Brewery: Bygland Bryggeri

Bygland Bryggeri is coming to the festival. They are an unusual brewery in that they focus on traditional Norwegian beer and ferment all their beers with kveik. That’s a quite daring strategy, so they are also a contract brewer.

The founder is Torkjel Austad, who has family from Bygland in Setesdal. He’s been at the festival several years as a home brewer, serving among other things a setesdal-style farmhouse ale he learned to brew from Jon K. Rysstad, an old-school farmhouse brewer in Setesdal.

The beers:

• For the Love of Kveik: Framgarden 9% - The first beer in a series titled “For the Love of Kveik”, dedicated to different kveiks, where Bygland tries to approximate the original farmhouse ale that the owner of the kveik brews. So this is based on Petter B. Øvrebust’s original recipe from Stordal, not too far from Hornindal, with juniper infusion, no wort boil apart from the humlebeit, and so on. Fermented at 30C.
• For the Love of Kveik: Espe 9% - The second beer in the series, based on Arve Espe’s kveik and recipe. Arve Espe will be at the festival, so it will be possible to compare the two. Fermented at 32C. The festival will, appropriately, be the world premiere of this beer.
• Gofa 6.5% - Described as a “smoked staut” (“staut” is the Norwegian equivalent of the English word “stout”), fermented with Sigmund Gjernes’s kveik.
• Sveikadden Sterk 8% - Traditional farmhouse ale with Norwegian malts, juniper and Gjernes kveik. “Sveikadd” is Setesdal dialect for “bachelor” in the sense of “unmarried man”.
• Møykjeddingi 6.5% - A NEIPA/raw ale hybrid, fermented with Framgarden.
• Ølgnassen 5.2 5.2% - A stronger version of the normal “Ølgnassen”, described as an “unfiltered juniper pilsner”, with Norwegian malts.