Based on an old recipe from Telemark that probably originated from the west coast of Norway.

Report from a course in brewing held on the farm Nedre Nordbø in Bø / Telemark, Norway. Courseleader and experienced homebrewer was Jens Terje Tennfjord.

The yeast needs nutrition in the form of sugar. Barley corn contains very small amounts of sugar, but is rich in starch. When barley corn grows, and before the plant itself can take energy from photosynthesis it uses its own starch directly.

The first step is that the starch must be transformed into sugar. This takes place during warming up of the malt and by the help of enzymes (Enzymes have the ability to build and rebuild molecules without destroying themselves.)

The Mash

The enzymes that are formed during the malting prosess will break down the starch to form less complex sugars. The formation of the different sugars is determined by the warm up rate of the mash. Some of these sugars will be used in the fermeentation process, others will determine the taste of the beer.

Warming up

We put the crushed malt into a Brewing Pan (Ours are made of stainless steel and contain 200 litres). The evening before we boiled approx. 100 litres of water with the juniper branches in, in an old iron brewing pan. On the brewing day we boiled it up again and took out the Juniper. Then we mixed the malt and some of the juniperwater. We took about a third of the malt a time. This we did to make it easier to work with and to get a good mixture. We did not want to go over 55°C so we used fresh water to cool the juniper water down before we mixed it with the malt.

The mixture should be as thick as thin porridge. We used the stick we mixed the blend with to test it. If the stick slowly falls to the side when released then we have the right consistence. It will be thinner during the warming up process. We started with the temperature of 55°C and it took us 3 hours to reach 78°C.

Our objective was to give the different enzymes good working conditions. If we do the best we can, and be careful that everything we use during the process is clean then we have a goood chance of making a good and shameless beer. A shameless beer means as follows: Its a beer you can drink and not get any warning before you are drunk.

The "Rost"

Rost is an old Norwegian word for the drum where you extract the wort from the malt.

-Our Rost is a plastic drum about 200 litres. In the side of it, close to the bottom there is a valve where the sweet wort is extracted. Over the outlet with the valve we lay some sticks made of the tree Alder, we removed the bark first.

Why Alder? -We don't know, but the old recipe says that Alder must be used.

Over the sticks we made a bed of Juniper. This is the strainer to prevent malt following the wort out of the rost. We took the malt from the brewing pan and into the rost. It is important that the air which is trapped in the strainer comes out as big bubbles during the filling of malt or just after. If it doesn't the air can prevent the wort coming out the valve.

When all the malt is in place in the rost, we start filling the rost with juniper water (not too hot). Always keep the level above the malt, and keep the juniper water pan good and warm, refill it with water when necessary. It is easy to cool down, but there may be a problem if the level of juniperwater is not high enough.

We tapped the wort out of the rost until the taste of the wort almost was gone. We got about 180 litres of wort. Then we started boiling it until there was about 140 litres left. This took about 4 hours. We put the two 300 g bags of hops into the the brewing pan (where we were going to boil the wort) and poured the wort onto them. We pressed them with the mixing stick we used mixing the malt with juniper water at the earlier stage. Its important to mix the hop-extract with the wort as soon as possible. After one hour we took out one of the bags, the other was in the Wort for the whole boiling period. The last bag of hops (100 g) was only boiled for the last 30 min. The different boiling times for the hops are based on experience from several years of making beer in the old fashion way. If we allow all the hops to be boiled in the 4 hours we loose the good sweet taste that we want and we will get a beer with a strong and bitter taste.

Cooling and testing of the Yeast

It is important to cool down the wort as soon as possible and in order to start the fermentation just as you reach the correct temperature, 28°C.

We tested the yeast in good time in two different bowls, mixed it with cold water and then warm wort. If we didn't get the yeast to work we still had time to contact other brewers to get hold of more yeast. There is an unwritten rule saying that all brewers must help others as much as they can in case of problems.

If the yeast reacts well it will show within 20-30 min. then you mix it with the wort which holds 28°C.

Fermentation

Fermentation creates heat and we measured up to 35°C after 12 hours. The fermentation creates new yeast which will float on top, this yeast we take off a couple of times to use it next time we brew. -We washed the yeast several times with cold water and then dried it, after that we wrapped it in plastic and put it in the refridgerator.

After 3 days we filled the beer into drums and placed them in a cold room to prevent further yeasting.

After 3-4 weeks when the beer had cleared we bottled it (and tasted it off course. Mmmmm) and gave them 3-4 weeks more before we enjoyed the beer as beer should be enjoyed.

Good luck!