg sausage - never created a beer that could stand with them like this one? A beer for warm buttered oatcakes with honey.
A gem. Brown ale with a side of tree two ways. You can read about the brewer in Norwegian and English. Strong BAer support.
Comments
Knut Albert - February 5, 2008 6:29 AM
The beers are hardly available locally, Alan, with our monopoly stores not carrying them. Most of the beers are exported, so it makes more sense to have an English label than a Norwegian one.
Alan - February 5, 2008 8:19 AM
So the little folk tale of wee elvish folk making beer in the old fashion way is a load of bunk invented by the importer? Or is it that any craft brewer has no chance to get local shelf space there and this is their only way to make a buck?
The Beer Nut - February 5, 2008 9:40 AM
I'd say that's part of it, Alan, the other being that the brewers grew up with Good Beer being an imported, foreign thing, so in order to make their product look like Good Beer they title most of them in English. It's happens regularly in countries without much beer-making tradition, though I've seen it more in brewpubs than bottles-for-export.
Alan - February 5, 2008 10:45 AM
I would be surprised that the brewery created these labels.
Knut Albert Solem - February 5, 2008 11:01 AM
The brewery made the labels, as 95 % of this beer goes for export. Not only to the US, but also to Denmark, and probably Sweden and Finland.
The story about the wee elves is largely correct, and you'll find the whole story about Norwegian brewing traditions in the Michael Jackson World Guide to Beer. (My copy is a Swedish edition from 1986).
The tradition of home brewing has not toally died out, though - there are still farms growing their barley, then malting and smoking it.
Alan - February 5, 2008 11:37 AM
How did four guys with a beer bucket (from the photos) handle the cross-competition standardization, the trademark issues, not to mention the transation and overall design costs?
Knut Albert Solem - February 5, 2008 12:25 PM
I don't think they worry about trademark issues, and they probably get someone to do the design for them for a few beers. Translation? Even if my English is a bit rusty, we have lots of Norwegians with a fair grasp of the language.
And what is the cross-competition standardization?
These guys brew good beer, they have exported to Denmark for a few years. I assume that it is through their Danish importers they have come in contact with the Shelton Brothers.
As for the labels, the Norse Porter and the IPA have special export labels. Dark Force and Norwegian Wood are, as I said, hardly on the domestic market at all.