Lillehammer brewery was closed down in 1983, but fortunately, some ardent souls with a taste for good beer and local, cultural history restarted the brewery in 2006.
We arrived early one Sunday morning in order to watch beer being made, take photos and ask the brewers about brewing in general.
Ingunn Veitberg and Randi Dahlum Johansen had set aside the whole Sunday for brewing beer. The first batch was started at about 7 in the morning, while the next one would be started at 1 p.m., Ingunn and Randi told us. The two female brewers have developed 4 types of beer together with master brewer Arild Tandberg, who is Norwegian champion in brewing beer. The ladies have graduated as diploma brewers from the Scandinavian school of brewing in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The brewery is located in the same premises as a pub meaning that it’s possible to enjoy your beer at the same time as you watch the workers making the stuff you are drinking. All the brewing equipment consisting, among other things, of tanks, pipes, devices for stirring together with a computer for controlling the brewing, have been imported from Austria.
First, malt is poured into a tank filled with water and heated up to about 50 degrees C. The mixture of malt and water is called mash and the stirring and how long the mash should stay in the tank is computer controlled. This process is used to release sugar from the malt. Water, which is safe for drinking, is taken directly from the mains supply. In due course, hops has to be added to set the flavour of the beer, while yeast also have to be added in order to turn sugar into alcohol. Lillehammer brewery is following the Norwegian purity law, which states that beer should only be made of water, malt, hops and yeast. However, this law has been revoked and it’s certainly possible to buy Norwegian beer with added flavours from, for instance, juniper berries. We visited the Hand brewery some time ago where we could watch insertion of juniper branches in the mash.
The following beers are made at Lillehammer brewery:
- Lillehammer Wieses ale (amber ale)
- Lillehammer Vinterøl (dunckler bock)
- Lillehammer Pipe Larsen Hveteøl (German hefeweizen)
- Lillehammer Hammond Pils (pilsener)
- Lillehammer Bues Stout (stout)
