#2- Ægir India Pale Ale

This beer was the second beer from a beer tasting I taught last month, following the first beer I reviewed, the St. Georgen Kellerbier. And who knows, maybe number three will be the third we tried? SUSPENSE!

Ægir India Pale Ale

Though I served this at the tasting, I had actually had a small glass (250ml... what can I say? Beer is expensive) at the ultra-hip and over-hyped new cafe in Grünerløkka, Nighthawk Diner. They had it on tap, along with a few other tasty boozes, including the obligatory Nøgne Ø and Haandbryggeriet. When I tasted it then, it was pretty good. But -and this is weird- it was salty. A little like olive brine. There are a few things that could cause that, the two most likely being a particularly hard water source with lots of sodium, or otherwise some really salty chips in the washing machine at the restaurant. I was pretty prepared to reject the more unsanitary of the two options, not so much out of lack of merit, as the Woody Allen-esque hypochondriac that it would certainly reveal. On the other hand, avoiding public places will give me more time to write this blog. Silver lining?

In order to avoid writing the Infinite Jest of beer reviews, I'll skip over most of the background on Ægir. They are a small brewery that is only three years old (teethed and all) from "The Living Postcard from Norway" Flåm. And their IPA indeed smacks of the rainy seaside, reflecting their attempt to duplicate the American India Pale Ale style of the Pacific Northwest, especially Sierra Nevada, Deschutes, and Rogue.

This beer pours a clean white head, and is the colour of padouk (or rosewood, if you don't feel like googling padouk. Ok, fine, it's orange-red:[ ). This aroma of this beer is incredible. Immediately I was transported to the seaside. Cascade hops, (or one of it's alliterative big sisters Centennial or Columbus), when added late in the brewing process, can produce a lot of really interesting flavours. In this nose you can find everything you need to put you on a rainy walk by the sea; the saltiness is still there, but much more subtle and suggesting seaweed, rain, grass, and a little citrus. Ok, so I guess you're walking on a grassy beach in the rain, eating a grapefruit. It could happen?

The flavour profile was more balanced than the aroma, with a certain amount of malty sweetness to balance some of the hoppy bitterness. But considering its color, I was surprised at how little caramel or nuttiness there was on the palette. When drinking a beer of 6.5% alcohol, it is expected to have a little more nuance in the malt flavour. Notwithstanding, this is still a delicious booze, and the closest I've seen a european brewery come to reproducing faithfully a Northwest IPA. This is one of my favorite styles of beer, and perhaps the one I know best. For further reading, I recommend trying an IPA from any of the aforementioned breweries, or Firestone, Odell's, Stone, or Dogfish Head. None of which, of course, are available in Norway. Shit!

And by the way, while this beer was salty, it was nowhere near as salty as it was at Nighthawk. Gross.