I expected the village of Flåm to be a pit stop on our DIY Norway in a Nutshell tour. Instead, it turned out to be a vacation highlight. It’s true that the appeal is purely one of atmosphere – there’s not much going on in Flåm, and almost nothing that would count as a tourist attraction per se. Unless you believe in the concept of the destination brewery. Which I do. And Flåm has a doozy of a destination brewery in Ægir.
Flåmsbrygga
There are literally only about a half dozen buildings in Flåm proper, and most of them belong to Flåmsbrygga, a hotel built right on the waterfront of the fjord, just steps from the ferry terminal. Although the building exteriors are designed to evoke the great halls of Vikings (or at least their churches), the kitsch stops at the door and the hotel rooms are modern and stylish, and not even that expensive by Norwegian standards. I was tempted to stay that but an extremely tight budget (and my daughter’s infatuation with bunk beds) landed us in a cabin at the campground instead. Which was fine, because we were very happy there, and we still got to eat dinner at the hotel.
Ægir Brewery
Among the cluster of Flåmsbrygga buildings is the brewery. Named Ægir after the Norse god famed for quality brewing, Ægir is one of Norway’s top craft breweries with an attached pub on the ground floor and a fancier restaurant upstairs. The décor is ski lodge meets stave church and I loved it. Although their award-winning beers are available in several Nordic countries, they do not export to the U.S., so my only chance of tasting them was at the source.
The Beer
They have a huge range of beers with some seasonal rotation. The day I went there, I got a tasting flight of five beers:
Bøyla Blonde; Rallar Amber; Siv Witbier; Ægir IPA; Natt Imperial Porter
They were all good – even the beers I wouldn’t normally drink, like the porter or the blonde, were tasty. They were also obviously part of a different brewing tradition than the brew culture I live in. All of the beers were more lightly carbonated and hopped than I’m used to. This made them feel thinner, but it also allowed for more subtlety and nuance than the beer I usually down.
Being from the PNW, I’m all about the IPA, and being more familiar with IPAs, that’s what I gave the most scrutiny. The Ægir IPA was different in the ways I’ve described, but still very recognizable as an IPA. Nearly everything I drink at home uses Amarillo and Cascade hops. This beer was hopped differently, and I was surprised how much it affected the overall character of the brew. I had to ask and discovered that there were some Citra hops, which I’m familiar with, but the primary hop was an Eastern European variety. (Unfortunately, I’ve lost my notes and don’t remember which one it was.) Anyway, it was a great reminder how easy it is to get stuck in a provincial rut, and how delightful to break out of it. I had forgotten it was possible to be surprised by the flavor of IPA.
I also picked up a can of the Upstate IPA for enjoying later back at the cabin. Cold and canned, this one was familiar in flavor, although still more lightly hopped than I’m used to. And that’s fine, because even though I love them, I recognize that PNW IPAs are, objectively speaking, too heavy on the hops. That means the Ægir IPAs were actually perfectly balanced.
The Food
Food trucks have overtaken the brewpub culture where I live, so it was a delight to sit down to a real gastropub dinner. At Ægir, they offer a seasonal Viking Plank, a five-course meal served with beer pairings. The dishes are modern gastro-pub fare, but made with local, historic ingredients that would (mostly) have been familiar to the Vikings who lived in this fjord a millennium ago. The best part of this modern sensibility is that there was a vegetarian version – hallelujah!
It’s probably not worthwhile to go into too much detail about the dishes, since they change regularly (and I can’t find my notes). But to give you an idea, there was salad, vegetables, an open-faced veggie burger, cheese, and a brownie. Like a lot of stylish food, the vegetables were in such large pieces they were hard to eat. The veggie patty didn’t hold up very well as a patty, but it was delicious, and a welcome change from the Gardenburger that is literally everywhere at home. Brownies with whipped cream and strawberry on top seem to be the molten chocolate cake of Norwegian restaurants, and I’m down for it. But I’m easy. The real test was my kid. Like Mikey, she hates everything. But she chowed down on her kids’ meal of meatballs and mashed potatoes.
Would I Go Back?
Okay, I don’t actually believe that any restaurant merits a special trip from the West Coast of the U.S. to Scandinavia. And unless Ægir himself brewed it, the same could be said for any beer. But if I happened to be in the neighborhood – say Bergen or Oslo, a mere 5-10 hours away, depending on traffic/train schedules – yeah, I’d make a side trip to have dinner in Flåm at the Ægir Brewery.
