Just as our culture and society are slowly blending and distinct lines between geographies and peoples have begun to blur, global beer has started to homogenize as well. The age-old paradigm has always been that the best beer comes from Germany. This may or may not have been true at one point, but I think it’s more a byproduct of Germany’s rich, prolific and globally broadcasted beer history than the quality of the beer itself, especially today. I would certainly contend that America’s craft beers, and specifically some of our own here in Alaska, easily rival and often surpass their German counterparts. Increasingly, American craft beer is being emulated overseas, not just because of the quality but because of the rich diversity that American beer provides.

As recently as January 2005, the brewers/owners of De Leyerth Brouwereijen (Urthel) from Ruiselede, Belgium, visited Alaska to participate in the Great Alaska Beer and Barley Wine Festival. This was a new experience that exposed the brewer to America’s creative use of hops. The Belgians use a lighter touch with hops, even to the point of drying and aging some of them to reduce the aromatic and flavoring compounds so that their use is more as a preservative and simply for balance in the beer. By the end of the festival, brewer Hildegard van Ostaden found herself at Midnight Sun Brewing Company poking around at the brewery’s processes that produce such lively and exciting beers. She went back to Belgium and brewed Hop-It, a beer that by Belgian standards is quite hoppy indeed. This beer’s become a mainstay in the brewery’s flagship lineup and Hildegard’s foray into American brewing techniques has inspired other Belgian brewers as well.

Undeniably, certain northern European brewers seem to have espoused American brewing styles the most, at least in recent years. Breweries such as Nogne O of Lillesand, Norway, for example, openly cite the influence of American beer in their breweries. Bland beer defined the region for years, and small breweries were forced to compete in a very tightly controlled beer-unfriendly alcohol industry for years, but keen interest has arisen from the influence our craft breweries have had on an increasingly global scale. Often, and as it’s been throughout the craft brewing industry, the interest goes both ways. Greg Koch, owner/brewer of the world renowned Stone Brewing Company in Southern California visited Nogne O in the summer of 2008. He extended an invitation and Nogne’s head brewer Kjetil Jikiun visited Stone where he brewed a batch of beer in conjunction with Stone’s brewer Mitch Steel and Ron Jefferies from Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, who was visiting from Dexter Michigan. This collaborative effort further softens beer boundaries and the distinctions between global styles.

If you want to see just how profound the American influence is on overseas beers, don’t miss the varied selection of Nogne O beers we continue to enjoy here, albeit on a limited basis. If you can find it, Nogne O’s Dark Horizon is one of the most profound beers in the universe. This imperial stout has been heralded as one of the best beers in the world by larger and larger circles of discriminating experts across the globe. It’s perfect to drink now and will make a fine addition to your cellar collection of vintage beers.

Another northern European brewery with ties to the west is Norrebro Bryghus in Denmark. The brewer’s been over here a number of times, and it was during one of his forays that he met our own Kodiak Island Brewing Company’s Ben Millstein at a craft brewer’s conference in the Lower 48 as long as six years ago. The Norrebro Bryghus’s owner and brewer have been baiting Millstein over there more or less continuously since then. It seems like easy bait, but time, money and the formidable distance between Kodiak Island and Copenhagen kept the trip a distant dream. This all changed this winter and Millstein was able to head overseas to learn more about beer in the region and toss some of his own input into the brewkettle by doing a collaboration brew at Norrebro Bryghus.

“We brewed an orange blossom honey braggot,” says Millstein. A braggot is part beer, part mead, and this was a big departure for the Copenhagen brewing operation. “They asked me what I wanted to brew. It’s something I’ve toyed with doing here. I made a batch before I left. I gave them some ideas of what I’ve made and they said they’d never done something like that and it sounded great,” he says. The brewers got together and rocked up the ingredients including 200 kilograms of Maris Otter Pale Malt (top shelf stuff), 200 kilos of orange blossom honey and just a smidge of hops to balance the malt and sweetness and lend a preservative effect to the beer. The European influence came with the dosing of the beer with Orval yeast (a Trappist strain). Once the beer’s fermented out, it will be bottle conditioned using champagne yeast.

Sound like some good stuff? Too bad we probably won’t be getting any over here. Although Norrebro Bryghus distributes beer to the United States and up here we’re lucky to get a couple of brands on an intermittent basis, this is a small, specialty batch and the only bottles that are likely to wash ashore would end up rightfully in Kodiak.

That shouldn’t stop you from sampling this brewery’s great beer when you can find it. I discovered an errant bottle of Norrebro Bryghus Skargaards Porter at the Brown Jug Warehouse the other day and snatched it up. I got a little sticker shock at the register but when I got home, the first sniff and sip told me it was well worth the expenditure. This beer uses Danish honey and a compendium of dark roasted malts in the beer. The cumulative effect is a delicious, fully rich aroma with delicate honey notes and no hops to speak of. The beer’s quite dark for a porter, but this is no defect. The malt is in the forefront of the taste of this beer that’s sweetish overall. This sensation is interrupted by both malt and slight hop-based bitterness, followed by more roast and chocolate notes. The six percent alcohol is almost buried in the big malt, but can be detected a bit in the flavor and the warming finish.

Kodiak Island brews are just about as spotty as those from half a world away, but keep your mug to the wall because they do show up in town here and there and only on tap. Humpy’s and Café Amsterdam are consistently your best bets.

Beer genealogy is a fun study especially when it’s reinforced with samples from disparate ends of the globe. In the coming days and years, I’m certain that as a result of the collaborative efforts of brewers from around the world, beer as we know it will continue to change.

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