Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.03.2016, Síða 48

Get your treat
at KEF Airport
------- SWEET OR SAVORY? -------
FOOD
YEASTY YEASTY FOOD
Beer, Beer Everywhere
Kexland’s Icelandic Beer
Festival is a knockout
Kex Hostel’s cosy, low-lit bar en-
tertained a slightly different crowd
than usual for four days in February.
There were more beards in the room,
for a start; and those beards perhaps
a bit bushier and less kempt. There
was a certain loucheness amongst
the buzzing, almost uniformly male
throng, with their slicked-down hair,
rosy cheeks, stocky builds and jaunti-
ly angled flat caps. And they weren’t
just knocking their beer back, but
daintily sniffing it, and holding up
their undersized glasses to check out
the beer’s colour.
The occasion was the (sold-out)
Icelandic Beer Festival, an annual
event organised by Kexland, at which
overseas and Icelandic craft brewers
plied their wares to a happy group
of beer enthusiasts. The brewers
poured their ales for the assembled
drinkers—at no cost other than the
4,000 ISK festival wristband—all the
while chatting about ingredients, fla-
vours and brewing techniques.
Amongst the throng, we grabbed
a few interesting-looking characters
for a chat. Sam, who came with the
Portland, Oregon-based Commons
Brewery, was taking a break from the
pumps to enjoy a light IPA. “We do
Belgian and French-style ales, and
German lagers,” he said. “We kinda
focus on Northwest ingredients. We
mostly sell in the US but a little goes
to British Columbia. Our flagship
beer is urban farmhouse ale—a sim-
ple, refreshing, mostly pilsner malt
and rye, and yeast-driven. We haven’t
met the other brewers yet, but I’m
looking forward to meeting them.”
Better drinking
The brewers were set up around Kex
Hostel’s spacious Sæmundur pub
and restaurant, with some pouring
their beers behind the central bar,
and others from barrels propped un-
der trestle tables around the room.
The longest queue was for the Dan-
ish brewery Mikkeller, who opened
a craft bar on Hverfisgata in 2015.
Their Acid Drop sour ale was aged
in wine barrels, giving it a distinc-
tive and eye-opening flavour strong
enough to give this writer goose-
bumps. Ordinary beer, this is not.
“I’ve been coming to the beer fes-
tival since it started,” said Gunnar
Ingi, an attendee determined to try
everything on offer. “The Funk Or-
chard from Alefarm in Copenhagen
was really good, and the Myrtle from
Commons Brewery was too. But I
like the sour ales best. I enjoyed the
red wine barrel-aged Acid Trip. I’m
hoping they’ll put on the white wine
barrel-aged version tonight, but I’m
not sure they’ll make it.”
Plans for the festival started al-
most a year ago. “We started organis-
ing it right after the festival last year
was over,” says Óli Gústi, one of the
Kexland organisers. “Then in Octo-
ber we started to think about import-
ing the beers. And really, we just fin-
ished setting everything up today. So
it’s been a long haul. We have brew-
eries from Iceland, Denmark, and the
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WORDS: John Rogers
PHOTOS: Art Bicnick