Extreme products will become available in Vinmonopolet

Finally, some extreme products will be available in the government owned outlet system for alcoholic beverages, “Vinmonopolet”:

Nøgne Ø have always liked the edges of the scale. Be it in bitterness, alcohol or color. In September a lot of extreme products will become available in Vinmonopolet. This really excites us!

Since we started to brew beer, we have always been playing with ingredients and flavors. Most have been fairly moderate, although it clearly has been revolutionary in a Norwegian context. In the recent past we have been having a little bit of extra fun, and now in September it will be possible to see the outcome in Vinmonopolet:

# 500, our 500th brew. An Imperial India Pale Ale. With 10% alcohol and 100 bitterness units, this is a small (but nice) monster. 5 types of hops, of which New Zealand Nelson Sauvin was used for dry hopping, contributes lots of flavor.

Two Captains. The winner of the Norwegian championship for homebrewers this year has brewed a Double India Pale Ale with us. This is a pretty aggressive IPA, with 120IBU and hoppy enough to mark the soul of most routined beer drinkers .

Sweet Horizon. Lots of sweetness. The perfect dessert! With a wonderful complex flavor of chocolate, malt, vanilla and coffee. This beer comes elegantly packaged in the metal cylinder. The bottle is 250 ml, because this beer has 14% alcohol.

Red Horizon. Another250 ml bottle of the metal cylinder. The world's first beer fermented with yeast to sake sake strength. This 17% strong ale has the body of a beer and the nose of a sake!

Junmai-shu. This is our only pasteurized sake, and therefore the only one which can come in the usual portfolio of Vinmonopolet. This is a sake made by the traditional Yamahai-shikomi method. (Well all our sake are!) An aromatic sake with good mouthfeel.

Since unpasteurized sake must be kept cool, such cannot get to the standard portfolio at Vinmonopolet. We think this is regrettable. For starters Vinmonopolet does not offer refrigerators or cold storage in their stores. In addition, no wholesalers/distributors with delivery agreement with Vinmonopolet has cold storage.

This means that Norwegian consumers do not have access to unpasteurized sake. Unpasteurized sake is more lively than pasteurized. In many ways it speaks with capital letters, or without filter if you will.

To try to do something with this, we challenge our customers to order directly from the outlets. This is referred to as special orders. This is done by the individual customer at Vinmonopolet outlets. We will then send the stuff by Post. The two to three days delivery time for this shipment is acceptable, even for nama-zake!

We now have 4 unpasteurized sakes:

Niogori. Milky White and slightly sparkling, with a grains of rice.

Nama-Genshu. Fermented with the famous Masumi-yeast. Peaches and sweet flower.

House Yeast. Fermented with naturally occurring yeast. Wild Raspberry and yuzu.

Yamahai motoshibori. A pressed moto (yeast starts). Intensely acidic, almost like rhubarb.

Kanpai!!!