Tap Nº 07

Fjord Lager

Pale lager, 5.2%. The house beer and the reason the cellar exists. Six weeks cold, soft harbour water, and nothing clever done to it.

A lager is the hardest beer to hide behind. There is no hop wall, no roast, no fruit, just malt, water, yeast and time, and every mistake you made shows up in the glass.

The malt

Floor-malted pilsner barley from a farm ninety minutes inland, plus four percent Munich for colour. Nothing else. We mash at 64 °C for a long, thin wort that ferments dry rather than sweet.

The water

Harbour aquifer, naturally soft, treated only with a little calcium sulphate to sharpen the bitterness. Soft water is the single biggest reason this beer tastes the way it does, and it is the one ingredient we cannot buy.

Six weeks at eight degrees. Most breweries take two. That is the whole recipe.

The cellar

Primary at 9 °C for twelve days, then a diacetyl rest, then five weeks lagering just above freezing. The beer drops bright on its own and goes to the tank unfiltered.