Iceland Beer Saga: Borg Brugghus Interview Part 3 - Updated

Before we dive into the final part of the interview I want to take another moment to say thanks to Stulli and Valli for taking the time out of their busy schedules to talk to me and share some of their tasty beer. It was a privilege. Now onto the thrilling conclusion!

Part 1
Part 2

Part 3

What particular beer do you feel best represents what you are doing here at Borg? What has been your best success to date?

Valli: I think it is no question that it is Úlfur, the IPA, it put Borg on the map. 

Stulli: Yes, it is definitely best all around sales. It really surprised the marketing department. 

Valli: Ulfar is the first IPA in Iceland much to my dislike because I wanted to be the first one to bring it at Ölvisholt. 

Stulli: I had this goal, this dream for many years to produce the first IPA in Iceland. I had told you a couple of years before that I was going to bring it. (laughs)

Valli: It is the first IPA and it came out in 2010.

Stulli: Early 2010

Valli: It is the first American style IPA on the market in Iceland. We had a couple of imported English IPAs, more like bitter ales.

Stulli: And really beat up Liberty Ale. 

Valli: Yes, just a couple months ago some guys started importing BrewDog and Mikkeller and you can now get those down at Micro Bar. 

We talked a little bit about how you are walking that fine line between craft brewing and that you have an industrial brewery backing you. How do manage that and still be able to produce these diverse, for Iceland, brews? 

Valli: It has been a process really. 

Stulli: It has been a steep uphill battle and getting the right people in the right places has really helped. 

Valli: We have managed to build up a reputation and people have finally realized that it is best to allow us to do what we want. 

Stulli: What we want is to introduce consumers to the wonders of beer and what the top floor sees is that we are increasing the positive reputation of the company.

Valli: We are building up the name Egils and that is one of the many roles of Borg. For example we came out with a 12% imperial stout and it sold out in one day. 

Stulli: The beer culture being the state that it is, it is a prime opportunity to introduce to the people fresh beer in the style it is being approached in American and Europe. The small breweries, interesting styles, high gravity beers, and doing that in the best way possible so that the consumers get the best quality product as possible. 

How collegial is the craft beer community around here or are you all still just a small band of rebels?

Stulli: Uh, I don't know (laughs).

Valli: For example Einstok is actually not intended for the Icelandic market. It is actually a brand owned by Americans. So it is basically just contract brewed up north in Iceland...

Stulli: …and we are lucky enough to get some of it in the market here because it is brewed here.

Valli: There are four types of Einstok being made and we can't get one of them on a regular basis. 

Stulli: Yes, it is a contract brewing gig, Americans approached the people at Viking about contract brewing for them. 

Valli: But this actually also shows the quality of the brewmaster they have. He is working a very big system, well in comparison, and manages to pull out these beers with no experience producing anything like this before, so they can do it domestically if they want it. 

Stulli: Well they just marketed it in cans as their summer ale. 

Valli: Right, the white ale, he apparently made two different types of batches of it and the one that the Americans didn't pick Viking sold as their summer beer. 

This is where the magic happens!

What do you want people to know about Borg?

Valli: Basically that we are making different types of beer.

Stulli: We are trying to brew the best beer we can make, trying to make honest products, having fun.

Valli: The big goal is to introduce different types of flavors. Get people to try new stuff. Essentially the easiest thing in Iceland is to be on the forefront of this movement because no one has done anything.

Stulli: So it sort of makes it easy for us to introduce a lot of things because people just don't know any better, so when I say make things as honest as possible I mean we are trying to make proper styles, proper beers, proper flavors, and not necessarily to style but make interesting things and be honest about them. It's about quality. 

Iceland Beer Saga: Borg Brugghús interview part 2

Part 1

Part 2

How has the reception been for Borg?

Valli: Being part of a big company there is a tension between sales people and brewers. So basically we haven't really been able to keep up with demand. It's a good thing, but it does hold back our creative abilities. 

Stulli: This is to make the owners happy. When I was starting I had to make a compromise. I got to brew an IPA if I made something they would like. So what I was going for was a lager with a twist. What I was thinking at the time was a sort of blend of a Munich Helles beer and something Belgian. It is a full time production beer. 

They get bolder as you move from left to right. 

Stulli: Our first beer was Brio, it was a 4.5 ABV German style pilsner, our second beer was a 4.5% brown ale [ed. note Austur] that I made for a bar downtown, the third was Úlfur which was the odd man out because I got to make it but it was a compromise because I would have wanted to make a 9% IPA. Then Bjartur a 5% lager like beer, a 4.5% amber lager, then when things changed you see Stekkjarstaur a 6% brown ale, Surtur, our imperial stout which is 12%, Benedikt, a belgian which is 7%, and so forth. 

Stulli: On Surtur, our imperial stout we ended up changing our final pretty drastically. 

Valli: It became a totally different beer. 

Stulli:  I had this goal, this dream for many years to produce the first IPA in Iceland. 

Valli: I was head brewer at Ölvisholt when it started, but because I live here in Reykjavik I basically couldn't afford to work there anymore. [ed. note Olvisholt is about an hour drive from Reykjavik and gas is very expensive on the island] So that is why I came over here. When we started at Ölvisholt I had promised to myself that I would never make a lager because that was all there was available in Iceland so I wanted to bring some change in. The only demand the owners had was to make a pale lager, but I made a steam beer so technically a lager. That was Skalftji. I didn't know I was making a steam beer, I had a lager but I wanted to brew it at a higher temperature to get more flavors to it and stuff. It wasn't when we started to export to Sweden that someone pointed out that this is steam beer then. It wasn't intentional, after that I tried to create beers that hadn't been produced in Iceland before which wasn't really hard though. All the things I made in Ölvisholt had never been produced here before. 

That is a cool opportunity to break new ground.

Valli: Well the brewers have actually been ahead of of the public. We are pushing out the new stuff, it is not because of the demand but because we want to do it. 

Stulli: Of course there is a small group of beer fanatic nerds, Haukur being one of them. The majority of people here just sort of tag along, they either love what we are doing, not necessarily every beer we make, but the creative things and new things at a small scale, or they hate it and just keep on drinking their regular beer. 

Valli: Well both groups keep on drinking their regular beer and that actually has been a problem. When Ölvisholt actually started we had a lot of good feedback to just bring something new and something different and we will pay whatever for it. We had huge amounts of people telling us that and we had great hopes and we were planning to expand the brewery before we even began brewing but when it came down to it people who had promised to buy nothing else didn't buy a single bottle of it. There is a lot of conservatism, people pick their brand, 'this is what I drink, this is my favorite.' People are starting to try different flavors and try different beers. 

Does that work in your favor when Icelanders go abroad? 

Valli: The thing is when Icelanders go abroad they go to a bar and ask for a cold beer. They get a Tuborg or a Heineken, and that is great for them because they are abroad, drinking, and that is enough. Although beer culture is better in most countries you still have to look for the quality and craft beers. 

Are you planning on exporting?

Stulli: Quality-wise, being Russian River alum, I'm not going to export anything I am worried about like my IPA. Don Feinberg has put in an order for our imperial stout which we are hoping to ship out to him, but we have to try and find time to produce it. 

What is the status of home brewing in Iceland?

Stulli: It is illegal in here, technically…

Valli: …you can't produce anything about 2.5%, that's the limit. 

How much of anything you brew is import? 

Valli: The raw materials? 

Stulli: Everything is imported.

Valli: Actually we are bringing out another beer, Snorri,  which we will bottle next week, [ed. note: this is now available at the duty free in Keflavik International Airport] made with Icelandic barley which is unmalted but with added enzyme. 

Stulli: It is no secret that the only way to make the raw barley usable is with added enzymes. It is just to get through the same process that is done in malting but in the kettle or mash tun. It is something we inherited from upstairs. 

Will there come a day when you can actually get malt? 

Stulli: In Iceland? 

Valli: I doubt it, just putting up a malting facility would be so expensive. 

Stulli: To make it profitable you would have to make so much malt and I doubt that enough malt is grown in Iceland. 

Valli: To make this beer a little more interesting we decided because it is so light to get some kick out of it we used english al and it's spiced with an Icelandic herb called arctic thyme. You can make it sound great, but then of course I think it is commercially acceptable. We run what we call beer school here and we had a trial version of it on tap and apparently the reception of the beer was very good. 

Stulli: We are going to bottle it unfiltered and try to make a new type of style, Icelandic barley beer. (laughs)

Valli: We boosted the spices in the next batch. 

Stulli: It is an exclusive beer for the duty free. 

It feels like you are doing research and development for Egils. Will something come out with their brand name on it that was your creation?

Valli: That is one of the many parts of Borg, we are the research brewery for the big brewery.  In the long run the goal is to produce beers that can move over to the big brewery for mass production. What we produce is on such small scale that in sales for the company it really doesn't matter on the books. The value for them is more marketing than anything else. Of course we produce beers that I know will move over to the big brewery. 

What was your inspiration to come back to Iceland and brew beer?

Stulli:  Having an Icelandic wife, kids on the way. It is great to live here other than beer, but I came to try and change that. 

***

Come back tomorrow for the thrilling conclusion where Stulli and Valli discuss what's next for Borg, maintaining their creativity in the shadow of a giant, and what's been their best success to date. 

Iceland Beer Saga: Borg Brugghús interview part 1

One of the coolest things I was able to do while in Iceland was sit down with the brewers of Borg Brugghús , Sturlaugur Jón Björnsson and Valgeiri Valgeirssyni. They had a lot to say about Icelandic beer culture, the challenges and opportunities, and how they are brewing a craft beer revolution on the island. 

The interview doesn't follow the standard pattern, we started at the bottom, worked to the middle, went from the top and ended up off script. So while I could organize it a bit I chose not to and went with the conversation as it occurred over tastings of Borg's excellent brews.  

Part 1

Valgeiri Valgeirssyni (Valli)

and Sturlaugur Jón Björnsson (Stulli) are

brewing up an Icelandic beer revolution.

So let's talk about your beer, what is your current line up, what is the current production you have going?

Current production is Brio Beer #1, though it has been moved over to the big brewery to keep up with demand. It is a pilsner, what we are drinking now. 

You didn't go with a pale ale?

Stulli: I'm sure that you realize that the beer culture in Iceland is so young, so it is pretty understandable that people just don't know any better. What Valli started with Ölvisholt Brugghús and when I came home what we had on our agendas was to introduce what beer is about, more than what most people think it is.

Has the community been receptive to the new beers?

Stulli: Yes, I would say it has really been going well, a lot of young people of our generation are getting into smaller scale production things and actually wanting to know what they are drinking and thinking about what they are consuming. They are looking for more interesting flavors and stuff like that. 

Has the jump for beer and food really taken off here yet?

Stulli: It is something that we are working on. Valli was sort of the trailblazer for beer and food when he was working with a restaurant downtown where they offered a menu paired with beers. 

Valli: There has been a big rise in Scandinavia food culture, but the drinks have been a little bit slower taking off, but because there is a high demand for Icelandic food, specialized Icelandic food spiced with Icelandic herbs, naturally they wanted to have Icelandic beverages available with them. 

Was there an Icelandic beer before prohibition? 

Valli: People say there was a special type before what we call Jólabland. That is an Icelandic Christmas drink mixed with orange soda.

Stulli: I would say if there was it was the maltextrakt, similar to what they have in Germany. Other than that, farther back in the past there wasn't really much of a beer culture anyways. Being such an isolated country with trade routes that weren't very active, only the bare necessities made it here. There really wasn't much demand for the raw ingredients for beer making or for importing beer either. 

You can't grow hops here either can you?

Valli: No, and we are barely growing barley as well and that is just a recent thing as well. 

Stulli: So the drinking culture here for centuries has been mainly strong liquor when available. Thinking about economics it is much cheaper per alcoholic unit to ship in a barrel of gin or akvavit than a barrel of beer. It would be a waste of space in the ship for cargo. 

Prohibition is repealed in 1989, though restrictions on liquor and wine had been lifted much earlier. Why?

Stulli: That's a good question.

Valli: They forgot about it basically.

Stulli: No, I think it was stubbornness, like in politics. It is a serious problem here in Icelandic politics, always has been. Prohibition started in 1915 and a couple of years later because we were refusing to take wine in trade of salt cod the Spaniards and Portuguese said they won't trade with us anymore if you aren't going to be buying our wine. So they allowed the sale and consumption of wine, shortly thereafter because of all sorts of corruption issues with doctor and such they allowed spirits. Spirits were technically legal but you had to get a prescription. So they allowed strong liquor, but probably as a compromise within the Alþingi, the minority would allow that if they did not allow beer. Which is hard to imagine but very likely with how politics are here in Iceland. So it was a very hard stubborn issue of minority that the ban would not allow beer. There were brief discussions in the 80s and finally they allowed it. All of the beer knowledge that Icelanders knew back then was just from going abroad. That was a lot of students going to Denmark and sailors going to Germany. That was mainly what they knew of beer. Of course at the time light lagers where the norm everywhere. It was the high point of light lagers. 

So what is the state of beer in Iceland now?

Stulli: I would say, compared to how short of time it has been since beer has been allowed we have come a fairly decent way. 

Valli: Compared to that there was absolutely nothing.

It is fascinating that you are located in one of the major producers of beer on the island and they do all the soda.

Stulli: Actually this company was started as a brewery.

Valli: When they started they thought prohibition would go away sooner rather than later. They had two years to produce beer

Stulli: Yes, they then produced non-alcoholic or 'light' beer which is 2.5%ABV, and maltextrakt, and soda. Through various deals this company expanded around the year 2000 and got into wholesale and importing. 

It is fascinating that they have taken the chance with Borg to be creative and mad scientists.

Valli: It is a very big step when they decided to do that, personally I don't think they had any idea what they were really going into. 

Stulli: No, not at all. When I came here they didn't even know about the things I was talking about, that beer is available in different shades of color and there are different flavors of beer. I don't think that anybody here actually knew how diverse beer could be. 

You should have sent them on a field trip to Belgium.

Valli: They would have just drank Stella and found it amazing. 

What are your favorite styles? 

Valli: Well that varies of course. For me it is the more the merrier. At the moment imperial stouts and double IPAs. The beer geeks favorites.

Stulli: Yes, I really like pretty much everything if it is well done and conditioned. The right atmosphere and right people. If I sit down to enjoy a beer definitely reach for a nice sour Belgian. Back in the day Orval is what got me into loving beer and still is my favorite. 

***

Look for Part 2 tomorrow where Stulli and Valli talk about Borg's reception, if they will be exporting, and other challenges they face. 

Welcome to Your Weekend: Return from Iceland Edition

The Loot: starring Borg Brugghús, & Gæðingur Öl, with
special guest Einstök. 

The Iceland Beer Saga: Chapter 1, A Bottle's Journey

A six pack of Port City Monumental IPA made the trip to Iceland, one bottle though had a much more epic adventure. This is that bottle's tale...

s

The bottle first journeyed down the coast to see the Seljalandfoss...

...then climbed to the top of the Stóra-Dímon...

...and took in the scenic views.

The bottle journeyed up along the coast of the Þingvallavatn...

...picnicked out at the Öxarárfoss...

...visited Þingvellir and learned about the Alþingi.

On the final day it took in the majesty of the Gullfoss, 

trying hard not to blow over and tumble down the cliffs...

and stood tall before the Hallgrímskirkja...

The bottle was last seen heading off with its fellows in the hands of a cool and gracious Icelander to have one final adventure. That story has yet to be told. 

Stay tuned for Chapter Two of the Iceland Beer Saga: These Few Good Brews