Nøgne Ø

Hello, I'm still on the beer trip, I usualy only drink during weekends but it's "fall vacation" and it's my first real vacation in 7 years, and so I'm going a little hedonistic becasue next week it's standard week again and school, so since I'm learing to like beer i might as well sit up late at night watching mel brooks films and drinking beer.

When I get into something I start to absorb knowlage, if I can read about it I can learn it.

I did it with Napoleoincs, ACW, AWI, 30YTW, and I did it with whisky, now I know a hell of alot more about Napoleoincs then Whisky, but as I said if I can read it, I can learn it, so I've read the basics of whisky, watched vidoes of the brewing and distilling prosses. so I did the same with Beer, reading about the diffrent types, how they are made their classificaion ect.

In my reading travles I came acros this Norwegian Brewery called Nøgene Ø, that's Danish for Naked Isle and comes from Henrik Ibsen in a poem, Anyway to understand the imporantce of this brewery you need to know that 98% of all beer made, sold and drunk in Norway is a piss caled pilsner or in norwegian just pils, it's bad stuff, but norwegians don't know how bad they have it, they are naive. Kinda like in the 80's when a Frank Zappa song Called Boby Brown, it became a BIG hit in norway people dancing to it ect. ofcourse Norwegians were stupid back then, and aperantly did not get the refrence to Golden Shower, we know better now, but the concept of norwegians digging and dancing to a song about a man pissing on another man is kinda funny.

It's the same today only the piss is not in a song but in the form of bad beer, norwegians drinks vast amounts of this stuff and they don't know there is actualy a whole world of other types of beer out there.

So in 2002 two home brewers stars a company, that now has grown into selling 250 000 liters of beer a year, half of which go to other countries, they have won atleast 1 price in 2008 for their Dark Horizon First edtion, they make propper beer, IPA, Imperial stout, bitter ect. and sevral other designer beers. I fell in love with the concept of the whole brewery, it would kinda be like if the whole of Scotland only made Blended whisky, and every body in Sotland only drank Blended whisky, but Ireland and Japan made Single malt, then suddenly a sole distillery in Sctoland decided to make a single malt, the Scots don't know what this single malt thing is all about, the blanded scotch is wonderfull nothing could be better ect. You get the point, same with beer in Norway, so these guys started a company that have gotten it's own fan club or association.
The make ale propper ale.

Today I tested thier Imperial Stout, at 9% abv it's strong, but damn it's bitter really really bitter, the foam is almost black, it takes some getting used to but I think I can learn to like it,
Something in the same ally was their Porter, Porter is fast becoming my favorite beer, Nøgne Ø proter is simular to thier imperial Stout only milder, it got the same feel and taste only slighlty less of it. It's bitter but not as bitter, it's almost as dark, it goes REALY well with dark chocolate, and ofcourse a strong peated whisky.

Well that's the report if you find Nøgne Ø were you live try it, I recomend in particular their porter and Imperial Brown, they do send some quanteties to America, I don't know if you can get in the Canada but you do get it in the States, and aperantly England, most of their beers have gotten a good grade at RateBeer website.