I’ve got an interview with Mikkel Borg Bjergsø, co-founder and head brewer of Mikkeller, coming up in next month’s issue of Beer Advocate magazine. In the span of five years, Mikkel hs gone from homebrew rookie to international brewing sensation.
Mikkel’s brewing some amazing beers right now. His Stateside IPA, for one, has a beautiful floral nose that’s balanced expertly by sweet caramel malts. And, at 7%, it doesn’t pull any punches. He brews everything full-throttle – he lays claim to the title of strongest Barleywine and Imperial Stout (17%!) in Denmark. And Heudegoop, a Wheatwine brewed in collaboration with Three Floyds, caused a riot at last month’s Extreme Beer Fest.
He’s also somewhat of an iconoclast. Mikkel talks a lot in the interview about not wanting his own brewhouse, not caring all that much about meeting skyrocketing demand, and wanting to push the limits on every batch of beer he brews. Great stuff. And to read it, you’ve got to be a subscriber.
What didn’t make the cut is this story about how Beer Geek Breakfast, one of the highest-rated beers in the entire world, came to be. No use wasting it. So here it is, rescued from the cutting room floor:
We were looking to do an oatmeal stout. It has quite a lot of oats – 25 percent oats – which is quite a lot. We brewed it on a small scale, and never thought about adding coffee. When we tasted it, we thought something is missing. It was not the way we wanted it to be. I’d tasted a Speedway Stout from AleSmith – I liked it a lot, I liked the way the coffee was blended into the beer. There are different ways of using coffee, and I liked the way they used theirs. I contacted Peter from AleSmith and asked how he added his coffee, and I did the same thing. This was still when we were homebrewers. It turned out pretty well. People liked it a lot, so we said, This is one of the beers we have to brew on a bigger scale.
It was kind of a coincidence that it turned out to be a Coffee Oatmeal Stout. Oats, coffee – it’s good for breakfast. The week we released it in Denmark was Week 40 – it’s the certain week in Denmark when the government tells you to drink less, and for some reason – we didn’t think about it, but this beer was released the Monday of this week. There was a big fuss that on the week to drink less there is a stout you drink for breakfast. Which of course gave it a lot of hype in Denmark.