Tag Archives: norway

Homage to the white bits on the map

Announcing the arrival of an Icelandic blogger to the scene the other day, Knut used the catch-all term ‘the white areas on the map‘. As anyone who saw this satellite image in the papers this week will know, Britain has temporarily joined the club, and so it seemed the perfect opportunity to get into the spirit of things.

Here’s what we did yesterday:

  1. Put Johan Johansson on the stereo.
  2. Had a hot bath.
  3. Rolled in the snow.
  4. Got back in the hot bath.
  5. Ate a salad of pickled herring, potatoes, beetroot, apple, onion and sour cream.
  6. Drank the bottle of Nøgne ø God Jul we were given by Knut before Christmas.

We enjoyed the beer a lot. It’s a classy, complex drop which is nonetheless easier going than Harvey’s Imperial Stout. We got something different with every mouthful but the overall picture was of treacle with a hint of wood smoke. We liked the fact that, although very dark, it was deep brown rather than black. The head was so far off white that, for a moment, we wondered if there might be saffron in the beer.

Additional notes: We didn’t roll in the snow for very long because we felt like a right pair of twats. The music eventually proved too pretentious for us and we put ABBA on instead. The table we ate off was bought from IKEA. After this bizarre interlude, we went to the pub for a bottle of Fuller’s 1845.

Update: here are Beer Sagas’ reviews of Nogne ø beers, and here’s the Beer Nut on Nogne ø God Jul Islay Cask edition.

Christmas Beer from Norway

It’s always nice when you hit upon a single word review of a beer: Oreos would do it for Ringnes Jullebok, one of a pair of Norwegian Christmas beers we were given by Knut Albert a few weeks ago when we met him in London.

At the time he described it as the most interesting Christmas beer from the big industrial brewers. Ringnes is the Norwegian arm of Carlsberg, he explained, and told us not to expect too much from the beer.

It looked lovely — transparent, dark, with an off-white head — but didn’t really have enough going on to justify its strength (9%). Boak didn’t like it much at all, having an aversion to overt sugariness in beer, but I enjoyed its smooth, lingering chocolate flavour.

Now we just need to find an opportunity to drink the bottle of Nøgne ø Christmas beer before Twelfth Night. If it’s bad luck to leave up your decorations after then, surely the same must go for drinking Christmas beer?

Bailey