Nose: Raisins, milk chocolate, caramellised something, fried butter and a little eucalyptus. Water brings out the sherry and some congeners, a hint of cellar, possibly some mould.
Palate: Burnt sugar and oak cask. With water the wood tastes rawer, there are a fair few congeners, but also toffee and sherry notes.
Comments: Somewhat strange on the nose, but not at all unpleasant. The congeners are a pluss, they help make the dram more interesting. I prefer the roughness of this to the elegance of the 17 year old. It’s ovbiously worth keeping a look out for these old bottlings.
Nose: Sweed Panda liquorice, Allsorts also, orange marmelade. With water the buttery part of butterscotch and after a while in the glass a hint of smoke.
Palate: Oak. Water opens it up and I find liquorice and eventually the familiar Springbank bitterness, but on this one it’s not overwhelming.
Comments: Very clean and elegant, not a sherry bomb at all. A little too clean and elegant, in that it gets a little boring after a while, but very nice, by all means.
Butterbeer is a drink which may require a little explanation if you happen to be unlucky enough to have missed reading (or seeing) Harry Potter. From that you can probably gather that Butterbeer appears in J. K. Rowling’s novels (and in the films), and so, naturally, it has been “recreated” and is sold at Warner Bros Studio Tour: The Making of Harry Potter in Leavsden outside London and at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida. Well, I say “recreated”, I think a more correct phrase would be “reimagined”.
In the books Butterbeer may be served cold from bottles or warm “in steaming tankards”, but both are said to have a “warming” effect. It’s possible that Rowling based the idea, or at least (subconciously) the name on a drink from the Tudor era, “Buttered beer”, which was made from beer, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, cloves and butter, in recent times recreated by Heston Blumenthal. When asked by the magazine Bon Appetit in 2002 what butterbeer would taste like, Rowling said: “I made it up. I imagine it to taste a little bit like less sickly butterscotch.” It is also reasonable to suppose that the fictional drink has a slight alchohol content, for while it is served to children , the house elves can get drunk on butterbeer.
What you get when you order Butterbeer at Warner Bros Studios is a sort of soda float. A soda-like fluid is pured in the glass and then topped with a soft serve ice cream-esque substance. You can pay extra to have thwe whole in a plastic souvenir tankard, of course. Which we did, of course. You know “fan” is short for “fanatic”, right?
Nose: Vanilla ice cream and toffee sauce.
Palate: “The foam” tastes of vanilla ice cream and toffee, and the “soda” appears to have a toffee flavour, too, the whole is surprisingly refreshing. An attempt at drinking the soda by itself, not through the foam, reveals that is is actually quite bland, a sort of watered-down toffee-flavoured soda.
Comments: As a package quite nice in a way, and much less nausea-inducingly sweet than I expected. I easily finished my “tankardfull” as an accompaniment to my burger. The lass, however, was less convinced (suprisingly, as she has a sweet tooth like the best of them). Her first reaction was “Yum”, but then she decided she liked the foam only, and went to get a spoon to finish it off. But when we’d finished our food and were ready to continue our tour, she hadn’t eaten more than half, which I think qualifies as a “not drinkable” vote from her.
Exactly two weeks ago I was at Myken to take part in the official opening ceremony for the distillery. It was an experience of a life-time, and it was clear that not only do the Myken gang “with freids” have a star-studded tea, but even the weather gods are rooting for Myken. Brilliant sunshine and blue skies are hardly something you can bank on in this country, but that’s what met us on arrival last Tuesday.
It’s possible to note with a smile that the weather gods had a role to play earlier in Myken’s history as well, as it was when they became stuck on the island through bad weather that Roar and Trude – to of the main forces behind the distillery – fell in love with Myken.
I arrived back home after 36 hours with close on 600 pictures and life-long memories, and whether you want me to or not I will be sharing some of them over the next few weeks. Let’s start with the most important part: A tour of the distillery.
Myken Distillery at sunset
Even though the distillery building is fairly anonymous compared to other disitilleries, it’s not exactly hard to find. Myken is not big. In fact, all distances logged on the local signpost are measured in meters, and the number of buildings overall is limited. As the old, temporary signage for the distillery has now been replaced by a new sign with Metric Designs shiny new logo design, it’s even easier to find the right building. It used to be a processing plant for fish, now it contains Myken Distillery on the ground floor and Bruket bord & bar, a restaurant, above it.
The mayor of Rødøy kommune, Olav Terje Hoff, unveils the new distillery sign.
The most important question coming to mind when you see Myken and are told that they distill whisky there should be: “But where do they get their water from?” The answer is a desalting plant which produces clean, clear drinking water from sea water.
Old milk tanks serving as washbacks.
Myken Distillery is a microdistillery and will remain so in the foreseeable future. Most of the processes are unusually dependent on manual input, and the equipent is hardly in the same league as the big players in Scotland. The mashtun is a repurposed plastic tank with an added mesh bottom, the washbacks are old milk tanks, which are available to purchase for the not-so-princely sum of 1 NOK per liter capacity. In fact it’s substantially more expensive to transport them to Myken than to purchase them in the first place.
Stills from Hoga Stills in Spain.
The stills are new and purpose built from copper, but with a somewhat unfamiliar shape if you are used to Scottish stills. This is because they are made in Spain by Hoga Stills Co. The possibility of purchasing stills from Scotland was investigated, but new stills from Forsyth’s would not only have been about five times more expensive, they also had an expected delivery date in couple of years time. As Hoga could deliver within a few months, the choice was made simple for our eager distiller-wannabees. The stills are fired with gas, through gas-powered paella-pans, also from Spain, naturally.
The first spirit was distilled at Myken in December 2014, and throughout 2015 they’ve kept up a steady pace, heading for a total production this year of 5,000 liters. With the equipment thay now have, they expect to be able to increase annual output to a maximum of 15,000 liters over the next few years. In addition they are contemplating investing in another pair of stills, which would put the total capacity at 30,000 liters. Note: Numbers are for actual liters put into cask, not pure alchohol.
Mykens version of a spirit safe.
Despite the manual processes (and technical challenges) the method should be familiar to anyone familiar with Scottish distilleries. The malt has so far come from Weyermann in Germany, and up until two months ago the 125 kilos Myken use per mash were milled on what can only be descriped as a home brewer’s mill (though powered by drill, not hand cranked). A somewhat more industrial version is now in place. The mashtun, as mentioned, is a converted plastic tank. About 700 liters of worts is produced per mash, with 500 liters of water going in at 64-65° C and then a second water of 200 liters at 80° C. The wort is transported to the washbacks by the simple expedient of lifting the whole mashtun with a forklift and transporting it to the washback so the worts can drain off straight in. Up until two months ago, things were not so simple and the worts had to be carried by hand in ten litre buckets from the mashtun to the washback…
The mashtun at Myken.
Myken use dry distillers yeast and the wash is left to ferment on average 3-4 days, but sometimes over a week if that’s what fits the schedule. The resulting wash ends at around 7% abv.
700 liters of wash are run through the washstill, and out come around 200 liters of low wines at 24 % abv. Two runs off the washstill are combined in the low wines tank to feed the spirit still with 400 liters.
Are you quite sure this is the correct tank and bucket?
So 400 liters of low wine are distilled, the head, heart and tail are collected in metal buckets and poured, very manually, into the correct receptacle. Roar told us that the steps up to the spirit receiver were useful in filling the function “time to consider whether this is the correct tank”, since, should someone pour head or tail in there the whole batch would be ruined. Of course it could be redistilled, but then you’d have triple distilled spirits, and something quite unlike the rest of the production. No one has so far made that mistake. After all that they are left with around 100 liters of newmake.
Experimental casks of 5-10 liters.
When they have collected sufficient amounts of newmake it is filled into casks. For experimental purposes they have a variety ofminiature casks of five to ten liters to get an early indication of how the spirit is likely to mature. If you’ve been to a whisky festival and had Myken spirit with some colour to it, it will have been from one of these. With so much wood to spirit interaction we are talking weeks rather than months or years for the spirit to “mature”. It’s not the same as a ten year maturation in proper casks, of course, or we’d likely see retailers’ shelves bulging with “speed matured whisky”, but it does give an indication of how various wood types will interact with the distinct Myken spirit..
Slowly but surely the Myken warehouse is getting filled.
Most of the production goes into ex bourbon barrels (most of them have been fro Maker’s Mark, lately from Wild Turkey), and some goes into 40 liter casks rebuilt from barrels by Thorslund cooperage in Sweden. These smaller casks are open to investors, so if you like you can own your own special Myken cask, if you want more details I published those a while ago.
Sweden: Box Distillery announced at Stockholm Beer & Whisky Festival this week that they are extending their private cask repertoaire with Islay casks. They are not at liberty to disclose which distillery is the originator for the casks, but revealed that it is one of the ones on the south coast, so the candidates are Lagavulin, Laphroaig og Ardbeg. David Tjeder makes an educated guess at Laphroaig (in Swedish only). For those who want the full-on peat experience the cask can be filled with Box’ peated spirit, but I’m more curious to taste the results of one filled with the unpeated variety. The cask will doubtless provide plenty of smoky character, especially since we are talking rebuilt 40 litre casks, but how well will it blend with the somewhat fruity unsmoked Box spirit? Only time will tell.
An Aberlour bottled in the 1980ies, when adding “Glenlivet” to your label was still in vogue.
Nose: Butterscotch, some dry oak. Water brings out a little fruit; apples and some pineapple.
Palate: Fudge with rum-raisin flavour. With water, slate and more fudge.
Comments: Not the most complex of whiskies, but definitely a nice every-day sort of dram. Just the tiny hitch of it being unavailable nowadays, of course.
Lille Gadegaard is a vineyard, but in 2005 they also started distilling malt whisky. The spirit is matured in french oak casks that have been used for maturing the vineyard’s red wine first.
Nose: Relatively rough, with oaky notes and acetone. With water burnt rubber takes over the nose and blocks any other aromas.
Palate: Tobacco, some acetone, oak and burnt rubber. Raisins or other dried fruits on the finish. Hardly any development with water.
Comments: This is an example of how wrong you can go with “speed maturation”, this is both too young (which the nose proclaims loudly) and at the same time the cask influence is too heavy. I think the spirit in itself is pretty decent, but it’s hard to tell, because it’s not been given the chance to shine. The taste is better than the nose in this one, the tobacco saves it from being totally undrinkable.
At the start of our summer vacation we stayed two nights in Lillehammer in order to visit the Hunderfossen amusement park. Two nights’ stay means one evening per adult to investigate Lillehammer’s pubs and beer selection. Arve had done some research and identified two likely pubs (well, three, but Lillehammer Brewery, who also have a pub, was not open Monday and Tuesday, which was the days we were there): Nikkers and Heim gastrobar. The former has two sections, one sports bar with a reasonably good selection of beers, the other a restaurant which gave the impression of catering well to families with children.
So Monday we tested Nikkers restaurant for dinner. The adults had beer from Austmann and the kids got coloured pencils and a children’s menu with built-in activity booklet. Everyone was happy with the food and the kids got a balloon on the way out. Conclusion: A perfectly decent place to eat, with a few nice beers available, even if the selection was limited.
Heim gastrobar
Later in the evening I started my pubcrawl at Heim. I had an Ægir Skjeggjøld (bottled), since there was not anything I felt particularly tempted by on the 8 taps at that moment. Well, 12 taps, to be exact, but four of them were branded Heineken taps, so I didn’t really count them. On the important 8 taps were Nøgne Ø Blonde, La Trappe Trappist Quadrupel, BrewDog 5am Saints, Brewdog Punk IPA, Nøgne Ø Saison, Ægir IPA, Samuel Adams Boston Lager and Weihenstephaner. The selection of bottled beers was considerably more impressive, and they even had three proper. The food was priced at an acceptable level and smelled delicious (since I’d already eaten I didn’t test it).
Respectable selection at Heim
Of stronger liquids I counted 50ish Scottish single malts and around 20 various whiskies (Irish, Japanese, Swedish, bourbon and blended).
Heim have a food and drinks club called Heimkunnskap, arranging tastings regularly. If you’re staying nearby for an extended period, I recommend checking it out, as an example Martin Markvardsen will be visiting in August.
Unfortunately I was suffering from a cold, or I’d probably have stayed at Heim for the rest of the evening, writing tasting notes for whisky. As it was, I moved on to visit a sports bar. Oh yeah.
Nikkers sport
At Nikkers Sport I had a Samuel Adams Boston Lager from tap. The other beers they had on tap were Founders All Day IPA (well, empty just when I was there, but branded tap), Newcastle Brown Ale, Paulaner, Strongbow and Heineken (why, Lillehammer, why?) in addition to 20-30 bottled beers. 5-6 single maltes, including Blair Athol Flora & Fauna 12 years old of all things, I hazard a guess that it’s been there for a while. If such things were allowed in Norway, I’d have offered to buy the remaining contents, including bottle, to bring home, but as I couldn’t it’s still there (untill someone has the sense to drink the lot). Accoring to the menu, simple food was available in the form of burgers, club sandwich and chicken salad.
The bar at Nikkers sport
As a sports bar Nikkers (I’d tend to say: unfortunately) up to its name. There were big screens on all walls, impossible to seat oneself in a manner not looking directly at one, and football (BRA vs KRI) on every one. But the pub was empty, so it was otherwise quiet, I buried my nose in my book (Funny Girl by Nick Hornby, I warmly recommend it) and ignored the irrelevancy.
The outside seating of Nikkers restaurant at right, Blåmann just visible on the left by the waterfall.
While we ate at Nikkers restaurant earlier I had noticed a place on the otehr side of the river calling itself Blåmann Gastrobar. Without any exalted expectation I wandered over there to check it out. All I can say is I hope they focus on food and perhaps win, because in the beer and spirits departments I found them woefully lacking. 3 Highland Park (including the 30 year old, perhaps they go for the people with money?), 2 Macallan and 1 Laphroaig. After a while I noticed a few more bottles hidden on a dark shelf, I could identify Lagavulin 16, and 5-6 American whiskeys were also available. Beer-wise they had Ringnes on tap (not Heineken, hurrah!) and five-six bottled.
Blåmann
The interior design in the bar area I found a bit… odd? I got a “posh hotel lobby”-vibe. Sitting down at the bar was certainly not inviting, so I retired to a corner with my book. I had a Franziskaner Dunkel Weisse, and it was very nice, thank you.
The restaurant section of Bryggerikjelleren, there was an identical vault on the other side of the bar.
As Lillehammer bryggeri was regrettably not open on Mondays, I ended my pubcrawl with a stop at Bryggerikjelleren. Well, the setting was cool, at least. Bryggerikjelleren is really a restaurant, but they have an area near the entrance that works better as a lounge for a beer or two. You’re supposed to wait to be seated, which was a problem for me, since, being on my own, I did not make enough noise and no one discovered I was waiting until another party got in line behind me. Being three, they were talking among themselves. Other than that I would advice that they proof read their menu before they have quarrelsome customers, because in the menu it said “Brooklyn Dark Lager”, while what I was served was a standard Brooklyn Lager. I suspected as much before I ordered, so I couldn’t be bothered to complain, but it was vaguely disappointing nonetheless.
Ghostly Brooklyn lager.
After Bryggerikjelleren I ended my crawl. My recommendation would be to stick to Nikkers and Heim – and Lillehammer bryggeri, Wednesday to Saturday. I’ll make sure to visit them at a later date.
Just to show it was not entirely unreasonable to hope that Brooklyn Dark Lager would appear before me.
Nose: Singed juniper wood and juniper berries. Lemon. Vanilla and coffee, and spices; chai? More of everything with water, but also chalk and mineral notes.
Palate: A lot. Let’s see: Immediately a little burnt rubber and liquorice, then herbs and after a while oak planks and one the finish coffee. The chalk makes and appearance on the palate as well with water.
Comments: I’ve poured a The Challenger in another glass to compare the two, and I still find Challenger closed on the nose. Explorer has more of a full in-your-face-nose. But they are both good. Very good, in fact. In six months the fourth and last bottling of The Early Days Collection will be released. I will be ready and waiting on the date of release, and once I’ve got it I will, of course, have a quadrupel paralell tasting. I’m already looking forward to it.
