A few years ago I came across a now seminal post by Lars Garshol, called “Brewing with kveik”, in which he discusses brewing a traditional farmhouse ale in Voss, Norway, with a local brewer and his family yeast – in that part of the world, yeast is referred to by homebrewers as Kveik. (Pronounced Kwike, to rhyme with bike).
The strain of yeast in question is remarkable in a few different ways – because it can ferment extremely quickly, is comfortable fermenting at temperatures that would usually render beer undrinkable, and because the ester profile that it imparts is aromatic and quite unique – described by several writers as orangey, or like Christmas spice.
Lars took a sample, and with the brewer’s blessing this was later sold in limited quantities via the Yeast Bay. Before I had even got my vial home, I already knew that I wanted to try and replicate the original farmhouse recipe as much as possible.
One of the reasons I wanted to do this is that I don’t have a frame of reference for what this traditional Voss beer, or Vossaøl, would normally taste like. In addition to this curious aromatic yeast, in much of Norway the farmhouse ale is brewed with a Juniper infusion, instead of hops.
This is by all accounts an ancient practice, which used to be far more widespread. While beer is a very old invention, the use of hops is somewhat more recent (although still very ancient). Using Juniper was by itself an exciting prospect for me – although, in fairness, I’ve yet to try brewing a beer made with Bog Myrtle, which was also traditional in days of yore. Maybe it’s the Gin drinker in me, but Juniper seems a lot easier to romanticise.
As it happens, Juniper was also the primary sticking point. To stay authentic, I’d have to find some Common Juniper growing wild, and ensure I’d correctly identified it. I live in a city, so this was always going to be a bit of a quest. I went on several treks out into Scotland to find Juniper. Eventually, with the help of my brewing partner Mark, we brought home a bag of very, very, definitely Juniper.
A lot of folk online who’ve considered brewing using Sigmund Gjernes’ traditional farmhouse recipe have settled for using dried berries, rather than branches. I bought some berries, and, mulled over the sealed packet for several weeks. But I held off. Lars summary of the Voss brewers shared opinion stayed my hand: “On the subject of berries they were in full agreement: the fewer the better.”
It seemed to me there was little point in trying to make an authentic recipe only to take shortcuts that had been expressly advised against.
Recipe
Here’s the recipe that I used, to make around 15 litres:
- Pilsner Malt / Lager Malt – 5Kg.
- A good, active starter of Kveik
- Juniper branches – as pictured below
- Hops – low alpha lager hops, Saaz or Tettnang to about 10 IBUs
(Hops are used in addition to Juniper, but their presence is really low in the mix.)
As you can see, the grain bill is very simple, and I would never usually brew a beer with a single base malt and no additional specialty malts. Specialty malts will often add yeast nutrients, give flavour or complexity to the malt character of a beer, and they’re also used to give a beer body, head retention, texture and mouthfeel.
Method
Create a mash infusion using juniper branches. Sieve off detritus as it heats.
Notice below how the infusion gains a distinctly green tint. I didn’t taste the water at this stage, but it had a warm juniper aroma as it heated.
At temperature, it's time to mash the pilsner malt in the juniper infusion, on a bed of juniper branches. Historically, these would have acted as a filter.
We set a strike temperature of around 70 degrees C, and allowed the temperature to drop as it mashed. We used a recirculating mash system, and were able to apply heat throughout the mash, so we took advantage of that and let it bottom out at around 60. Traditionally, the temperature would be allowed to drop naturally, and the main thing to avoid is reaching a temperature where the wort could sour (in the mid 50s).
We added hops to the mash, as well as during the boil. However, I get the impression that hops are being added to these traditional recipes for their inoculating properties, rather than their character. (Hops can help fight off bacterial infection, which will generally spoil the flavour of a beer).
We mashed out after 3 hours, and sparged to about 30 litres. (That is, we rinsed the grain with hot water, to make sure we got as much sugar out as possible). Actually, one thing we almost forgot was to use more juniper infusion instead of plain water for the sparge.
After sparging, you have “wort” the precursor to beer. Usually, this is boiled. Homebrewers will typically boil between 45 and 90 minutes. But in this case, the boil is supposed to last a long, long time, and given we were brewing in Scotland in December, it got dark fast, as you'll see in all the pictures.
Here’s an interesting thing about when the wort reaches the boil; normally when brewing beer, you get a foam occurring on the surface around boiling point, along with a coagulation of proteins called the hot break. I would tend to stir the foam back into the mix, and at this point you tend to be more concerned about the potential for your kettle to boil over than the break itself.
However, with the juniper infusion, you’re advised to take the scum off, which is much as you would do when making mead. (Sigmund called this getting rid of the headache, and I’m all for that.) So here's my co-brewer Mark taking off the break, while I just plain take a break.
If you look closer, you might notice that the break is really quite different in character to a regular brew – it’s a lot more viscous, and it folds a bit like the skin of cold custard. It has a browner colour than usual as well.
At the end of the boil we used a counterflow chiller to pass chilled wort directly into our fermenter. The incredible thing about this yeast is that Sigmund pitches at 40 degrees C.
A lot of people seem scared to try this, but I wasn’t about to break with tradition after coming so far. So here’s us monitoring the temperature as we decant to the fermenter:
What’s the worst than can happen, right?
I’ve fermented with higher than normal temperature yeast before – things like the Du Pont saison strain at around 30 degrees - but even that would probably fail long before this kind of temperature.
A good starter (strong, lively, well fed preparation of yeast) seemed like a must to me, because we wanted the yeast to get to work right away, before the temperature drops; it won’t stay at 40 degrees forever, and certainly I wasn’t proposing to try and maintain that kind of temperature artificially.
This one has been prepared a few days in advance, to get it right where we want it.
The beer fermented for four days before reaching a gravity around 1.020.
That number suggests that less of the sugar had been converted to alcohol than I expected. I waited another few weeks to see if it would go lower, but it didn’t.
I wasn’t sure whether this was a stuck ferment, a side effect of pitching at a high temperature, a lack of nutrients due to using only base malts, not enough oxygen, or what.
Eventually I decided that it probably had finished, and given that this Voss clone was intended to be drunk still, I decided it would probably be safe to bottle at 1.020. The gravity hasn’t changed in the bottle in a couple of months now.
The ABV works out at around 6%, which is somewhat lower than the 8.5% I’d been expecting. We lost out at both ends, as we both didn’t boil off as much wort as expected (perhaps due to the cold) and finished at a higher final gravity.
At any rate, here's a finished bottle:
The finished beer pours almost still, with just the hint of effervescence. There's zero head, but you can see some bubbles cling to the inside of the glass in the first few seconds after the pour.
Tasting
The nose is floral and honey, and reminds me of mead, but this doesn’t carry over into the flavour.
It has some bitterness, but it’s an abrasive, woody bitterness, which is more singular in character than the beer I’m used to drinking, lacking the rounded bitterness of well applied hops. That said, the bitterness is not dominant - apparently skimming off the scum during the boil helps to reduce this bitterness, and I’d guess that this has gone well in my brew.
The flavour is sweet and very fruit and spice forward, Christmassy is a pretty good term. At first, it’s a rich wine-like experience, that you’d expect to have in much stronger drinks, and then you get some of that honey character following. It’s really only when you let it sit on the tongue for a while that you get a sense of the underlying malt character, which is simple and bready.
As a drink, this is as different from beer-as-i-know-it as Gin is different from Vodka. But despite using that all-too-easy analogy, there’s not really a ‘gin’ character to this beer. The fruit flavour I believe is mostly coming from the yeast, and while the juniper might be adding to the overall effect, it’s not distinct on the palate - I suppose there’s a good chance it would have been more present, or even overwhelming, had I used berries, and that’s probably why they’re typically avoided.
This beer will stick with me long after the last bottle is gone, both for the adventure of brewing it, and the genuinely different nature of the final drink. I consistently bring this out if I’m showing off a variety of beer, and it never fails to generate interest and discussion.
Final note
Even though I’ve taken as read the advice to avoid Juniper berries, I am tempted to re-do the brew using berries, just to be able to compare the difference – as far as I’m aware, nobody has tried this yet, or explained in detail what kind of difference you’d expect to see.