Brewing Lemongrass Ale today!

Our brewer Rolf Tore Vik aka Toa in action!  Chopping approx. 20 kg lemongrass stalks today, an  occassional reminder of his previous proffesion as a Gourmet Chef.

Homebrewers Day Part II

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for a fantastic Homebrewers Day Part 2! We hope you enjoyed yourselves, and look forward to next year´s event brewing Imperial Python Pilsner.

The competition was judged by 5 judges, and they all individually rated the beers a score of maximum 50 points based on RateBeers Tasting form. 

The scores were then added, and divided by 5. You will find the 3 best beers in the following classes: 

Amber (best beer based on WBC style-guidelines of the classical Amber Ale) :

Jan Arild Helle 39,2

Harald Wegge 33,6

Paul Lund 33,4

Creative (best beer):

Ole Kristian Nylund 39,2 

Sveinung Hodne 36,6 

Sven J. Guldbrandsen 36,4 

The 1st prize where 3 bottles of the not-yet-released Dark Horizon 4. edition!

Tore, our General Manager, is addressing the crowd. Its time for the competition results.

And the winner is…..

This guy! For the best creative beer. (Ole Kristian Nylund)

Afterwords, its dinner, sharing and socializing on the menu.

Welcome back next year!

What is Craft Beer?

There are probably as many answers to this as there are brewers.  The only thing we know is our own definition:
No filtration or centrifuging: To allow the beer to ferment and the yeast to flocculate at its own pace.  To rush a beer through the stage of secondary fermentation and maturation will have bad effects on flavour and complexity.  
Craft ingredients: Using ingredients which are made in traditional methods.  We do not use automation when we produce our beers (in fact we call it hand crafted) and as such we appreciate when our suppliers are able to get us hand crafted malts.  But this certainly comes at a cost. The cost of making the same beers without changes from one batch to the next.
Recently we got a picture (from some dedicated enthusiasts) of two glasses of #100, where clearly one was much darker than the other. The reason: Our chocolate malt is roasted by individuals who use their eyes and ears and noses to assess the roasting process. Sometimes the colour varies.
Right now we have another issue:Tiger Tripel. We use some Scottish peat smoked malt in it. The last shipment of this peat smoked malt was indeed more smokey than previously, and hence our last batch of Tiger Tripel is kind of more assertive than usual.

This is what craft brewing is all about: Hand crafted ingredients used in hand crafted ales, where nothing is rushed.  
This is what distinguishes craft from industry.
We hope you appreciate this. We think this is the charm of it all.