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Good Beer is Hard to Find; Harder to Make.
Monday, March 30th, 2009
Saturday saw the official Norwegian Home Beer Brewing Championship (or something to that effect). As it has been for the last few years, it was held in a woefully inadequate and labyrinthine space that normally serves as a student pub. This year, around 50 individual beers were entered into the competition, ranging from Raspberry Mead to regular pilsners. Armed with a sheet of A4 paper, 2 small plastic cups and sharp elbows, we tried making our way through everything, to get the lay of the land (and our drink on). There were a lot of interesting beers on offer, and the overall quality was quite high.
My favourite ended up being an Imperial Stout (contestant #17). It was one of the first ones I tried, and it immediately struck me as reminiscent of the Nøgne Ø Imperial Stout (although this one had a lot more chocolate). Bitter, heavy, extreme, yet polished both with regard to balance and mouth feel, it had qualities that most other beers there that night just didn’t. That said, my track record for picking the People’s Choice Award — the only thing we were in a position to influence — is horrible. The winner turned out to be a team of female Medicine students at the University of Oslo. Their beer was called “Brilleøl” (a not-so clever pun on the phenomenon of so-called beer glasses). The beer was their first brew, but it wasn’t the best beer available that night by far; nor the worst. However, they seemed to have a great time, and considering the general demographic (mostly men past their 30s), 4-5 smiling female students have several legs up on the competition.
There were a couple of other beers I noticed: an intensely perfumed India Pale Ale that smelled just like those lemon candies of yore (though you can still buy them); a very pleasant surprise. The two others I can remember off the top of my head were both Wits, another favourite style of mine. A common tendency this year was lighter beers tending towards banana/bubblegum. Both the Wits I remember had that to varying degrees, but one of them actually managed to have a very pleasant bubblegum thing going on, which is exceedingly rare. Again, me liking it this much probably has more to do with nostalgia and the fact that the servings were really small (which also favours the Imperial Stouts).
I’m hoping my good friend Kay enters one of these years. He’s produced beers that would have ranked well in this years’ competition, and with his scientific, incremental approach to creating recipes, he’s only bound to get better. If he hadn’t showed me the amount of work, meticulous attention to detail and infrastructure required to produce great beers in the (relative) comfort of your own home, I might’ve tried my hand at it too. Knowing someone that dabbles in the art is close enough for now.
The Norwegian Home Beer Brewing Championship is held every year in March, and offers a great opportunity to sample some of the sheer variety of beer styles that exist (as well as some that don’t, and shouldn’t). This year, it was 130,- NOK at the door. The evening normally starts out quite strict, having to mark off every beer you’ve sampled so that you can’t “abuse” your access, but within a few hours, you pretty much have a carte blanche to go for it; as a matter of course, the competitors are checking out their adversaries’ as well as their own product. Frequently. If you stay until the bitter end, you’ll have an experience of Dionysian proportions.
