2011: The year of the Beer!

  So were finally at the end of the year, (Actually 2012 when I post this…) this is the time when many choose to sum up what’s happened the latter twelve months. This marks my first year as a beer blogger, and what an awesome year it has been. So I guess I’ll make some of those lists too. These are my highlights of the year and the best beers I’ve had in 2011. I usually take pictures of all the different beers I drink to remember them, so there’s a lot of pictures I need to look through before I start writing...

Highlights:

This is the easy part, the highlights, but ranking them is the hard part, but the order don’t really matter does it?

• “The Ginger Man” in New York City.

Kjetil, Awesome Bartender & Haffy. (Me)

New York’s best bar, hands down! 73 craft brews on tap, and between 100 and 200 awesome bottles of delicious beer, this place is a dream come true. Best service in New York, no contest there, but that alone don’t make it awesome superb plus! Super efficient bartenders that know their job and beer, good looks are the dot over the i. (As we would say in Norway) Me and Kjetil had an awesome time, even getting to know the owner Bob Precious, getting a tour and freebies! If ever in NY, this place is a must, and you gotta try the “Ginger Man Ale”, ale brewed by the local brewery Captain Lawrence exclusively for this bar. Great food and atmosphere and good times is what you get here. Arrive early this place gets packed! Read the whole story here.

• “Beer Festival” at Nærbø.

Eddie from Midtfyns & me.

The bi-annual beer festival at Nærbø was a blast! Ægir, Nøgne Ø, Kinn, Lervig & Midfyns and other exhibitors were present, the brewers poured the beers themselves, and were available for a chat. New beers were introduced from several of the breweries. Ægir introduced the awesome “Ratatosk Double IPA”, Kinn brought on their darkest and strongest beer so far with “Svartekunst” the “Foreign Extra Double Imperial Russian Export Stout Porter”. Nøgne Ø introduced “Holy Smoke”, the etiquette features a picture of Kjetil the brewer of Nøgne smoking a joint! Midfyns had a new Black IPA called “Gleipner”. Eddie the boss of Midfyns were also apart of the beer seminar and were one of the speakers, he nailed it! He shared his beer generously, and joked around a lot, funny guy. Espen Lothe from Kinn and Petter Nome the main spokesman from the “Brewery and beverage association” also spoke in the seminars. Other than that I got the pleasure of meeting most of the dudes from “Norske Ølbloggere”. (Norwegian Beer-Bloggers) Good times…

• X-Mas dinner at “Nøgne Ø” brewery.

Me, Erik Dahl from VANØ & Kjetil.

Hanging out at the power station was awesome, we got a private tour of the brewery and everything. In their storage room our guide opened a bottle of “Dark Horizon 2^nd edition” and gave us all a taster. We tried the Sake, we tried a new beer called “Indian Saison” and all the new seasonal beers. Talked to the brewer, got drunk and had a blast. Also to mention at the vorspiel with “Venner av Nøgne Ø” at Patricks in Kristiansand, Erik Dahl shared his last “Dark Horizon 1^st edition” bottle. It was amazing! Many thanks to “VANØ” for being awesome hosts. Strange memory: Having to chug down large gulps of 2^nd edition before leaving with the bus, strict bus driver, that was my second bottle of the 2nd Ed. that night, he he…

• The “Brooklyn Brewery” visit with a private tour by Steve Hindy.

Me, Steve & Kjetil at Steves office.

On our way to the airport we stopped by Brooklyn Brewery, a pub owner we’d met told us he could get us a private tour with Steve Hindy and he weren’t lying. The pub owner thought we were starting a new Norwegian microbrewery, but those words never touched our lips. We showed up at Brooklyn Brewery and got a private tour by the owner, it was me, Kjetil and two bosses from InBev. Needless to say, we felt like small small fish, but it was still fucking awesome and informative! Read the whole story here.

• Visiting Southern Tier.

Me and Kjetil drinking awesomeness at the brewpub.

We went through hell and high water to get to Southern Tier, and then we where bummed out by a shitty bartender when we got there. But after one sip of the first beer, everything felt better. One of the employees straightened the earlier mention issue with a tour of the brewery after the pub closed. That day is one I will remember for the rest of my life! Read why here.

• Visiting the Brewdog Bar Aberdeen.

Meeting James Watt from Brewdog at Brewdog Aberdeen.

Our first shot at Craft Beer tourism were a smash hit. The Brewdog guys and gals gave us excellent service and awesome beer. No need doing anything else, we spent 12 hours each day at that pub. Tried exclusive beers, met James Watt, got free merch, had a good old time. The BBQ were awesome, "5 am Saints chutney" and "Beer & hops ketchup" anyone? Witnessed the premiere of Evil Twin “Jin & Jang” and drank Wasabi stout. What more you say? A dude gave us free beer spiked with Viagra, he he, no joke… Read the whole story here: Part I & Part II.

• Visiting Copenhagen “The Beer Mecca of North Europe”.

Kjetil and me at Mikkeller Bar.

This trip was cursed, Kjetil got robbed, the plane was 12 hours delayed, half of the beers we packed in our bags to take home broke and the Mikkeller bar was flooded the week before and had no bottled beers. But Copenhagen is a Mecca for beer lovers. Tried a lot of great beers, the highlight was drinking a Mikkeller “Black” from tap at noon before having breakfast. Ice cold 17,5% stout in the sun. Read the whole story here.

• Cardinal’s Christmas Beer Tasting.

These two tried all the beers and wrote notes, respect!

73 different types, I tried them all, good food and good times. Sigrid Strætkvern the author of the Norwegian book “Beer with a knife and a fork” lectured us on the traditions of Christmas beer, or sun turn brew as this tradition is older than Christianity in Norway. Sigrid and another guy from Ringnes were seated at the same table as me, we had many interesting discussions about beer. Some of the highlight were introducing Mike Murphy from Lervig to the Ringnes guy, and drinking single barrel akvavit stored on cherry casks. Best beer of the night: Port Brewing “Santa’s Little Helper”, surprise of the night: Liking the Jacobsen “Golden Naked Christmas Ale”.

• Me and Kjetil starting to brew.

I made this Stout, me proud!

After becoming a craft beer geek and then a beer blogger this was the next natural step. We didn’t start brewing before 30/10, so we’ve only brewed six batches. All of which has learned us more about beer. Instead of starting to brew by following recipes, we decided to make our own. We consider that approach a bit like we do in our band, sure we like other bands songs, but we wanna make our own songs, in this case beer! The best part, it tastes good, sure some better than others but we’re learning and having fun. More on this coming in 2012... DIY

• Lervig getting their groove on, Stavanger finally getting its first IPA!

Stavangers very own IPA!

A great local brewery is important for a beer geeks pride. And after Mike Murphy moved to Stavanger in 2010, Lervig suddenly got worth noticing. From the start there were limited edition brews available only at Cardinal, I can remember “Northwestern Lager”, “Luck Jack Unfiltered”, “Smoked Baltic Porter” & “Cardinal Winter Wine”. The beers you can get in the local grocery stores are “White Dog” (Wheat beer), “Betty Brown” (Brown Ale) & my personal favorite “Lucky Jack” (Pale Ale). At the national wine monopoly you can get “Winter Ale”, “Konrads Stout” & “Rye IPA”. They also make both a low and high alcohol Christmas beer. Before 2010 all they brew were pilsners. Can’t wait till next new brew, Lervig got the groove on and it feels and tastes good…

• Getting my friends together for craft beer nights!

The beer testing panel. (Haffy, Slemmy, Stian & Mr. Bongo)

Acceptance among friends is important to any geek, and when I can share my experience, and get the trust to use my friend’s money to make an excellent beer program for the night, I know it will be an awesome time. I’m currently planning another night and I hope some inexperienced and curious friends will join. If you have an open mind and palate you’ll be fine! Live by the beer, die by the beer!

Top Beers of the year:

This is the hard part, I have 27 beers on my list before starting to write, and I’ve already edited it down from almost 40 beers. Damn this has been a great beer year! Here's top 11:

• Nøgne Ø “Dark Horizon 1^st edition”:

PURE AWESOMENESS!

The most awesome beer ever: Intense aroma, awesome head, extreme body and a finish to die for! What is DH1? It’s a crazy 16% ABV, coffee stout, all out, all in, go crazy, all the way, motherfucking S.T.O.U.T! It’s awesome, as it’s one of the world most sought after beers I thought I’d never come across this one. Now I can at least check off one of the points on my “Things to do before I die” list…

• Mikkeller/Brewdog/Nøgne Ø “Black Tokyo* Horizon”:

A very special beer!

I’m so lucky to have tried all the beers this brew’s recipe is based on in 2011. It’s funny, three different tasting strong beers like this, into one, and I can recognize elements from all of these three different beers. When it comes to Nøgne Ø’s part of this brew, it’s based on the recipe for the 3^rd edition of the Dark Horizon. This is 17,5%, but it tastes like gold, it tastes like victory. This is brewed at Brewdog in Scotland. Probably the most expensive beer I’ve ever paid for, price? 340 NOK, almost 45 Euro or almost 60 dollars, worth it? YES!

• Southern Tier “Pumking Imperial Pumpkin Ale”:

Hail to the king baby!

Almost any of Southern Tier’s big bottles is worthy this list, ST is one of my favorite breweries ever, complete awesomeness. This golden treasure is one unforgettable piece of joy, pumpkin pie, madness, with crust & spices. The smell, oh the smell, I wish my pillow smelled like that, so I would get in bed in time more often, I wish I had one right now, a big 0,65cl bottle just for me, all alone. It’ mine, my precious… I had this fresh directly from the tap at the brewery, be jealous, and be very jealous…

• Cigar City/Mikkeller “Nielsbohrium”:

Luxury in a bottle...

This brewery really caught my eye this year, I had two visits to America this year and tried a bunch of Cigar City, really good all of them, but this is the one I chose for this list. I bought this at Ølbutikken in Copenhagen this summer. This is a stout stored in oak casks used for rum. It’s totally awesome, and without doubt one of the best beers I drank last year in the peace of my own home, needless to say, I felt like a millionaire sharing this sexy big bottle with my friends…

• Ægir “Lynchburg Natt”:

One great tasting beer, try or die!

“Natt” is the Norwegian word for night, this as a black porter aged in “Jack Daniels” barrels, it’s really awesome; much better than the normal “Natt”. And I don’t even like JD. Been drinking this at Cardinal many times, I just want more, even if it costs a pretty penny, I don’t care. Give me “Lynchburg Natt” or give me death! Hope they brew more of this one.

• Mikkeller “Black”:

Wrong edition, but u get the...

I have a great memory from drinking this beer in Copenhagen as mentioned above, it’s weird, that such a beer can be this good, but it is, extreme malty flavor, almost no carbonation (On tap), but still awesome. This beer is also made in a million different versions, whisky, cognac and so on, I’ve tried a couple, they were nice, but the original is the best one!

• Midtfyns “Rough Snuff”:

Lip tobacco beer, now illegal!

Tastes like banana, smells like Belgium! This beer has added snus/snuff (tobacco) and bladder wrack, it’s a fisherman’s ale, made from a homebrewers recipe. It’s awesome, it’s illegal and it’s wonderful! Voted ”Beer of the Year” in Denmark 2010. This is one hot little babe you’ll never taste, unless you already have! Bananarama tobacco beer bonanza, no less! BANNED by the European Union!

• Ægir “Harvest Ale”:

Funky fresh beer!

Taste as fresh to me as hobbit legs does to Orcs. This tastes like heaven, nothing strong or special, just extremely fresh and smooth. Well balanced, citrusy, hoppy and clean. Awesome, I chose this one over Ratatosk for this list!

• Brooklyn “Black OPS”:

OBAMA-RAMA-BEER!

Brooklyn breweries best brew! Drank it at “Rattle ‘n’ Hum” in NYC. Got the tour by the boss of this brewery and he told us about the time Obama drank this beer by his doctors order. This is a vanilla bourbon bomb, and it kicks ass, it’s expensive but do we really care?

• Lervig “Rye IPA”:

Pride!

My hometown finally brews IPA commercially! Love it, as the title says it’s a Rye IPA, 8,5% ABV and 100+ IBU! It’s a strong bitter motherfudger, with lots of aroma hops, dry hopped to heaven and hell and back to earth. We’re almost talking Imperial here…

• Southern Tier "Creme Brulee Imperial Milk Stout":

This guy bought two! R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

This vanilla bean madness beer changed my perspective of what good beer could be. It was so good that I felt forced to try every Southern Tier I could find, and again what I found were so good if forced me to do a pilgrimage all the way across the big pond to the land of the "free". I love this beer, if you find it try, but it's really sweet, I recommend sharing one bottle with two friends...

Conclusion: This year went to 11!

So these are my highlights and top beers of 2011, there was lots of runner-ups for both of the lists, lot’s of good times and a whole lot of great beers. In 2011 I tried more than 1.000 beers I hadn't tried before, I've already come to terms with the fact that this is a year that will be hard to beat! But I’m OK with that, as long as I know there’s more new beers to try and new places to visit. See you on the road, or at Cardinal!

Let the beer light guide you…

Cheers and best wishes for 2012…

- Haffy

Five great places for beer in New York City!

Another article on New York, are you kidding me, what’s he gonna whine about this time? Free tours & free beers or helpful American citizens! God save us all!

As I write this, two months have passed since I left New York City. My wallet still hurts and great memories still linger in the back of my head. I haven’t got it all out yet, so I need to write one more article about New York before I’m done. So I found my notebook that I brought to NYC and checked out what I’ve written, I went through old photos, and I choose five great places for beer in NYC that I think any Craft Beer drinker would love to visit! While writing this I realized I miss New York…

Let the countdown begin:

5. The Birreria at Eataly (http://eatalyny.com/eat/birreria)

Me with a Punkin from Dogfish.

Eataly is a fantastic place in New York to buy food, many markets under the same roof selling quality products. Here you can pick up a six-pack of Dogfish Head Punkin and fresh ingredients for the dinner you’re making for your friends, if you live in NY that is! But take the elevator up to the 14^th floor to “The Birreria”, there you get a nice view of the NY skyline with the Empire State Building in the background. It’s a nice place to start your beer-drinking day in New York, get a decent European meal and drink some American craft beer. You can always get Dogfish Head on tap here, or you can drink one of the ales made at the premises, made with help from Dogfish Head. This is a brewpub, so fresh beer is never far away, hopefully not to fresh if you know what I mean! I intended to make this a list of four waterholes, but this place was to good to not be mentioned. They had 12 different craft beers on tap and 20 different beers on bottle. The atmosphere was great, the service was OK+, and both the food and the beer were excellent! Nice modern look, clean and cool, bet it’s a hot place to hang out at night!

4. The Pony bar (http://www.theponybar.com/)

Kjetil with a New Yorker!

This is a place I will return to next time I’m in NYC, only got to spend a short time here, they only had 22 beers, but all of them were on tap and no bottles. But I hadn’t tried any of the beers before, and I hadn’t even heard of some of the breweries they served. The bar staff could have been friendlier, but nothing was bad, get me right here! Here Kjetil and me met a man, who invited us to a Gay beer club meeting on Brooklyn the day after. We already had plans so we didn’t go, no were not afraid of gay men or gay beer clubs! Brooklyn has a lot of interesting bars that we didn’t get to visit like Barcade. Lots of New Yorkers are really friendly and I got surprised about their friendliness more than once. This bar updates their menu every day, even online, and they change their beer selection all the time. The Pony Bar All American is a club for regulars that have drunk more than 100 different beers at the Pony Bar, they get a free shirt and first crack at seats when the Pony bar arrange Brewery Tour road trips. The atmosphere were nice, not vibrant or anything, but a cool place to hang out with friends and drink good beer.

3. Blind Tiger Ale House (http://www.blindtigeralehouse.com/)

Not all the beers they had at Blind Tiger Ale House!

30 something beers on tap, and close to 100 different bottles. This place was alive, we came early but the place was already loud and busy. The interior looked like an old alehouse from a movie or something. A bit waiting time for ordering, beer menus constantly updated on the charcoal board. This place was kind of dark and had a fireplace. Lots of pretty female costumers drinking Craft Beer, sexy! Definitively a place I could visit again, they even had food, and I ate roasted nuts that tasted awesome! Drank some great beers but alas my time in this place were not as long as I wanted!

2. Rattle N Hum (http://www.rattlenhumbarnyc.com/)

Sorry for the blurry picture, this is Rattle 'n' Hum!

Tag line: “No crap on tap!” This could have been the best bar in NY, and don’t get me wrong it is an awesome bar. No less than 40 different craft brews on tap and somewhere between 150 and 200 beers on bottle. You could get a 4x4oz flight for 10$. Here they also updated their tap menu every day. All these things great! Now I would like to think we were just unlucky, but we visited Rattle 3 or 4 times and experienced the same service every time. The costumers were not in focus and service could have been better. The best service we got were from a new cute blond bartender that didn’t know jack shit about beer yet, now somewhere between her lack of knowledge and forgetfulness there probably were a future bartender. But luckily she had a more experienced bartender there the most of the time to save her ass. But I would’ve loved it if that were made unnecessary. Leaving a new bartender in a craft beer bar to two guys like Kjetil and me is like throwing children to the wolves, she was a good sport though! 

Small girl, big bottle!

12 Percent” were apparently a beer event with 12% beers according to one of the bartenders, now this was answering another costumer that asked about what was on their event calendar, but I helped her out and cleared the mistake. 12 Percent is a beer importer. We tried some really awesome beers at the Hum and their beer selection is nothing less than amazing. “Southern Tier Cuvee Series One” & “Brooklyn Brewery Black OPS” were the most memorable beers. If you’re ever in New York visit Rattle ‘N’ Hum and make up your own mind about this place, I will definitively visit them again! This was a typical working class Craft Beer bar, not very classy or hip. Not to forget they also serve food, and according to Ratebeer November 2011 Rattle is the best bar in New York City area with a 97/100 score.

1. The Ginger Man (http://gingerman-ny.com)

Outside of The Ginger Man

Awesome bar, my favorite by far in New York! I would say the only bar I would ever compare this experience with is my hometown water hole Cardinal. Now let me tell you why! 73 different beers on tap and more than 100 bottles! All craft beer, except some German stuff a lot of NY people were drinking. The bartenders knew all of the beers on tap; it’s their job! Probably the busiest bar we visited in NY, insanely efficient bartenders, totally awesome! They also had food, so we didn’t have to go anywhere else to eat. My first impression of this place weren’t this good actually, we fell in a bit late on a Friday night in New York, and the noise level in this place were incredible, god damn American girls talk loudly, lots of woo-girls. The Ginger Man was more a bar for successful people than Rattle, lots of middle class plus and business people and us of course! No TV screens and no sports, just a good old classy pub.

Kjetil with Mead!

Our next visits were when we came back from Southern Tier on 9/11. After midnight it was I, Kjetil and one other costumer drinking until closing time. He was an old Hardcore Punk fan and started talking to us because of our t-shirts: Poison Idea & Henry Rollins. We finished the night sharing a Dark Horizon 3 from Nøgne Ø with our new friend and the bartender. A very special experience it was going out drinking at the 10^th anniversary of 9/11. New Yorkers don’t act like silly drunks like Norwegians do when we get a drop of alcohol in us, so the fact that people acted and drank responsibly were nothing special, cause it was like that every day.

Awesome bartender!!!!

We also spent our last night in New York at The Ginger Man, and that were our best night in New York. Our bartender was totally awesome, knew all the beers we asked about, and to top it off, she was a fan of Norwegian Black Metal. We let her taste whatever we bought if she hadn’t tried it before, and when we were about to leave she said next one is on me. Then a man stepped in who obviously had to be the boss, so we figured we’d tell him how happy we were with the service. We got another beer from him, he was the owner, Bob Precious continued to give us more to drink, trying different Bourbons before we got a tour of the back room, he he! 73 different beers on tap in a small storage, challenging! We got to choose a bottle each for free, and then we left the bar for the night, after emptying our pockets for cash to tip the bartender! Sorry to say we didn’t have as much cash as we wanted to tip, but she deserved every dollar!

Kjetil, Bob & Haffy @ The Ginger Man

Among the highlight of what we drank at The Ginger Man were “The Ginger Man Ale”, brewed at the “Local” brewery “Captain Lawrence”, a Belgian Amber Ale brewed with real Ginger, awesome! Dansk Mjød (Danish Mead) Vikingerness & Viking Blod was also memorable threats; one brewed with Hibiscus flower the other one were hopped. We also drank Barrel-Aged Lager from Coney Island called “Human Blockhead” it was absolutely awesome. Not to forget the three Cigar City bottles they had, awesome. What more can I add to convince you how great this place were? Tap selection: World class! Bartenders: World class! Bottle selection: Awesome! Food: Great! Atmosphere: Very Good! Prices: Affordable! Premises: Nice!

The Ginger Man: A Beer Lovers Paradise….

So to sum it all up, how was New York for me? Totally awesome, I visited many other bars not mentioned to, but these stood out, but to be honest with you, I planned to visit these places! The key to a great beer holiday is to plan out what places to visit before you travel. The chances to find something great by random is not great. New York including all the five boroughs has more than 20.000 bars and restaurants.

Have a nice trip!

- Haffy

The road to Southern Tier...

Like Ivar Aasen travelled Norway in the mid-nineteenth century to collect words, proverbs and expressions to create a new independent language for Norway, I travel to document strange beers and awesome flavors. And I share them here with you, the reader. The next step in my scheme will be to make awesome beer that will shake your taste buds and rock your world. You see, I am apart of a new generation of beer drinkers, and we will no longer stand for boring, tasteless crap “made by appointment to the royal Danish court”. We will no longer be silent, we will no longer stand idle by and watch the oldest and the most widely consumed alcoholic beverage in the world being monopolized. Beer is culture! This isn’t fucking “Highlander”, where there can’t be more than one! We want change, change we can believe in, not some semi-lying bullshit from some big shot! And instead of trusting the big guys to do it right, we will arm ourselves with brewing equipment and make it our business to be apart of creating the future. We will drink new beers, and challenge everyone we meet to do the same! So educate yourself in beer, and be apart of the craft beer revolution! I’m proud to say: “I am a craft beer drinker”, and I mean it when I say: “Life’s too short to drink cheap beer”! Now enough with the propaganda, I got a story to tell, this is: The road to Southern Tier...

Morning in NYC

I believe in love at first taste, and since that first taste of Southern Tier, our relationship has been close. The first story I ever beer-blogged was about Southern Tier, and everywhere I’ve travelled since then ‘ve been looking for Southern Tier beers; “Do they have one I haven’t tried yet here?” And if I find, I buy, and celebrate, because I love Southern Tier. So nothing would be better than going there right, to the brewery? So Kjetil and me set our sails to Lakewood, (Ta-da) and what a story it turned out to be. But let’s set the stage for this story. First came “Irene”, with heavy winds, flood and destruction, and then only a few weeks later came “Lee”. The tropical storm “Lee” hit New York State a week before we arrived, heavy rainfall resulted in historic flooding. It was 7am in the morning of September 10^th 2011, Kjetil and me were in New York City and we had just picked up a sporty red rental car from AVIS. The weather was fine, there wasn’t much traffic, and we had plenty of time to drive to Lakewood, all the way west in New York State before the first tour of the brewery started at 2pm. We felt confident, nothing could go wrong, nothing was gonna stop us, we were on the road again! Nick Cave asked on the stereo, “Do you love me?” And I though about my first meeting with “Southern Tier’s Crème Brûlée”. Everything was green, in fact it was super green!

The mad river!

Everything was running smoothly, we were halfway there and in front of schedule when we suddenly and without warning were directed off the highway. “Closed!” And had we known how the road ahead would be we probably would have turned around then and there. But since we weren’t in a rush, and we knew there was a tour at 5pm also, we had no reasons to stress this minor obstacle. We decided to hit the side roads and find a way. Two hours later after driving through every side road we could think of, driving past houses under water, broken roads and getting in trouble with a cocaine crazy trigger happy local sheriff, we’re suddenly at a hotel in the middle of nowhere, NOWHERE! The whole area had been under water and everything was dirty, the hotel had no electricity, and everybody was running around like headless chickens. At that hotel in the middle of nowhere we met “The wedding band”, which just happened to have gig in the town we were going to. A lovely lady at the hotel took the time to equip us with maps and explains us the way out of this maze of closed and broken roads. Her lovely hospitality and helpfulness is the exact opposite of how the hillbilly cop from hell just treated us half an hour before. When we asked for directions his answer was: “Get the fuck out of here!” “Don’t you guy’s watch the fucking news, it’s a fucking disaster down here!” When we said we didn’t know the way out, because we were lost his response was: “I’m so angry now, I’m about to hit someone!” His right hand resting steadily on his gun the whole time, so we turned around and drove, fucking hillbilly! The directions we got from the lady failed, another cop at a road block wouldn’t let us through to get over a bridge that would have lead us out of the maze. We decided to follow the wedding band into something similar to a movie like car chase, and the next place they drove to where the place where the angry crazy psycho cop fantasied about murdering our asses. YAY! The river was crazy, water everywhere, houses under water, and reports came in that people were looting. Luckily the cop was gone when we drove by the same spot, but soon after the road were gone too, and only river remained. Using an iPhone app one of the dudes from the wedding band found a dirt road seemingly into nowhere, we stopped at a gas station in the middle of the woods, kind of looked like the place they filmed “Deliverance”. Between the banjo duels I had the perfect nature moment as I were pissing in the woods, a stalker dear were eyeballing me no more than ten meters away, and he even had the courtesy to wait until was finished before running away. We kept driving on a semi broken roads, and suddenly we found an open bridge, and the highway was under our wheels again. Civilization! We drove as fast as we dared and some, and did our best to follow their car, but suddenly they were gone, and we had the pedal to the metal the whole time. Messing around in Lakewood we entered the brewery 5 minutes to late for the late tour, (5am) due to rather crappy descriptions on Southern Tier’s website. The bartender said, “you’re too late and by the way it’s sold out”, I told her we came all the way from Norway, and that we went trough hell and high water to get to the brewery, I used all my Norwegian charm, but she just said sorry, have a beer instead. Ah, just shoot me please…

The Empty Pint!

Being turned down like that after travelling over the Atlantic Ocean and struggling ten hours in a car really bummed us out. My expectations were reset to minimum standard and we headed for the hotel and got some food before we followed the bartender’s advice, to have a fucking beer! After the crazy drive it’s a miracle we even found our way to Lakewood, and without “The wedding band” we never would have. So we cheered ourselves up and called a local cab company to drive us to the bar. Some stinky unclean sweaty redneck pig came to pick us up, after waiting ten minutes for us to get out of our hotel room, because the lock on the door decides to call it a day and retire so we had to break out, we jumped in the cab. The first thing this inbreed looking sorry excuse of a man did was to ask for a cigarette. Lakewood is a really small place, and the person who drove the car didn’t even know where the fucking brewery was, next thing he did was to complain how the sun hurt his eyes as he drove up a hill against the sun, what a pussy! After explaining our way to the brewery we’re finally there, the air was filled with the sweet smell and aroma of hops. I love the smell of hops in the morning! The bar was packed with people enjoying themselves and suddenly everything seamed brighter. Welcome to “The Empty Pint”…

Haffy & Kjetil with the Pumking!

The first beer we bought were the “Pumking Imperial Pumpkin Ale”, all I got to say is hail to the pumking baby, hail! One of the best beer experiences of my life, halle-fuckins-lujah! Pumpkin pie with crust, spicy and sweet, a dessert, and an experience most beer drinkers never will have, close to perfection. Made with caramel malt and pureed pumpkin, lots of spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and clove, this were one beer I will not be able to forget at all. After that we treated ourselves to seven other glasses from Southern Tier’s tap selection, all of which we’d never tried before. The ones I remember the best were the Hopsun, Harvest, Porter & the Rasberry Wheat. Even got to try a brand new one, the “5 Boroughs Belgian Pale Ale” that were made for the New York craft beer week that was arranged the week after. Beer fresh from the brewery, very recommendable!

Inside "The Empty Pint"... 

One problem with the pub were the staff, most of them didn’t seem overly interested enough to please a craft beer geek, and when one of the employees insisted that we should drink the beer from the pint glasses, I thought it went to far. I asked Kjetil, “Why the hell do you bring beer in pint glasses?” He said: “They don’t wanna give us the other glasses anymore.” At the “souvenir” store, they sold their Imperial Glasses, but what’s the deal with serving these awesome beers in shitty glasses? I of course marched straight to the bar and settled this problem, giving me IPA & stout in pint glasses, who do they think they are? They also sold beer for take away in growlers, a growler is a half a gallon glass bottle, and for only eight dollars you could fill it with anything you wanted in their tap selection. Pretty cool, wish I could do that at Cardinal in Stavanger, I’d come by before a vorspiel and fill it up with my favorites from the tap selection that day.

Arrogant Bastard!

After going through all the Southern Tier’s we hadn’t tried before, we had some of the other beers the bar sold. Now remember me and Kjetil have tried around 28 different beers from Southern Tier in total. That’s why we went for a Stone Arrogant Bastard, an old favorite of Kjetil, awesome beer with tons of attitude and balls, by the way: “you’re not worthy”! I got hold of one of the bartenders for take away beers, among them “Oud Beersel Oude Geuze”, best before 2029, and only 6% alcohol, Impressive, it was quite good actually. Yeah so we figured it were a better idea to go to the hotel room and have some beer, cause some of the local redneck chicks had been looking and drooling at us for quite some time. They looked a bit like the sewer mutants from Futurama, and we really didn’t want to go to some local bar just to be escorted to a shotgun wedding the day after.

Access granted! 

It was midnight when we were planning to leave cause the bar were closing, when one of the guys working there said, “So you’re the guys from Norway, wanna get a tour of the brewery before you leave?” “Yes please!” Pallets upon pallets with beers, oh sweet beer wherefore art thou beer? “Pumking” to the roof and lots of good stuff ready to be shipped out to bring joy to the world. The bottling line still only does 15.000.000 bottles a year, I mean since last time I wrote about Southern Tier. The room isn’t really that large, but there is still room for more fermenters and conditioning tanks, (2.000 gallons each and they had around 20 of em, not really sure been drinking a lot!) and the bottling line isn’t running 24/7 so there should be room for some expansions. In conditioning the last of the Pumking, made only for tap, were enjoying its last days in its mothers womb, just beside a Un*eartly and a Gemini. What perfect symmetry! Southern Tier use their own yeast strain and have two lab technicians making sure the yeast is happy on their pay roll. Southern Tier have been around since 2002 when Phineas DeMink and Allen "Skip" Yahn started the brewery, and if they keep making awesome beers like they do today, there’s really only one way this could go!

All Pumking!

When we left that night we were pretty happy, we went through hell and high water to get there, and almost had to crawl over corpses, but in the end we got the service we’ve learned to expect as spoiled Norwegians. And that’s the way it should be! Before leaving we posed for a picture in front of the Southern Tier logo and when our guide found out we pay 50 bucks for a bottle of Tier at the local pub, he gave us two for free! 

Posers! :/

Cheers and hail to the king baby, hail to the Pumking, the king of American Pumking ale, Southern Tier Pumking Imperial Pumpkin Ale… (Yes you're suppose to have a hard time reading that last sentence!)


- Haffy

The Brooklyn Brewery Story!

Hello everyone, I'm back!

Today I’m here, tomorrow I’ll be gone, well when I don’t feel like writing anymore that is, I will simply stop. Enjoy it today, my little testimonials. Like with good beer, here today, empty tomorrow, some never to be brewed again, and that’s fine, it was awesome, now try something new! And I always try to do just that. But sometimes or some places there’s no options, and that’s bad, other places there’s just a few options, that’s better! (But still not good!) OK so there I was at an airport, or specifically at Aquavit Bar Gardermoen. “Fine” I think, so I ask the bartender, “What do you have?” “East India Pale Ale from Brooklyn Brewery huh?” “Yeah, I’ll have one of those!” And I liked it, yeah it wasn’t my favorite IPA or anything, but it was an alternative to the otherwise crap beers you get served in Norway, and when I went home again I noticed a lot of the local bars, that didn’t really have much of a beer selection had this one. That was my first meeting with Brooklyn Brewery, I think it was a couple of years ago…

Brooklyn Brewery Black Ops

So Kjetil and I were sitting at “Rattle ‘n’ Hum” in New York City one September afternoon in 2011. We ordered the most expensive beer in the bar, a 40$ bottle from Brooklyn Brewery called “Black Ops”. This is what the bottle read: “Brooklyn Black Ops does not exist. However, if it did exist, it would be a robust stout concocted by the Brooklyn brewing team under cover of secrecy and hidden from everyone else at the brewery. Supposedly, "Black Ops" was aged for four months in bourbon barrels, bottled flat, and re-fermented with Champagne yeast, creating big chocolate and coffee flavors with a rich underpinning of vanilla-like oak notes. They say there are only 1000 cases. We have no idea what they’re talking about.” So this 10,7% Imperial Stout totally blew our minds, über complex and everything I expect and love in a stout. Dark as Satan’s soul and sweet as an angels chocolate heart. Awesome!

Me with a Goose IPA @ Ear Inn

Later that day, or another day, does it really matter? We were hanging out at the Ear Inn, as far as I know it’s New York’s oldest working pub. Bought by George Washington’s slave or something back in the early 1800’s. So anyway we met the owner I think, Sheamus, and he said he can set us up on a tour with the owner of Brooklyn Brewery, Steve Hindy. I thought it’s probably just the booze taking, but it sounded cool, so I said to Kjetil let’s gamble on that he’s a real honest guy. But we didn’t hear anything, and I thought, yeah off course all piss and wind. Then on our last night in NYC Kjetil got an sms, that we could go and get a free tour with the owner of the brewery Friday morning before we left.

NYC from one of the bridges to Brooklyn

So we set the alarm on for shit early and went to bed. The morning after we checked out of the hotel, and jump in a bus with no white or english speaking people in it. We headed out for the Central Station. We looked at the subway map and found our way around to the area we planned to visit in Brooklyn. With half an hour left we decide to walk the last mile or whatever, yeah nice neighborhood I thought! "Cop-Shot, 10.000 bucks in reward for tips that leads to the arrest of a cop killer", that’s what the local posters from the NYPD read. (Example) But whatever soon there, yeah then the road ended just before the house number we were looking for. Some friendly dude tells us we’re way off, 20 minutes that way. Awesome, we’re fucked! No taxis wanna stop, until some ladies helps us by calling some Hispanic taxi company. Half an hour later we arrived Brooklyn Brewery at the other side of Brooklyn.

Outside Brooklyn Brewery

I press the buzzer at the brewery and after a couple of minutes of explaining who we were they let us in. By the way the smell outside of the brewery was just awesome, sweet and malty! A short but friendly man greeted us, Steve Hindy that was. “So you’re the Norwegians that are starting your own brewery”, he said. “Yes, we are starting to brew”, were my response. I know we spoke a lot about brewing back at the Ear Inn, but if this misunderstanding got us something extra like this, lets just roll with it I thought. So he invites us into his office and gave me an article he got the same morning on the fax from an old friend from Norway. It was an article by Odd Karsten Tvedt about Brooklyn Brewery, and as far as I’ve understood they both used to be stationed in the Middle East as news correspondents, hanging out drinking and stuff. So we sit around in the office talking for a little while because Steve is waiting for some friends from the Anheuser Busch Empire…

The original sketches by Milton Glasor

On the off shot chance that you read this article because you want to learn more about New York’s finest: Brooklyn Brewery, I will include some facts now before I continue my story! All right, so after drinking homebrew in the middle east as a reporter, you know where alcohol is forbidden and everything, due to the fun, fun, fun “Sharia law”. Well Steve was surprised how good homebrew could be and he thought, damn it I can do this. He had to move home you see not to loose his wife and family, because they were sick and tired of following him into war zones. So Steve and his new neighbor Tom Potter started to brew. It was a rough start and nothing was for free, this was back in 1987. Steve knew that they needed a proper image, and after 10 or 20 requests Milton Glasor, the designer of the world famous “I <3 New York” logo said OK I’ll design your logo. He was paid in stocks cause the company hadn’t earned any money yet. So since they didn’t own a brewery all their beers were brewed at Matt Brewing Company in Utica, NY. Steve and Tom had their own distribution company, and were driving the beer around from store to store, pub to pub themselves. It wasn’t until 1996 they got their own location, in Williamsburg Brooklyn. But due to the capacity the Brooklyn Lager (And some other beers) was still produced upstate in Utica, and that’s how it is still. Now not long after moving into the brewery in Williamsburg, Steve got visited by the mob. Well actually he invited them, because Steve had a new Brewery and they didn’t earn money, he couldn’t afford bribes, and he didn't want his precious brewery burned down, so he invited them to explain his case, back in the 90’s this was still a rough neighborhood. (Maybe still, remember the Cop-Shot poster?) After a while the Mob guys walked out of the room to discuss, Steve sweating bullets heard them laughing their asses off in the next room, when they came back they main guy said: “Sorry we’ll have to hurt you”, squeezed his balls and threw him into the wall, then said: “Only kidding, we’ll leave you alone.” Before leaving they invited him to their Christmas party. Since then the brewery has expanded a lot, they now export to around 17 countries, one of them Norway. Steve is now running the business alone, and is currently planning to buy his own larger brewery with a beer garden upstate. I’m sure Brooklyn Brewery will be a world wide success, only thing I miss is export of their “special” beers.

Magic happens here...

So the Budweiser dudes steps into Steve’s office and we’re ready to start the tour. My first thought is noooooo, not another Goose Island, InBev the company that owns Anheuser Busch/Budweiser bought this excellent microbrewery earlier this year. It was very clear that Steve knew these guys from the road or something, and that selling is not his plan. Every day there is possibilities to get tours at the brewery, except Friday. So as we’re walking around the brewery, getting our Friday tour with the owner, he starts talking about tours. “You know every year we have around 2.000 tourist here for tours in the weekend, they’re always sold out.” And then there are the weekday tours. So we went through every part of the brewery, the fermentation tanks, the boilers, the bottling line, and we listened to stories. At the Brooklyn location all the special beers are made, and that’s the beers I think is the most interesting. We went to the barrel ageing room, and there was another smell, of wonderful oak and vanilla. Before they store the beers on barrels they have been used for whiskey, sometimes sherry or other stuff before that, but after the barrels arrive Brooklyn they are only used three times. After that they’re sold. Steve insisted that he can’t taste any different in flavor whether the barrel has been used once, twice or three times. The barrel aged beers are stored in different temperatures depending on were they are in the “aging” process. No it’s not lager beer! A couple of weeks before our visit, Brooklyn Brewery expanded even more, to get the new and larger conditioning tanks in, they had to remove the roof, with only centimeters to go on each side, or inches as the say in the US, Steve was nerve wrecked and didn’t dare to watch.

The new stuff!

After getting the tour at Brooklyn I now sees them as a microbrewery again, they’re far from as big as I thought. All special beers, the champagne bottles, the local beers, and cask beers for the local pubs is produced in Brooklyn. And Brooklyn Brewery were basically everywhere in NYC. “The importance of the special beers is to keep the fans interested, to keep their attention”, Steve said, when confronted with the question: Why do you make these beers that don’t make that much profit? The Bud guys nodded and said hmmm, before asking more questions about cost issues. Steve then decide to share a story about the “Black Ops” I mentioned earlier. He met a guy, I think it was Obama’s physician, now this was three days after the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. So this guy that meets with Obama weekly said he loved the “Black Ops” beer, and he would love it if the president and his staff could get the possibility to try this beer at this very special time. Some cases of this special threat were shipped to Washington, and there the president sat and enjoyed some “Black Ops” from Brooklyn Brewery, probably contemplating on his next Black OPS, with a beer prescribed by his physician, I want a doctor like that! Steve spoke about the brewing traditions of Brooklyn, even Yuengling, one of Americas largest and oldest breweries used to brew in Brooklyn, before the probation and all hell broke loose. Steve and Tom the co-founders of the brewery wrote a book a couple of years ago: “Beer School – Bottling success at the Brooklyn Brewery”. He said: “After you guys read this, you probably don’t wanna start a brewery after all.” The tour lasted a good 90 minutes, and afterwards we took a picture together and started our long journey home. The visit to Brooklyn had been a success, and if you’re ever in the area I recommend you to book a tour. Oh yeah, and try the special beers, they’re good!

Left to right: Haffy, Steve Hindy & Kjetil (aka Bongo)

Cheers

-Haffy

P.S. It has been pointed out to me that you cannot write an article about Brooklyn Brewery without including Garrett Oliver. Steve mentioned him at our visit, and attributes a lot of his success to him, generously saying he would not have made it without Garrett. Garrett spends most of his time overseeing the production at the larger brewery upstate so we did not meet him when we visited. Garrett has written two popular books about beer: “The Brewmaster’s Table” & “The Oxford companion to Beer”. Pairing beer and food and hosting beer dinners is also one of Oliver’s activities when he’s not accepting awards for his fine work as a Brewmaster!