Microbrewed Adventures - Charles Papazian [76]
At Vello and Dan’s homebrewery recordkeeping was not a habit, but from my senses I surmised they brewed a beer at 1.050 (12.5 degrees B) original gravity. Color was about 14 SRM, and the hop character of Hallertauer contributed about 30 units of bitterness. Their Gotlandsdricke had a fruity and pleasant juniper taste and a smooth, distinctive smoky flavor. But friendly rivalries existed among Gotland’s homebrewers, and everyone had his own secret recipe and styles: sweet, bitter, strong, weak, dark, pale, sour, with more or less smoke and juniper. We finished Vello and Dan’s beer and continued our daylong expedition to Virungs Bryggeri, the island’s brewery/brewpub in the small village of Romakloster. In fact, the small cottage and barn compound seemed to be the entire village. There we visited Lillis Svärd and his family, who raise sheep, run a smokehouse and meat house and operate a small malt house, brewery and attached inn. Lillis malts his own barley and was experimenting with growing and malting wheat and spelt.
A lightly smoked (relatively speaking) version of Gotlandsdricke was brewed using 40 percent lightly smoked malt along with some Munich malt bought from a commercial malt house. Lillis’s other beer is called Drog öl, brewed with pale and Munich malt and honey. Lillis had been a homebrewer for the past ten years and had recently gone commercial. Though he was working on a system with which to bottle his beers, you would have had to be there to experience the finest essence of his craft. Lillis has since closed his brewery in pursuit of developing concrete tepees, but I can’t imagine he has stopped homebrewing.
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VELLO’S GOTLANDSDRICKE
The fruity and refreshing character of juniper boughs and berries combined with the mellow warmth of gently smoked malt emerge as a magical combination. It is not without reason this centuries-old beer tradition remains regionally popular. If you have access to fresh juniper, you can recreate this Scandinavian experience at home. The recipe can be found in About the Recipes.
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I believe that as you brew your next batch of beer, whatever your style might be, Lillis and Vello will be tending their most recent batch of Gotlandsdricke. I fell in love with the stuff and was very pleased with how my first homebrewed batch turned out. I did have a little help, since Lillis gave me about 10 pounds of birch-smoked malt he had made, but you can produce your own style of “dricke” using ingredients locally available. Why? Because you’re a homebrewer and microbrewer.
And if you can drink it out of a wooden juniper mug, please do. It’s simply wonderful.
CHAPTER 9
Flights of the Imagination—Eccentric, Creative and Wild The Netherlands and Belgium
“Geezus I’m blasted. No, not wasted. Blasted. Do I get combat pay for this trip? Everyone seems to want to feed me three times more than I could possibly eat and then pour me five times more than I can possibly drink. I am truly saturated. HELP! I mean having a beer at 10 a.m. is one thing but continuing until 1 or 2 A.M. one after another and knowing that the next day begins at 7 A.M. is an awesome thing to consider.”
—FROM MY TRAVEL JOURNAL, MAY 1995,
THE YEAR I VISITED THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM.
Long Days’ Journeys into Nights
PERHAPS there is no country in the world more under-discovered and under-recognized for its beer culture than the Netherlands. Amsterdam