Local traditions as a means for commercial production of historical beers: The case of Vossaøl, Norway

ABSTRACT

The aim of the article is to analyse challenges facing the commercial production of historical beers, which are ‘extinct’ beers. The concept of ‘fictive terroir’ is introduced to emphasize these challenges. The author addresses the following questions: What kind of knowledge is needed to produce historical beers? How can this knowledge be acquired? How can it be used commercially in craft breweries? The studied case is Vossaøl, a craft beer imitation of a beer produced in the early 19th century. The data were obtained from written sources and interviews with local home brewers and brewers at Voss Brewery in Norway. The study revealed the need to reconstruct the terroir in the early 19th century. Additionally, Voss Brewery had to acquire knowledge about how to process and combine the ingredients, which included the traditional yeast (kveik). Involving traditional home brewers was crucial to determine how ingredients could be combined to produce Vossaøl. The author concludes that a synthetic knowledge base was a useful point of departure in this respect. Participation in the traditional culture of brewing proved an important means when working with this knowledge base. The results are interesting in the broader context of the reconstruction of beverages and food.

KEYWORDS:

• brewing
• craft beer
• historical beer
• terroir
• Norway

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the editor and two anonymous referees for comments and suggestions that contributed to the improvement of this article. I thank the representatives from the breweries and the home brewers at Voss, who participated in the interviews. Both the County of Oppland, which administered funding from the Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation, and Eastern Norway Research Institute, are thanked for appropriating funding for this article.

Notes

1 In this article, ‘history’ refers to general elements in the past, to ‘something that has happened’, whereas ‘tradition’ signifies the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs or examples from one generation to the next (Merriam-Webster 2017). Thus, in contrast to history, tradition signifies continuity.