Beer review No.2 - Berentsen's Skumring brown Ale

Hello again. I'm having a bit of a beer phase at the moment. Tasting some interesting spirits but having a couple of pints in between, hence this beery review. I have to say i was a bit nervous about posting beer reviews. I know quite a few beer nerds who know a heck of a lot more than me and I didn't want to get it wrong and make a plonker of myself online. You might have read my first beer review, which was really a ten in one introductory special. This time one beer is going to have a post all to itself. Lucky beer. This'll be the first of a series on the beer's of Berentsen's Brygghuset. Probably it will be interspersed with other things, but who knows. The future is clouded and uncertain. Was it Lady Galadriel who said what? Comment if you know. For now let's get on with the procedings...

Remember to be nice to me, this is my first properly analytical beer review.

Bit of an intro
It was a bit hard to find out about the brewery itself or the beers they produce. There are laws about advertising alcohol in Norway which restrict how much information they're allowed to put out on the website to almost none, so there isn't even a list of the alcoholic products they produce. They make eplemost (a delicious drink made of pressed apples) and they have information about that, but not the beers or ciders. Other websites indicate that they have rather a lot of different beers, and they're generally not too pricey so this series could be long. Luckily a tasting doesn't take much time.

What I did manage to find out is that Berentsen's Brygghus (which translates to Berentsen's Brew House) is in Egersund, a small town about half an hour South of my current location if you take the train. I've been there, it's a bit gloomy. It's been running for 120 years, which I think is kind of cool. The brewery that it, not the town. I have no idea how long the town's been there. You can't keep in business for that long without doing something right, although if your product makes people drunk you're in with a better chance. I have fairly high hopes for a decent drink here.

So Skumring means "twilight" and is a brown ale. The term "brown ale" is somewhat vague. Originally it was used in the 17th century to describe beers made from 100% brown malt, which seems quite logical, but now it seems to refer to pretty much any ale that's brown in colour. I think these days a brown ale has a base of one kind of malt with 10-25% brown malt, so I assume that's what they've done here. Brown malt would be roasted or "kilned" to make it darker and give it some nice flavours. The more it's roasted the darker it gets and the more the kilning influences it's flavour, a lot like roasting coffee. They started using pale malt in brown ales because it was cheaper, but I don't know what's usual now.

English brown ales tend to have most of their flavour coming from the malt, so we're looking at things like caramel, roasty toasty flavours, nuts, chocolate and malty sweetness of course. American brown ales tend to be drier with more hop influence in the flavours. Apparently citrus notes are fairly common due to the american species of hops used, like cascade. Typically fruity notes from the yeast are not too prominent. I hope you're excited to see what kind of flavour profile a Norwegian brown ale has. I know I was. My curiosity was satisfied along with my thirst.

I can't tell you much more about it really, other than that is cost me 29.9 kr for a 33cl bottle. That's £2.28, $3.49, €3.20 or 241.30 Kyrgyzstani Soms. For a nice polite Englishman like me it seems like a lot to pay for less than a pint, but here in Norway where I live it's actually pretty cheap. To put things in perspective, it's about twice the price of a Mars Bar here. I got mine in the supermarket. It's 4.7% abv, by the way, making it legal to sell in the upermarket. I think I've mentioned before that anything over 5% can only be sold at the state run bottle shop, and anything over 60% is apparently considered a narcotic and is prohibited. Let's have a closer look at it...

Packaging
Mine was just in the bottle, but you can buy six in a nice little box thingy. I'll pop to the supermarket on my way home and get a picture. I did that and here is the picture:

Six little bottles in a box with a handle.

The bottle's just a standard small beer bottle. it's brown glass, and with whisky it would suggest they were hiding the true colour for whatever reason. but with beer brown glass bottles are pretty normal. Berentsen's Brygghus use the same bottles for almost all their beers.

Your typical common or garden beer bottle

The label's ok. Not particularly exciting, but it's fairly eye catching. I kind of feel like it shouldn't appeal to me, but it kind of does. Possibly because it's not the kind of label you'd find on a British beer. It's a little bold, but the drinking culture in Norway leads me to suspect that it's a bold label so Norwegians who've gone a bit overboard can still read it. No offense, Norwegians, but some of you do need to calm down a bit when you're at the bar. Have a look.

I believe it's an owl

I have to say I quite like the owl and the black and purple lines, although to me they suggest a darker beer than this one. It's colourful enough without looking childish, but as I said it's a bit bold. I can never quite understand why Norwegians can't seem to use their own language. Skumring is Norwegian, but then they use English right below that. "Brown ale" should be "brun øl". Surely it makes more sense to go with English or Norwegian, not this confusing combination. Am I in England or Norway? Should I drink from the bottle or pour it into a glass? What's my name? Where are my car keys? So much confusion! Not really, that was what's known as "hyperbole", where you exaggerate to emphasize the point. You can't say this blog's not educational even if it is irrelevant. Comment if you know why Norwegians use so much English.

It seems like a pretty cheap label, but that's ok. It just means they're not adding to the price unnecessarily. Or it means that their target market is people who prefer quantity to quality. We'll see when it comes to tasting.

The back of the label has a little description, which I'll type out for you and try to translate.

"Berentsen's Skumring har en mørk brun farge og et frodig lyst skum. Ølet dufter av mørk malt og er lett humlet. Skumring er brygget som en Brown Ale og passer utmerket til grillet kjøtt, vilt og ost."

Confused? Me too. Here it is in a proper language:

"Berentsen's Skumring has a dark brown colour and a lush, light foam. The beer's aroma is of dark malt and it's lightly hopped. Skumring is brewed as a brown ale and is perfect with grilled meats, game or cheees"

Interesting to read comments on taste from the brewer. I prefer to read them after I've made my own to see how they compare and it's always important to realize that their description is trying to make it sound as good as possible. Marmite was the first product I ever saw where the manufacturer acknowledged that some people really don't like their product with their "love it or hate it" thing. A clever marketing strategy which probably not have worked if they didn't have such a strong presence in British culture. Ever read a beer label that said "Kind of bland and you can taste the can"? I doubt it, although it's true of a couple of beers I've tasted. Tasting notes are coming up, don't worry.

Appearance

It's a nice bark brown colour. If you pour it into a glass and hold it up to the light it looks reddish, like the toffee on a toffee apple. Fairly dark compared to other things I've seen called brown ale.

Brown

I'm not sure about the lush foam, but I wasn't really thinking about creating a decent head on it when I was pouring it. I was concentrating on not missing the glass.

Aroma

Initially sweet malt

Hops are there too, becoming more prominent after a couple of minutes in the glass.

I got a smell of coffee as I took the first swig

Malt takes centre stage again halfway down the glass. The malt smell is quite thick and heavy, and reminded me a lot of a drink called Supermalt, which is apparently quite popular with Nigerians. I don't blame them, it's pretty nice.

Smells like it should be sticky and treacley, but doesn't feel it in the mouth.

A treacle note does come in further down the glass

Taste

Mainly bitter hops, with a drying quality which prompts you to take another mouthful.

Quite fresh tasting with a fair amount of body to it, by which I mean it feels reasonably substantial in the mouth despite it's freshness.

It's not too sweet despite having a reasonable amount of body.

Malty sugars balanced by bitter hops.

Something kind of composty maybe, like well rotted compost or soil so fertile you almost want to eat it.

Well boiled hops, that is to say a fair bit of bitterness

Aftertaste
Bitter hops
Drying quality to the bitterness
Doesn't taste sweet, but leaves the sensation in the mouth like you just had something sweet
A touch of something kind of grassy or farmy. Maybe like rotting grass that's just started to rot or a mild silage kind of taste which is actually much more pleasant than I just made it sound. Kind of outdoorsy.

Ballance
I have to confess I'm still very much an amateur at this, but I reckon it's reasonably well balanced, especially for something so cheap. Cheap for Norway that is. It leans a little to the bitter side perhaps. Judging by the body, the mainly malt aroma and the feeling in the mouth afterwards it has quite a lot of unfermentable sugars. These are balanced by the bitter hops quite well, although it's possibly a little heavy on the bitterness without much in the way of hop aroma.

A few extra comments
The description on the bottle was accurate, but with a bit of a positive spin. If you take out all the flowery language they said it smells of malt and doesn't have much by way of hops, which is true. There are a few other interesting smells and tastes, but on the whole it's plain old malt and hops. You really have to get into it for the more interesting things.

Conclusion
A decent, no frills kind of ale. Made with malt and hops, smells like malt and hops, tastes like malt and hops. When you take the price into consideration it's certainly passable, but I'd generally be inclined to spend a few more kroners and get a bigger bottle of something with a bit more going on flavourwise. I don't think this will be a regular drink for me as I'm from the "drink less, but drink better" school of thought. This seems more like a "drink more, but drink ale" kind of beer. If I'd brewed it myself I'd be really pleased with it, but as it stands it was made by professionals, and I've had some much better beers. Admittedly they cost a bit more, but they're better and there's more in the bottle.

Would I buy it again? Maybe, but not regularly and probably not very soon. Being an Englishman, if I want a beer I want a pint. This beer in a bigger bottle would be more appealing, but there is another brown ale available in the supermarkets that is already in bigger bottles and suits my requirements rather better. On a scale of one to ten I'd have to say I'd be very happy to be offered one, but not overly excited if I was sold one.

Next beer review will be another from Berentsen's. It's a series like I said, but you know that already because you've been paying close attention to every word I've written. Well done you. Your reward is to come back and read my next review without shame. Share and enjoy.