Mikkel Borg Bjergsø - Mikkeller’s Book of Beer

FOREWORD

T wenty years ago, a lot of beer (most often lager) tasted the same across the world. Whether Tuborg, Tsingtao, Budweiser or Heineken, it was pale in colour, weak in flavour and low in alcohol, and for the most part consumed either to quench thirst or to get drunk. Today, the situation is very different. Courtesy of the craft microbrewing revolution that spread during the 1990s from the US and the UK to the rest of Europe, particularly the Nordic countries, and then to the rest of the world, the beer scene now is home to a diverse band of brewers and beer enthusiasts who live and breathe the hopped beverage. One of the figureheads of this revolution is Mikkel Borg Bjergs, the man behind the Mikkeller microbrewery that, since 2006, has helped change the general perception of beer to the point where it now takes in not only weaker-tasting lagers, but also highly-hopped India Pale Ales and bone-dry lambics.

Mikkellers Book of Beer has been written with the indispensable assistance of numerous experts from Mikkellers colourful team, but essentially it is the product of a close collaboration between Mikkel and me. I met Mikkel before he had caught a whiff of the hop. Today, we are married with two daughters, and it was at home in our apartment in Vesterbro, Copenhagen, that it all started back in 2003. That was the year in which Mikkel and his childhood friend Kristian Klarup Keller began experimenting with home brewing in our kitchen, where I occasionally helped to bottle, cap and label the beer. Subsequently, I trained as a journalist, and, as Mikkeller grew, it became more and more obvious that I should tell the fascinating story of the maths and physics teacher who became world-famous as a nomadic brewer and a craft beer evangelist. His democratic principles of brewing allow anyone to brew their own beer at home, at relatively little cost.

In the following pages, you can read Mikkels story of how he found his way into the world of beer, how Mikkeller started and subsequently developed into one of the worlds leading microbreweries. Above all, though, you can read about beer, because this is first and foremost an inspiring guidebook for anyone who is interested in beer in any way, whether those who aspire to learn more about this versatile beverage or those who dream of brewing exciting, great-tasting beer at home.

PERNILLE PANG

February 2014

CHAPTER 1

THE STORY OF MIKKEL AND MIKKELLER

FROM BUCKET BOY TO STELLAR BREWER

F or as long as I can remember, Ive had a competitive gene. If I can see that Im good at something, Im always trying to get better. I cant help myself. Ive always preferred the type of sport that is measurable. Which is why I think I started running. Football is so much about chance and teamwork. In running, whos best is not open to debate. Its always the person who comes first.

My twin brother, Jeppe, and I were close companions all through our childhood and part of our adolescence. Our parents divorced when we were eight, and we stayed in a single-family detached house with my mother, while my father moved to North Jutland, remarried and had two more children. Jeppe and I started in the same preschool class at Niv Centralskole, but the teachers quickly agreed that it was best to split us up. By all accounts, we were too domineering. We were twice as big, strong and loud as all the other children. And although we regularly fell out, we always backed one another up against the other children. If anyone said anything bad about Jeppe, I was always on his side, and vice versa. But we also competed with one another. Initially, it was mostly for fun, like when we timed each other when we had to empty the dishwasher at home.

When as teenagers we both began to do athletics, the competition became more serious. I remember one time at the Aarhus Games when the judges ruled that I had beaten Jeppe by one hundredth of a second. You couldnt tell from the photo-finish image, so we shouted and screamed at one another. We were always being compared, so it wasnt much fun when one of us wasnt quite as good as the other.

A RUNNERS WORLD

For about 10 years from 1987 to 1997 we spent most weekends training and attending meetings, and we both became multipleDanish champions. As 14-year-olds, we attended a meeting where we met Kristian Keller (known as Keller) and Brian Jensen, who ran for the Viking Club in Bornholm. We quickly became friends, and Jeppe and I started spending holidays with them in Bornholm.

When I began at Espergrde Gymnasium upper-secondary school, I got up every morning at five oclock, put on my training kit and was out of the door in just five minutes. I then ran 10 kilometres (6 miles) on the asphalt path alongside the train line and fields from Niv to Kokkedal. I did that every single day, even if it was hammering down or there was snow and frost on the ground. After the run, I took a quick bath and wolfed down a bowl of oatmeal with milk and sugar before catching the train to Espergrde. Three or four evenings a week, I trained at the Sparta sports club in sterbro, otherwise I went to my girlfriends house in Vanlse. If I had homework, I often did it on the train there and back. When I had PE at school, I was allowed to do running instead. In total, I trained 12 times a week; twice a day on weekdays and once on Saturday and Sunday respectively. I ran middle-distance events 800 metres and 1500 metres and my aim was always to beat my competitors, including Jeppe.

When Jeppe and I became students, we both went to the USA after winning running scholarships to American universities. Keller and Brian also won scholarships for the USA, so we continued to see a lot of one another both at athletics meetings and in our leisure time, even though our universities were in different parts of the country. I spent several hours a day in the long, narrow corridor of my dormitory talking on the phone with Keller.

After a year in Kansas, I returned home to Denmark. I was tired and injured, and I thought the university was too demanding. Jeppe also returned home, and we moved into an apartment together inrhusgade in the sterbro district of Copenhagen and both got jobs in the canteen at Bispebjerg Hospital. Every morning at six oclock, I ran to the hospital, where I made mashed potatoes and llebrd, a dish made of rye bread, sugar and non-alcoholic beer, in 200-litre (53-gallon) pots and baked 1200 rolls every day. I finished work at two oclock in the afternoon, then ran all the way home, via Bispebjerg and around Hellerup, to sterbro. I did that for six months until I ended up on dish washing, where it was really damp and steamy. I began having breathing problems, my doctor diagnosed exercise-induced asthma and I was off sick for three months.

At that time, I was really fed up with Copenhagen. Everyone I spent time with was always talking about running and I wanted to meet new people. I also had a girlfriend who lived in North Jutland, so I decided to move there and started teacher training at Aalborg Seminarium. The course looked fairly easy to get through without a lot of effort, which suited me perfectly because Id had enough of self-discipline after so much running. I needed the freedom to do things other than reading and writing assignments.