Tag Archives: Old Odense Ale

Nørrebro Bryghus Old Odense Ale


Posted by Aschwin de Wolf

As discussed in the post the domestication of beer, the practice of wild fermentation must have ensured that many traditional gruits must have been quite sour in taste.  It was therefore only a matter of time before modern craft brewers in search of tradition sought to re-create such brews.  A recent and interesting attempt at a spiced sour ale is Old Odense Ale, a collaboration between Dogfish Head and Nørrebro Bryghus based on a 15th century Danish gruit recipe.

The following notes were taken on Tuesday, March 24, 2009:

600 ml in a snifter.

Appearance: Opaque, reddish / orange color, pours with two finger head but little head retention and no lacing.

Smell: Fruity, sour apple, hay, yeast, caramel/maple syrup.

Taste: Sharp, sour apple with a subtle sweet caramel candy apple note. Ends on a slightly bitter herbal note. Could not detect the anise.

Mouthfeel: Thin and smooth with a vinous astringent note. Carbonation is moderate and in balance with the beer style.

Drinkability: Very drinkable. Goes down easy and light.

There is no established beer style for Old Odense Ale but the flavor profile reminds me more of a  subtle spiced Flanders Red than a traditional lambic.  This is far too good to go down the memory hole as  a one-time limited brew and hopefully it, or a similar brew, can be made available again in the future.  Old Odense Ale is highly recommended. There is a future for spiced tart beers.


The domestication of beer


Posted by Aschwin de Wolf

Traditional lambic brewers are among the few remaining producers of alchoholic beverages that  allow spontaneous fermentation and the unruly behavior of  bacteria and yeasts to influence their brews. Such practices have been increasingly rejected by modern brewers who want complete control and a consistent end product. This development is not the first step in the “domestication” of beer, as evidenced by the history of “gruit.” As Theodore Schick writes in “Beer and Gnosis: The Mead of Inspiration” (in the collection Beer and Philosophy: The Unexamined Beer Isn’t Worth Drinking):

In the fourteenth  and fifteenth centuries, many Europeans began to look askance at the lavish and hedonistic lifestyle of many church leaders. Their promotion of the highly inebriating gruit was emblematic of their decadence…So the movement toward hopped ale was in part an anti-drug movement. The passage of the German beer purity laws in 1516 which mandated the use of hops was a form of prohibition not unlike that passed by the US congress in 1919.

Because for hundreds of years all beers were brewed using spontaneous fermentation, there must have been beers that combined the sour character of the traditional lambic and the herbal characteristics of medieval gruit. A recent attempt to create such a beer is Old Odense Ale, a collaboration between Denmark’s Nørrebro Bryghus brewery and Delaware’s Dogfish Head. As has been highlighted before in the discussion about “barnyard IPA“, the use of wild yeasts does not have to be confined to lambic beers.