What is a Kveik?

Beer styles. The term is becoming more and more arbitrary. Hazy, fruity, sour, dosed with lactose, made with off-the-wall ingredients, or any combination of these things, the term “beer style” is becoming more and more of a gray area. 

We’ve dabbled with all of the aforementioned features and techniques and have had a lot of fun doing so. It’s part of what makes brewing fun and exciting, and it helps keep things fresh. It’s also helped a lot of “non beer-drinkers” realize they do like beer, they just hadn’t found the right one yet.

Lately, an old world ingredient has made its way back into the modern brewing scene. It is called kveik (pronounced “kwike”). Kveik is a type of yeast from Norwegian brewing and encompasses several different strains. Brewers are experimenting a lot with this yeast, as it is very versatile and, unlike almost all other yeast, can ferment wort into beer very quickly and at very high temperatures with no detrimental effects. 

Most ales need to be fermented at around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, or else they will create a lot of unwanted fusel alcohol flavors that are unpleasant. It takes a lot of attention and temperature control to be sure the exothermic reaction of fermentation does not cause the beer to go above these temperatures. Kveik yeast, however can reportedly ferment at over 100 degrees without creating any off flavors. In fact, the higher flavors can create even more pleasantly interesting and citrusy aromatics and flavors.

So naturally, we tried our hand at using this unique yeast with a beer. But what style is it? It’s pale, hazy, soft on the palate, and really bursting with citrusy flavors. A hazy pale ale? What about the kveik? We don’t know. All we know is that it’s delicious, light, palatable, and a very refreshing and sessionable summer sipper. Come get ya some; we can see ourselves using this yeast again soon.

Switching gears, we also recently brewed something that is a well-defined and recognized style: Russian Imperial Stout. It’s big. It’s bold. And it is high octane. It clocks in at around 11.5% ABV, and has been conditioning for a couple months to smooth out any harsh flavors. We plan to do a couple individual keg variants of this one and release it during our 3-year anniversary party June 27thand 28th.

A final tidbit that we’re excited about is that we are finally getting into the barrel-aging game. A barrel rack is on its way, and we recently purchased a 53 gallon Woodford Reserve 8 year bourbon barrel, along with the necessary equipment to transfer beer to and from the barrel. We are going to fill this bad boy with the imperial stout mentioned above and let it sit for at least a few months. We’re pretty stoked to finally getting into barrel-aging, and we’ll keep everyone updated on all future projects we plan to do with wood.

Until next time, cheers to three years of you all letting us being a part of our amazing community. Cheers!