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Category: Farmhouse Ales
What are we talking about here anyway? Unfortunately, this question is harder to answer than one might think. In fact, you can even get very angry about it. It happens regularly in international (hobby) brewer forums when someone asks the question: What exactly is a Farmhouse Ale?
With the Kveik yeast, it was "love at first sight" for Dominik Pietsch Attempt at a definition
Brutally local
The result
Each farm had its own beer, which explains why the term Farmhouse Ale cannot describe a particular style even today. However, the definition that it must be brewed self-sufficiently on farms no longer works today either. Because such farms hardly exist any more.
Surprisingly, Garshol goes beyond the taste of the beer in his definition: Farmhouse Ales taste different from classic, commercial beers (e.g. they are usually hardly/not at all carbonated and always cloudy), he argues, and thus sees the style as actually at home in home brewing. Nevertheless, he fully concedes to breweries that have grown out of a clear Farmhouse Ale tradition that they brew these beers commercially.
A yeast wreath from 1877, on display at the Nordic Museum, Djurgården Island in Stockholm, Sweden Farmhouse Ales today
If, on the other hand, we look at craft breweries that offer so-called "farmhouse ales", the matter is more complicated: can what a young company brews in a (modern) brewery from purchased raw materials with the aim of selling it actually be a farmhouse ale? "Neo-Farmhouse" or "Farmhouse-Replica" would be designations that Garshol would let pass - provided the end product is convincing in terms of taste and care is taken to comply with traditions in terms of raw materials and processes.
And then the case can be like this: Young breweries are inspired by an old tradition to create something new. This is the case with Dominik Pietsch, founder and managing director of the Flügge brewery in Frankfurt am Main. Of course, he is well aware of the controversial nature of the term Farmhouse Ale. But he often and gladly acts according to its principle: "For example, we always - if possible - use local suppliers of raw materials. And here, everything is on the doorstep of Frankfurt, so you can make great things," says the craft brewer. Beer-wine hybrids, for example.
What also distinguishes the Flügge beers and is in the tradition of the Farmhouse Ales is that Pietsch has a soft spot for Kveik. "It was love at first sight," he says. When the topic of "brewing with Kveik" was discussed in various forums a few years ago and the first yeast banks recognised that there was potential here and they offered the first pure-bred Kveiks, he, still a hobby brewer himself at the time, simply gave it a try.
It is interesting that the Norwegian Garshol does not use kveik as a decisive factor. Although traditional Norwegian farmhouse ales were almost all brewed with kveik.
Originally, "Kveik" was a Norwegian dialect for yeast. In the meantime, however, Garshol defines Kveik as follows: "Kveiks are Saccharomyces cerevisiae, all descended from a single family. They are all related to each other, a separate branch of the family tree for ale yeasts." In traditional farmhouse ale making, the kveik would be carefully cultivated further and further, stored in bottles or dried on cloth or wooden rings (kveikstokkern). So at some point every farm had its very own kveik culture.
Kveik - aromatic, racy and warm-hearted
All these cultures had one thing in common: Kveiks provide spectacular aromas, like to work at quite warm temperatures, can hold a lot of alcohol and are rapidly fast: pitching temperatures are between 25 and 43 °C, often fermentation is already over after 48 hours. Storage times are almost zero, and many Kveik-fermented beers are already drinkable immediately after fermentation. You don't need much kveik at all - but the kveik needs a relatively large amount of oxygen to work well.
"We have a great urge to play, we like to research and experiment. Actually, not a week goes by that we don't try something new," says Dominik Pietsch from Flügge. "And I was immediately taken with the process with the Kveik, the simple handling is totally convincing: you don't need temperature control, cooling units or a cooling jacket. That made it easier for us to start brewing professionally. Thanks to the Kveik, we were able to get into it cost-effectively."
But even more important for the brewer, of course, was: "With the Kveik, we always end up with a very special, great taste. Super fruity and unique. That translates very well to different styles of beer." And so it is that he uses Kveik in Pale Ales and IPAs as well as in sour and fruit beers.
Admittedly, these beers are not considered Farmhouse Ales. But they are examples of how a (brewing) tradition that should actually be dead, because times have changed, can create something new and thus in a way still continue to have an effect.
