Brewing Raw Ale in Hornindal
This past weekend, I have have been enjoying a whirlwind series of events related to the farmhouse ale festival (Norsk Kornølfestival) they hold in Hornindal, Norway each fall. I will be posting more about the fest and farmhouse brewing more broadly, but I thought it would be nice to do a detailed visual depiction of raw ale brewing.
On Friday, Stig Seljeset offered attendees a demonstration of how he makes the beer, from the wood-fired juniper infusion through pitching his own strain of kveik yeast (kveik #22, Stalljen). Below are the photos, and I’ll narrate as we go.
In the first series below, we arrived at the brewhouse (or pergola) up a valley above Lake Hornindal, Europe’s deepest.
The view from the brewhouse.
The brewhouse itself, with a living roof common in this area.
Stig (left) begins by collecting juniper boughs for the mash water infusion. This will both flavor the beer and add an antiseptic barrier to infection.
Juniper water on an open fire. I believe this copper pot is roughly 200 liters (over 50 gallons)—in any case, it’s quite large.
As the water heats, the brewer prepares the mash tun. In the actual event, we used a more sophisticated steel tun with a metal strainer, but typically Stig would use a plastic tun (in the old days they were wooden) he’d prepare with a filter log and juniper boughs. (Even with the steel mash tun, he packed it with juniper.)
The log has a trough in the bottom and holes throughout.
Stig places the open end next to the faucet and then,
and 4., he packs juniper boughs around the log for finer filtration.
Next, he carefully places the malt on top of the juniper. In Hornindal, they use regular commercial malt sold to homebrewers.
Adding malts.
Malt ready for mashing. The paddle in the center of the mash tun is juniper and dates to the 1970s.
Adding the juniper-infused water.
The mash sits for some time (I have audio notes on all of this, but they are as yet untranscribed—details available if you want them). Then the sparge comes next, again with juniper-infused water. This is a long, slow process, which ensures good extraction.
The thin thread of wort pouring into milk cans.
Scooping out sparge water.
Adding water to rinse the grains.
Now we’re ready to pitch the kveik yeast.
First, Stig cools the wort with an ingenious collar of hose perforated to dribble out cold water.
Dried kveik yeast. This is one of its many unusual qualities—the ability to dry and remain wholly viable. He offered take-home pitches of yeast to anyone who wanted them. (I did!)
Creating a starter.
I took a video of the actual pitching, and this is the frothy, just-pitched wort (those bubbles came from pouring wort into the fermenter, not the yeast—yet).