Oslo, Norway

The only two things I know about Norwegian beer comes from Jan Hillesland's book "All about beer that a man needs to know", they are "Lorry" (a restaurant with a beer garden) and "Ringnes" (the most popular local beer in Norway).  I tried both within four hours since my touching down on this part of Scandinavia (including three hours of searching for the correct way from the airport to the B&B).  I never imagined that I would be surprised by many more during the short stay in the capital city of Oslo.

Lorry and Ringnes

The neighbourhood around my B&B (Holegata) is neat and tidy, basically everywhere in Oslo is neat and tidy (you might feel too tidy if you started to get used to the Polish way).  A short walk downhill took us from the B&B to Lorry.  The interior of the restaurant looked like an haunted house, filled with all kinds of exquisite objects ranging from 兵馬俑, chairs for a king and a queen, a deer's head, and anything you name it.  We just looked for our simple lunch, so we ordered a salad and a sandwich.  Of course, unavoidably, some local beer (only afterwards that I know that's Ringnes).

I could not describe much about Scandinavian lager, except you may say the taste is clean, crispy, or refreshing.  From Hillesland's book, we know that Scandinavian lagers are brewed according to the original law of Purity, which means only malt, hop, water and yeast are used in the process (no rice, no fruit, or whatever).

The famous thing about the place Lorry is that it features an extensive beer menu with over 100 different brands.  But anyway, I insisted to try the local one, instead of UK or German stuff.

There are still those weird regulations imposed on sales of alcohol in Norway nowadays.  For example, you cannot purchase from any supermarket alcoholic drinks on Sundays, or after 8pm weekdays.  That's obviously inconvenient to me, when cashiers rejected my beers twice.

Actually the receptionist of the B&B could not show us the way to Lorry when we asked her, instead she introduced a "very good" microbrewery "just at the next block of this street".  Eventually we visited there in the next day, after several museums, and found out (afterwards) it was the best microbrewery we visited in the whole trip.

Oslo Mikrobryggeri

After visiting four cities in Europe during this trip and Shanghai in my previous trip, microbreweries are definitely a fashionable item in big cities (maybe except Hong Kong).  But the problem quality.  I can surely say that Oslo Mikrobryggeri is the best microbrewery we've ever visited, up to now.

The bar only sells beers brewed at site, not any other bottled or draft beer.  There were eight kinds of beer mentioned in its catalogue, but only five are available on the day of our visit.  You could easily tell them all from the photo.

In most of the microbreweries visited, the beer seemed to taste milder and paler.  I guess the reasons for this are, one, customers' favour for pilsner; and, two, not easy to make the bitterness a good balance.  Many cases are that you would try the other extreme - those hop juice.  They say that's American style IPA.  I don't like it.  IPA should not be hop juice.

Here in Oslo Mikrobryggeri, Steamer is very well-balanced ale.  I like it a lot.

I also tried the IPA and porter, they are also great!!

After the Mikrobryggeri and a night's sleep, we departed for any Norwegian city - Bergen.