The tradition of brewing beer and mead here in Norway is virtually ancient and at one of the village?s Stave churches they found brewing logs dated back to the year 800 with the recipes neatly in scripted into a great big log.  Luckily for us Historians have translated the inscriptions from ancient Norwegian and into a readable form, as the inscriptions of the old Viking?s are hard to go by.

  From the year1100 the Gulatings law obliged all the farmers in Norway to brew a certain amount of Beer and produce a sufficient amount of barley and hops for this purpose if not it carried heavy sentences, the church in the name of the Bishop would take half their land and the King would take the rest so one can see that the locals wanting to hang on to their land had to brew a good beer. One can still find these Hop plantations and their wild offspring?s growing on the hillsides.

Several entries such as the following are found, this one dated back to 1786 the Bishop Wille describes the importance of the beer being strong enough. ?If the guests didn?t become drunk, there should rest a course upon them?. So many a guests acted drunker than they were to please their host and to show that they did not deserve the curse in doing shame to one of Gods gifts.

 Norse legend says that Odin, disguised as an eagle, spilled the secret of beer from the sky. The Norwegian brewers learnt that, if they kept the stick they had stirred their previous brew with; it would help to start the next fermentation. Coated with sticky residue, the "magic sticks" harbored millions of living yeast cells. Later called "yeast logs" some have been kept as family heirlooms.

Today, in the rural valleys of the mountainous west, almost every farmer keeps a supply of liquid yeast for home-brewing, and all say that this precious resource has been in the family "for as long as we can remember?, probably from Viking times.

In 1820 Norway had their first commercial brewery and by 1850 there was 343 breweries scattered around Norway.

All this caught my interest in 1982 when I was 14 and going to church for our christening perpetrations.

Worship to the ancient Gods had to be carried out and the recipes that were discovered at the Stave church had to be tried so a friend and I started gathering the equipment needed for the upcoming adventure of our first brew.  First things first we needed a "yeast log? the last Sunday of each month we had christening school so we planned to borrow one of the churches ancient "yeast logs" as the Priest was a strict old man we thought it be best not to let him in on our upcoming plans as we could easily return the log on the following class.

The log was safely secured and having Easter holidays we went on with our plans the following day using the exact recipe and instructions from the year 800.

  We thought this exiting venture went quite well; of course it took 3 days before the brew started fermenting but other than that the making of beer seemed easy bare in mind that temperature control was dome by sticking your hand in and feeling how hot it was during the various stages.  My friend scolded himself when he stuck his elbow into the still very hot wort.  All the details were described in that old recipe  (it did say to use your elbow for finding the correct temperature needed before stirring the ?borrowed magic log?.

 We let our finished brew sit in a keg until summer holidays not daring to taste it at our young age we ended up giving it to some older boys at a village summer party.

 Norwegians having Viking in their bloodline drank it all. They seemed very pleased with us right there and then, but as they ended up really sick and encountering a runny next day in addition to their killing headaches.

  They decided to settle the score, with this we were both rounded up for a good beating that following week.  Some of the same guys are good friends now and they enjoy my beer with fellow villagers.

This was my introduction to the fine art of brewing and it has grown on me ever since. The first few years it was hard to find information about the secrets of brewing as most of the old brewers kept their magic to them selves always keeping their skills close at hand so that no one could steal their secrets.

One always craves for more information on a serious hobby and I have been upgrading my skills and brewery ever since that first Easter day.

When fine magazines like BYO and Internet came along, achieving good information has become easy and it gives people a great way of being introduced to the skills and techniques of brewing.  For me it was a super upgrade from my first book on brewing dated back to 20.06.1900.

I can highly recommend a book called Technology Brewing and Malting in the international edition by Professor Kunze.

My latest brewery was a major upgrade and I finally ended up throwing out all the old equipment that had been put together through out the years. My first decision in planning a new setup was to use the same detergents as commercial brewers use, the only problem is that these detergents corrode copper and more or less eat aluminum.

Every thing had to be Stainless 316L steel with food grade quality.

Second dream was to have a brewery with that magic 1000 Liter capacity.

I started searching for this material and calling different companies that sell stuff a brewer could need but soon encountered that this task would take an investment much larger than any hobby brewer could even dream of so I started roaming dump sights diary plants and other factories in the food production business for used or out graded materials by this my stock of 316L grew and grew.

 When I told them that I was building a small countryside brewery they all got interested and by this day I do not know how much beer I promised the guy?s working in the mechanical and developing departments of the food industry all over Norway. I know I am sending out beer steadily.

Bare in mind there is only 4.5 million people in Norway and most things are pretty spread over great distances ?compare it to the great state of Montana?

Getting all my valuables here also took a lot of beer bribing in the trucking industry but as long it?s about beer they?re all helpful.

Finally I ended up with a Stainless Steel craze and lots of it.

The layout of the brewery had to be planned thoroughly as the space in my brew room is very limited only 3 by 4 m with a door located at each end; therefore it had to be built into the room.

At the beginning I started out and hired a welder to weld the parts that I had prepared but after 20 hours I could already feel the budget screaming so I ended up buying his tig and rod

Welder and had him instruct me in the mystique of welding after 10 hours of professional instruction I went on reading and practicing on my own.

Again this was partially paid for in the upcoming brew.

There were lots of obstructions and failures encountered on the way but as you can see I ended up with a 99.9% Stainless steel brew house (the lid on the boil kettle is aluminum and a stainless cone is under construction). Although not 100% finished it works very well with high brew house yields and the possibility to brew any beer one could think of.

My steam fired 3-kettle setup lets me prepare any adjuncts I wish to add to the mash or do a decoction brew with any desired percentage of the mash.

I have furnished CIP units in all the vessels witch gives me as clean vessels and transfer lines as any brewer could wish for.

The only parts of the brewery intended for beer are the two 1000 L high-pressure tanks. I bought these from the company that developed the bag in tank concept although expensive I purchased them with a 45% discount and the promise of 200 L beer being delivered to the company?s Christmas party. They have already pre tested the product and were so pleased that they sent me 40 pieces of their1000L Mylar liner beer bags for my tanks.

They work great as the beer is always contained in a sterile environment and it allows me to transfer beer with air pressure.

Brewery over view.