http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/ Personal blog of Lars Marius Garshol. en larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/222.html When I first got seriously interested in beer, roughly ten years ago, Norway was a miserable place for a beer enthusiast. Norwegian beer was pretty much limited to four styles of lager from the industrials plus two half-decent brewpubs. As for imports, they were not very impressive, either. Two pubs had some Belgian beers, but that was about it. I used to memorize which pubs in Oslo had Erdinger, so I could get something decent to drink while out. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2012-01-26 19:44:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/221.html I can still remember my first sip of lambic. I was sitting in the tasting room of the Cantillon brewery in Brussels after completing the brewery tour, all eager to try the final product. The shock of actually tasting it was all the greater. It was sour! So sour it almost burned. And what's more, it was thin and tasted of metal and grain. This was lambic? larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2012-01-13 17:37:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/214.html Lithuania may be a small country today, but once the joint Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth included much of present-day Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belorussia, and Ukraine. This is why Vilnius has one of the largest surviving medieval towns in Northern Europe, covering well over three square kilometers. So Vilnius is well worth visiting just for the sights, but it also happens that you can find a very rare beer style here: kaimiškas, or Lithuanian farmhouse ales. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2011-05-14 10:40:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/219.html Beer enthusiasts like to say that people who argue over which industrial pale lager is best are missing the point, because they all essentially taste the same, and none of them are very good, anyway. I personally agree with that, and that now that there are so many good craft beers available everywhere, there's really no reason to drink this stuff at all. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2011-05-08 16:23:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/218.html I was recently invited to give a presentation on Topic Maps at Vestlandsforsking in Sogndal, as part of their 25-year jubilee seminar series. I first tried to fly there in December, but because of fog the plane was never able to land. Ironically, the flight itself was absolutely beautiful. The little propeller plane flew over an endless expanse of snow-capped mountains in blazing sunshine. Just before arriving in Sogndal we could clearly see the Jotunheimen mountain range in the distance, sticking up over the smaller mountains. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2011-04-03 10:18:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/213.html A flood of industrial lager has swept away the native beer traditions of just about every country in Europe except, famously, for the Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium, and the UK. Oh, and, it turns out, Lithuania. If you haven't heard about Lithuanian beer traditions, don't worry, because nobody else has, either. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2010-09-18 21:09:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/210.html It's far and away the most spectacular brewpub I've ever seen. Part of it is the location, at the end of a Norwegian fjord surrounded by tall mountains that seem to tower over the little village. But it's just as much the brewpub itself, a dark, bulky wooden structure looking vaguely like a stave church that's lost its tower, decorated with wooden dragons on the roof, in true dragestil. Inside it's no less unusual, as we'll get to in a moment. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2010-08-05 20:33:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/212.html When I heard there was a third gose in Goslar I didn't want to believe it. After all, we travelled to Goslar in 2008 specifically to try the two goses from Brauhaus Goslar, carefully hunted down both the pale and dark versions, and tried them both several times. I then crossed Goslar off my list of "places to visit before I die," and was ready to move on. So to be told that there was another gose in Goslar was not what I wanted to hear. Especially not that it was only available in a place I'd already tried to get in, and failed because it was reserved for a private party. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2010-07-17 11:44:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/208.html In the Nordic countries there is a whole style of brewing that has so far almost completely escaped the attention of beer enthusiasts, although some tips of the iceberg are showing above the surface here and there, if you look carefully. I'm referring to the traditional homebrewers, who have just about nothing in common with the new wave of US-inspired home brewers. What makes these brewers so interesting is that the beers they brew belong to styles that are almost completely unknown outside of these communities. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2010-01-16 14:48:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/207.html When I saw that Dr. Jekyll's Pub in Oslo was arranging a tasting with Brewdog, featuring their Tactical Nuclear Penguin beer, the world's strongest at 32%, I knew I had to go. Unsurprisingly, so did Knut Albert (his blog posting is here) and Geir Ove. The tasting was given by James Watt, who is responsible for Brewdog's marketing. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2009-12-17 08:41:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/204.html It's hard to find the really good pubs in most places in the world of any size, but London presents special challenges, for a number of reasons. First, there is the sheer size of the city, which has a population larger than many countries. Second, there is the enormous number of pubs (about 4000, according to many sources). And, third, there is the vast difference in quality between the average pubs and the really good ones. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2009-10-18 13:26:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/201.html Innis & Gunn has met with a divided reception among beer enthusiasts. Some really like it, some think it's not bad, and some hate it. Personally, I quite like it, and it's one of the very few beers that are oak-aged and fairly widely distributed. So when Dr. Jekyll's pub in Oslo announced a tasting with Dougal Sharp, the creator of Innis & Gunn, I signed up. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2009-06-21 19:23:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/196.html Beer consumption in Norway may be falling, but craft beer production is booming. To cope with increasing demand Haandbryggeriet recently ripped out their old brewing plant, replacing it with a new one. The old one had a capacity of 900 liters per batch, whereas the new one does 2000, more than doubling the batch size. In fact, since the old one could only do 700 liters of strong beers (because of the amount of malts), capacity is close to tripled for these beers. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2009-02-22 13:00:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/194.html I don't usually do beer reviews on this blog, but I got "reviewer copies" of the BrewDog Paradox Smokehead and Isle of Arran, and thought they were worth writing about. Contrary to what you might think, this doesn't mean breweries have suddenly started to send me their beers, clamouring for me to review them. BrewDog sent them to Knut Albert, who kindly passed them on to me. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2009-02-15 13:35:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/193.html It's odd that the pub should in one sense be the ultimate English tourist attraction, since all countries have their own bars and cafés, but somehow the English pub has become part of international culture. And deservedly so, because there really is something special about English pubs. A good English pub is almost like a communal living-room; a kind of home away from home. That is, the good English pubs are like this. They are of course outnumbered by the indifferent or even bad pubs, which are just boozers like those you find anywhere in the world. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2009-02-10 12:34:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/192.html The summer after finishing high school a friend and I set out on an interrail trip through Europe. In England, one of the things we wanted to experience was a proper English beer. So we ordered a Guinness. This was a mistake on many different levels, but I'll limit myself to three here. First, Guinness is of course Irish, and not English. Secondly, we could have had it just about anywhere in Norway. But perhaps the worst mistake was that what's most unique about British beer culture is the cask method of serving beer draft. Guinness, however, even in England, is served from keg, like draft beers in the rest of the world. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2009-01-25 15:07:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/189.html Not long ago, my advice to anyone wanting to try Norwegian microbrew in Oslo would have been to buy bottles from the Wine Monopoly stores and drink them in the hotel room. Not very appealing, of course, but the alternative would have been to hit the two or three pubs that carried a couple of such beers each, where you would have had to argue with the waiters in the hopes of perhaps persuading them to sell you one. (To be fair, Bar & Cigar could be relied on to not just have some, but to also sell them.) larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2009-01-17 13:08:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/187.html I've written before about my experiences as an uncertified beer judge, and when the Norwegian homebrewer's association offered their beer judge certification course again this year I decided to apply. My goal was to learn more about the beer brewing process, to improve my ability to analyze beer, and to learn about specific flaws in beer and how to detect them. If I'd also have to teach myself the Norwegian beer style guidelines I decided that was a price I'd be willing to pay. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2008-11-20 15:39:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/185.html Amber Gold and Black is Martyn Cornell's new book on the history of British beer, currently only available in self-published ebook form. Getting it as a PDF wasn't ideal for me, as it meant I had to pay quite a lot to get it printed, but since Martyn is extremely well-informed on British beer history and passionate about getting his story right, I was more than willing to put up with this in order to be able to read the book. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2008-11-17 18:06:00 CET http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/186.html Samuel Adams Utopias is the world's most expensive beer in regular production, costing about USD 100 in the US. In Sweden the government alcohol monopoly takes in a few bottles every time it's produced, and a friend managed to get hold of a bottle from a pub in Gothenburg. It cost about USD 300 there, though, so he wisely decided to split the bottle with others. In the end we were eight beer enthusiasts who gathered in a flat in Oslo to try it. And, of course, since we were getting together anyway, we brought a few more beers to try at the same time. larsga@garshol.priv.no (Lars Marius Garshol) 2008-11-15 21:40:00 CET