Iceland review - 2013, Qupperneq 60

58 ICELAND REVIEW
sometimes play around with it for Microbar
but I stick to the same recipe for the bottled
beer.”
rESPONDING TO THE
MONOPOLIES
The business seems to be going well with
sales projected to increase by 50 percent
this year to 75,000 liters and a total of eight
varieties produced: Pale Ale, IPA, Micro
(Lite Lager), Stout, Hveiti (a wheat beer),
two Christmas beers and a barley wine.
The beers are easily recognizable for their
unusual labels. Popular Icelandic cartoon-
ist, Hugleikur Dagsson, who happens to be
Árni’s cousin, designed the logo and label,
which feature a cartoon man on his horse.
“We wanted to have something different,”
Birgitte says, explaining that the word gæðin-
gur in Icelandic means ‘the perfect riding
horse’ and that Skagafjörður is considered the
‘horse capital’ of Iceland.
As if the couple didn’t have enough on
their plate, they decided to open Iceland’s
first—and only—microbar (a bar which
exclusively sells alcohol from small-scale
breweries), simply named Microbar, in
Reykjavík in the summer of 2012. “I had
our beer at a bar in Reykjavík for a while
but then I was squeezed out. I woke up at
4 am one morning and thought ‘I should
just open my own bar!’” Árni recalls when
we meet at the bar a few weeks later. “It was
my answer to the big monopolies. They play
by their own rules. The big breweries have
their own equipment which cannot be used
for other beer and there’s no room for other
equipment in bars, so basically bars have
to buy their beer. Technically they are free
to sell what they want but then they don’t
get the discount they would get from the
big breweries for selling in bulk. If you sell,
say 100,000 beers, you get a set discount in
advance,” he scoffs.
Birgitte explains that the bar represents all
four of Iceland’s micro or craft breweries as
well as beers from abroad totaling 200 types
all in all. And several restaurants in Reykjavík,
including Vox, Dill and Tapas barinn, have
Gæðingur on the menu. “They pair the
food on the menu with our beers,” Árni says
proudly.
CHILE ON THE HOrIzON
Next on the agenda is producing whiskey. “I
just caught up with a friend of mine. We’re
thinking of distilling whiskey. I’d brew it up
north and send it down here [to Reykjavík]
for him to distill,” he says. “We were both
invited by the Icelandic government to
attend a trade fair in Denmark along with
20 other Icelandic food and beverage hand-
craft companies—mostly fish but also beer,
schnapps and salt—and I met him there,” he
explains of how they got talking about the
idea. Never short of ideas, Árni and Birgitte
are also considering opening a microbar in
Sauðárkrókur. “As a bar it wouldn’t really
make any money, just for the brewery, but
it’s important for the town for people to be
able to go and have a local beer,” Árni stresses.
With things going well, the natural next
step would be exports. “I did get some inter-
est but the whole process took months. I
had to send samples and pictures and when
they finally got back to me they said they
weren’t sure. But, now they seem interested
again. We’re looking at possibly exporting to
Norway, maybe Chile,” Árni explains. But as
a microbrewery, part of the attraction is just
that: being small and somewhat unknown to
the greater world. “I’m all too aware of the
dangers of becoming ‘too successful,’ so I’m
taking things slowly. If I find one big custom-
er, if it’s too big then I’ll be ‘sold out’ when
what I want is to stay small and unique.” 
fARMING
the cows are part of the family. Baltasar opts for a glass of orange juice.