This week

What a busy week it has been, with six bottling runs including a couple of night shifts.

The highlight is the bottling of India Saison, which we brewed when Ben Kraus from Bridge Road Brewers visited a couple of weeks back.  It is the first commercial beer brewed in Europe with Stella hops from Australia!

At the end of the week, we rounded the production run off with preparation for Christmas.

Velkommen til Juleølsmaking på Nøgne Ø!

KOLLABORATOR

We all like surprises.  

It is an many ways more fun to surprise others, than being surprised, we think.  

When Ægir and Nøgne Ø planned to do a collaborative brew, we thought that making a lager beer together would probably be the best surprise.  

As we are approaching the cold and dark season we decided to go for a rich, warming, malty and chewy, DoppelBock.

The general release date is September 23rd, but some bars where Nøgne Ø and Ægir have their draft beer side by side will be offered to have a pre release on Spetember 19th, so beer drinkers can compare the two versions of this beer.

They are both brewed the same way, with the same ingredients and the same brewers, but in different breweries and with different water.  

The list of where to find "Der Kollaborator" is at this point in time undisclosed.  

Please stand by for updates!

New hop varieties

As most craft brewers we love new ingredients.
This week Ben Kraus from Bridge Road Brewers, Beechworth, Australia came to brew with us. He brought us some new hop varieties:  Stella and Galaxy from Australia.
Just another IPA you may think. But not this time. India Saison!

CHRISTMAS

Cooling system is being installed on our new fermenters.  
Without these tanks there would be no Christmas beer.  At this point it looks like we can welcome Christmas yet another year!

Coming star!

The Norwegian beer scene is truly in a dynamic stage. New craft breweries are entering the stage. Espen Lohte started Kinn Brewery about a year and a half ago, and has a great portfolio of well crafted ales. Kinn is a name everyone should get used to right away, because Espen and his beers are likely to be around for a while!

Kinn ferments all beers in open (and home made) fermenters.Yeast is all of top cropping strains. We admire Espen for his loyalty to this traditional method.

http://www.kinnbryggeri.no/

Optimism

Norwegian summers are cold and short.  Not ideal for growing hops.  We are probably hoping for too much when we try to grow our own , but it is certainly worth a try!

Our barley, on the other hand is much more promising.  It is just too bad that we have to send it out of the country to get it malted.