Tollef Fog Heen's blog

Ben Nevis is the tallest mountain on the British Isles and also the name of one of the beers that the Bridge of Allan brewery makes. We visited the brewery around the start of the year. One of the beers we brought back was a Ben Nevis, described as a ruby red IPA. I'd classify it as more of a dark amber or brown ale. The taste is quite hoppy without being too bitter and with a fair amount of malt. A bit of fizz for a British beer, but I quite like it that way. All in all, a good and drinkable brown ale.

A Lithiuanian light lager, 0.33 bottle. Colour is light straw while the foam is pure white. As most lagers, this is filtered and not bottle-conditioned. The foam leaves some signs behind, but not much. Smell is not very particular in any direction; a bit fresh and maybe a hint of summer, but not very strong.

The beer tastes a bit like an ale with the rounder, more friendly taste than the fizzy and almost angry lagers. Decent amounts of carbonation, but absolutely not too much. Medium bitterness with a tiny, tiny hint of citrus.

All in all, an interesting enough light beer, but those aren't among my favourites, so it falls through because of that.

In Drammen, a bit outside Oslo, there's a small brewery called "HaandBryggeriet" (meaning "The Hand Brewery"). Among their beers is a porter which I picked up some weeks ago. Today, I decided to taste it.

The bottle is not the same as the somewhat-standard Nøgne Ø bottles which have become common lately, but one which has a bit less of a neck and a bit rounder. The beer itself is bottle-conditioned, unpasturised and unfiltered, so the usual precaution of leaving the last cm or so in the bottle applies.

Dark beer, as a porter should be. It doesn't have much fizz, nor does it have much foam. A bit too little, in fact, but I don't mind too much about that. The taste is slightly bitter, with lots of chocolate and coffee. Somewhat sweet and very nice. Only a shame it's just a half-litre bottle.

A fairly light beer made for Easter. Bryghuset Svaneke is a small brewery on the Danish island of Bornholm. They make tiny batches, just about 1000 liters. The beer itself is a somewhat-fruity ale. Not too much foam which lies down quickly. Carbonation is on the same level as most pilseners, so fairly carbonated, but it's naturally carbonated on bottle.

All in all a nice Easter beer from a small and nice brewery. I had a bottle of it last year too, but can't remember what it tasted like then, except it was a whole lot cheaper. This time, I bought it from Vinmonopolet (the state-run wine, spirits and strong beer monopoly) where it costs a whole lot more than in Danish supermarket.

This is the second of a set of sample beers Karianne and I brought home from Canada. It's described as "a golden ale with a slightly fruity taste and a light spicy aromatic flavour". It's absolutely an ale, but it mostly reminds me of Stjørdalsøl, the "beer" Anders served this fall. Unlike Stjørdalsøl, this is carbonated like normal beer. What's special about this compared to a regular ale is the taste of burnt or smoked barley. As long as the taste is not too strong, I find it quite good, but too much (as is the case with Stjørdalsøl), it just gets overwhelming and makes the beer undrinkable.

The body is relativetly thin, as is the case with regular ales. Carbonation is a bit on the high side compared to the rest of the beer. The ale is more of a spring or summer drink than something to drink around the turn of the year.

So, all in all an interesting beer, but not one I'm going to drink much more of in the future (just the fact that you can't get it outside of Canada limits the chance I'll see it again anyway).

So, since Anders has continued blogging about beers, I figured I might try blogging about interesting beers too.

I had a beer I bought in Finland, during a beer-shopping spree Magni and I went on. Some of the beers were ok-ish, but this is absolutely one of the good ones. It's a stout, so it's black. The head was very small, but it smelled good. The dark, sweet (but not overwhelming) smell of a dark beer. A bit of chocolate, but not too much of that either.

The first two or three tastes were when the beer was still a bit too cold, so it lacked a bit in the body, but once it warmed up that corrected itself. Full and nice chocolate/coffee-taste. The carbonation is medium, so neither flat nor tounge-biting.

Unlike some other stouts, this one doesn't feel like it will fill up my stomach, so it's much more like a porter in that regard. (Incidentially, porters and red/brown ales are my favourite kind of beer.)

All in all, a very nice beer and I hope I'll find more of it in the future.