Beer bowl from upper Telemark

The first time I heard about it was in Telemark (southern Norway), where Halvor Nordal said that one of his neighbours used to sometimes heat the beer very briefly in a saucepan before serving it. His neighbour thought it made the beer taste fresher. I mentally filed this under "Weird, unexplained things" and just left it there. For a few years.

Then, the year after, I visited Rasmus Kjøs Otterdal in Hornindal, 300km to the northwest, and he told me about the same thing, this time in a little more detail. People served the beer this way to bring out more aroma and carbonation in the beer. That last part may sound odd, but farmhouse ale generally has very low carbonation, rather like British cask ale. I've several times heard the brewers complain about the carbonation being too low.

Rasmus explained what people did was to take an empty saucepan and heat it quite well on the stove. Then you took it off the stove and poured the beer straight into the saucepan. The beer would give off a fierce fizzing sound and a thick head would instantly form on it. It tastes great if you drink it right away, but doesn't last long, he said. People would usually do this with old beer that was a bit stale to make it taste more fresh.

Otterdalen, where Rasmus lives

They called this "å belje ølet". According to Rasmus "belje" was a general term for heating things up, but Ivar Aasen's old dialect dictionary records only one meaning for the word: "to roar/scream," and that's how I know the word, too. They added that some people called it "å brøle ølet" (to roar the beer), obviously referring to the powerful hissing sound when the beer hits the hot saucepan.

I'd assumed this was something modern, but if people in both Telemark and Hornindal did it, presumably it was an older custom? And it turns out it is. Hans Gjeitvik published a book titled (my translation) "Farmer's lives in Sunnmøre at the start of the previous century" in 1926. So he's writing about the early 19th century, and he says of the Christmas dinner: "A pot was set over the embers [in the fireplace], and heated so much it would hiss if water were poured into it. Then the head of the household came with a big bowl of beer and poured this in the pot to heat it." The heated beer was then served together with the Christmas dinner.

For Christmas people then as now typically served the best they could get their hands on. And indeed he writes the Christmas dinner was "the finest of the year" (just before the quote above), so clearly this was not something that was done to freshen up stale beer. It must have been seen (at least then and there) as the best way to serve the beer.

The view from the ferry to Norddal, in February

In 2017 we had the annual meeting of the farmhouse ale festival board, in Norddal, not far from Hornindal. Late in the evening we were in a hotel room, drinking farmhouse ale that some of the board members brought, when the subject came up again. Ståle Raftevold (nephew of Rasmus, brother of Terje) knew about "roaring the beer", and since we had a kitchen with a stove and saucepans, we decided to give it a go, with Ståle showing how to do it.

Beginning to pour. Left, Ståle Raftevold. Right, William Holden.

An empty saucepan was heated on the stove, and the beer poured in. The fierce hissing started immediately, and the promised thick, rich white head formed. When the beer was poured over in glasses that thick, lovely head stayed there. Farmhouse ale is generally soft and delicate in the mouth, but this beer was really smooth, soft, and fluffy, and weirdly warm. The mouthfeel was not completely unlike Irish coffee. And what was promised turned out to be true: it really did bring out the fruity aroma as well. We all really, really liked this way of serving the beer, much to our surprise.

Most of the beer is in

At the farmhouse ale festival that year, Baatbryggeriet, a small craft brewery from nearby Vestnes, brought not just their farmhouse ale interpretations, but also a tiny tabletop stove and a saucepan. So people dropping by their stand could choose to have the beer served the normal way, or "roared". I had try it roared, of course, and recorded this video.

I apologize for the sound quality, video quality, and editing, but this was close to midnight, when the festival had transitioned into full-on party mode. Since, as far as I know, it's the only video of beer being roared ever made, I included it anyway.

Roaring the beer works really well with farmhouse ale. I've tried it once with a brown ale, and felt it didn't work at all. It actually brought out what tasted like brewing flaws in the brown ale, but I felt they hadn't been there when it was served the normal way. So although I've only tried this three times I think you need to pick the type of beer to try it on quite carefully, and real farmhouse ale is probably the best bet.

On another note, when I talk about Norway having its own beer culture, this is the kind of thing I have in mind, together with oppskåke, the beer styles, kveik, and quite a few other things.

Sources

Bondeliv på Sunnmøre i begynnelsen av det forrige århundrede, Hans Gjeitvik, Hjelle, 1926. Page 97.

Norsk Ordbog, Ivar Aasen, Christiania, 1873.