Last month I spent a few days in Chicago attending some performances of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival. And of course a polar vortex descended upon the city as I was driving south and held the city in its icy tendrils as it blew frigid blasts of wind through Chicago's street grid the whole time I was there. My walks to the theaters were quite brisk, I can tell you. Luckily one was only about 3 blocks away. While I was bundled up with all 13' of my Doctor Who scarf, gaggles of young women walked out of smart restaurants on Halsted dressed for a pleasant autumn evening and then observed with a whine, "It's so cold out!"
I returned to Madison on the day the vortex began to lift but not before stopping to meet a cousin for a fine Polish lunch at Opolska Restaurant in Schaumburg. She informed me that right across the street from the restaurant was a Polish grocery store, Deli 4 You. I was pleasantly surprised to see shelves of Polish goodies and bought more sweets than I perhaps should have. And, since it was close, I also went to the local Binny's outpost.
Not surprisingly, there was a decent selection of Polish beers and I bought a couple. Unfortunately, they were both skunk and I have vowed to only buy Polish beer at Polish stores. Well, except for pale lagers as I think that Okacim and its ilk sell alright. But craft brews, nope.
My eyes became strained and I grew bored scanning the shelves for non-IPAs when I saw a label that read "Smoke * Kviek * Spruce Tips * Juniper".
They had me at smoke.
The style was listed as "Gotländsdricka" which was somehow familiar to me. It took me about halfway to Madison to recall that New Glarus had brewed a beer with a similar name. When I finally got home, I looked it up and found that it was Gotlandic, one of their R&D brews from several years back that I recall enjoying.
This brew was called Visby, named after a port on the island of Gotland which is out in the middle of the Baltic Sea east of Sweden. And it was brewed by Old Irving Brewing back in my old neighborhood. I enjoyed their bock, Lifeblood, and was happy to find another of their brews that held appeal for me. Another mark in the beer's favor was diacritical - that umlaut. The ingredient list plus that umlaut surely meant that this was a Nordic style. And Nordic peoples live near the Arctic Circle (most do, anyway) where they must get polar vortices daily so this stuff had to be suitable for winter, if not entirely appropriate.
I think I can count the number of times I've drunk a beer fermented with kviek yeast on one finger so I figured this would be interesting.
My pour produced a nice, big, frothy head of just off-white foam that sat atop a brew that was a slightly hazy gold. For some reason I thought it would be darker. Firstly, I seemed to recall that New Glarus' take on the style was dark and, besides, if this was what the Vikings drank, shouldn't it be Stygian? I mean, wasn't Viking society all dark, grey, and sooty? Didn't these people see The Northman?
Inside I saw a smattering of bubbles.
As expected a sniff revealed a healthy dose of pine. Unexpected, however, was an even healthier dose of pineapple aroma.
"Well, that's kviek for ya," I reasoned.
Taking a sip, I found that it had a medium-light body - not as heavy as I thought it would be - and had a very nice fizziness. That kvieky pineapple was right up front and was accented by a hint of citrus. And there was that resiny/piney flavor. Missing was any smokiness. Even after I let the beer warm I still failed to discern much smoke. As best I could taste, any fuliginous goodness was mellow to begin with and was overshadowed by the resiny one-two punch of spruce tips and juniper.
The pineapple taste lingered on the finish for a spell before being overcome by all that pine flavor which boosted the dryness and let a little bitterness through.
Despite the absence/paucity of smokiness, I really enjoyed this brew. There is just something about how my tongue tasted the pineapple first and then made the shift over to pine that I found intriguing and delicious. Maybe it's because both flavors have "pine". There didn't seem to be a lot of malty sweetness which I appreciated. The grain flavors and what I suspect is a modicum of hops weren't readily tasted and instead seemed to be keeping the more prominent flavors from becoming overwhelming.
Despite a fairly light body, Visby is 6.5% A.B.V. so it definitely helped keep the cold at bay on a recent night as the mercury was taking a dive to below 0.
Junk food pairing: Pair your Visby with a big bag of Crunchy Cheddar Jalapeño Cheetos. The jalapeño adds another sharp taste to complement all that pine. And who doesn't like cheese?
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