Introducing Lava
Take your tongue on a trip to the Arctic isle’s ring of fire with Lava Smoked Imperial Stout (9.4% ABV). It will skál þig yfir (bowl you over).
Last winter, we went to Oslo, Norway for a long weekend. There, fast friends and key operatives in the craft beer scene introduced us to a beer they loved from Iceland’s only craft brewery, Olvisholt Brugghus. We loved it too. And so began an odyssey to find the brewer and bring back his delicious beer to you. We went to Iceland in September and the combined effect of Iceland’s raw natural beauty and Jon Gunnlauggson’s talent as a farmstead brewer – on a wild and lonely heath facing an active volcano – was utterly stunning and inspiring. And so is the Olvisholt story:
The brewery opened on Jon’s family dairy farm in 2008. The day before the official inauguration, an earthquake, registering 6.1 on the Richter scale, shocked Southern Iceland. The full combi tanks were swayed side to side, but the equipment withstood the tremor. Visitors at the opening said the brewers must be in contact with the Nordic gods since their first beer, Skalfti, means earthquake. Next came Lava… and Eyjafjallajokull – the volcano that erupted and halted all air traffic across Northern Europe. Hmm…
So here is Lava: a full-bodied, pitch-black beer with a dense brown head. It is richly flavored with notes of dark chocolate, rummy plum, roasted malt, espresso and lactose, with birch smoke in the finish. Lava is highly sought after by Scandinavian beer geeks. Taste it and you will understand why.
Praise for Lava
99/100 on RateBeer
“Beautifully creamy, chewy with a faint alcohol burn. A fantastic absolutely beautiful supremely well-balanced winter beer. 5 out of 5 The best beer we tasted this winter” Chris Schryer
Perhaps the best and most interesting imperial stout I’ve had. Ratebeer
More Iceland, Please!
Some Icelandic foods to pair with Lava: oysters, lobster and crayfish, arctic char, herring, sea urchin, halibut, gravlax, lamb, reindeer, rabbit and shark.
A fistful of herbs, spices and plants to work with to turn any dish Icelandic: angelica, dulse, sorrel, dock, yarrow, wild arctic thyme, juniper, crowberry, caraway, scurvywort, moss.
Recommended reading with a Lava: Anything by the Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness, The Njall Saga (mythology), Delicious Iceland by Volundur Snaer Volundarson (who worked at Charlie Trotter’s) to guide your culinary adventures.
Dine here: Forrettabarinn, a New Nordic restaurant on the top floor of the Harpa Concert
hall in Reykjavik, and Fjorubordid, a charming restaurant in the seaside hamlet of Stokkseyri.
Go to the Thingvellir and learn about the Althingi’s where the oldest parliament in the world met for more than a millennium. Stand astride the tectonic plate – one foot in North America the other in Asia. Little Iceland, the size of Ohio, is quite a place.
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