There’s a lot of beer out there. Like, more than you can ever try. I know because a few years ago, I wrote about some of the guys who bust their (backs) trying to try them all and discovered that the most dedicated among them are “Ratebeerians” living in Copenhagen. In a recent issue of All About Beer Magazine, these “tickers” (folks who try to tick every beer brewed off their “been there, drank that” list) helped devise an itinerary for beer travelers visiting this hotbed of European craft brewing and as luck would have it, it was the first stop on the Yaeger Family vacation (Happy 70th birthday, Dad.)
While the others in my family were trying to get over jetlag and adjust to the time change, I met with ticker extraordinaire Jens Ungstrup at Mikkeler Bar, the tap-basement run by the “godfather of gypsy brewing,” Mikkel Borg Bjergsø. I started the night with a glass—they don’t pour anything by the pint—of Mikkeller Spontandoubleblueberry, a lambic-style blueberry ale and finished it by happily checking the joint off my Bucket List.
The next morning, another in the Copenhagen crew, Henrik Papsø, offered up a tour of the Amager Bryghus, the brewery that honored Henrik on the occasion of his twenty-thousandth beer review by conjuring up Hr. Papsø on Acid: a port barrel aged quad with Brettanomyces and implied to possess an herbaciousness not derived from standard hops. I’m scared to uncork my bottle. Or maybe I just always want to have a little taste of Danish beer available. All I know is it’s good I didn’t drink it on the ferry from Copenhagen to Oslo because until you get into the Norwegian fjords, sailing the straits had me walking crooked for days and the licorice stout I had on board probably didn’t help.
Next up, Scandinavian Beer Part 2 – Norway.
