{"id":2214,"date":"2011-03-26T00:02:12","date_gmt":"2011-03-25T11:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=2214"},"modified":"2011-04-13T00:50:07","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T12:50:07","slug":"n%c3%b8gne-%c3%b8-aku-aku-lemongrass-ale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/03\/26\/n%c3%b8gne-%c3%b8-aku-aku-lemongrass-ale\/","title":{"rendered":"N\u00f8gne \u00d8 ‘Aku Aku Lemongrass Ale’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"N\u00f8gne<\/a>
N\u00f8gne \u00d8 'Aku Aku Lemongrass Ale'<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hanging out at the bar at Hashigo was doing my addled brain some good, so I stayed for another. Dom, the owner, had had his wedding party that night as so was in with a crowd for a few afters and he was having one of these<\/em> while I was having my ‘Black Magic’<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I still can’t properly pronounce the name of the brewery, but it seems to go something like “Nurgh Nuh”. My militant Mongrelism \/ proud Cosmopolitanism usually leads to a certain savviness with these things, but these Nords have so far beaten me; I ordered by pointing, instead. For shame.<\/p>\n

It’s not my first of their beers, either, compounding the embarrassment of not being able to actually vocalise their name. Scotty and I ordered one on the Malthouse tab when we were there on our staff party day nearly exactly a year before (one of many discoveries of Rather Spookish Timing made while scanning the pages of Diary One<\/em>, last night). That<\/em> was an ultra-weird thing called ‘Sahti’ — packed with juniper, honey and whatnot; fermented with three yeasts; made with a mash of several grains. It was awesome<\/em>, in the literal sense. Well, Scotty and I thought so. We are big fans of the Weird. Everyone else thought it was several<\/em> bridges too far. To each their own; more for me.<\/p>\n

Contrary to the appearance caused by that<\/em> and even the mere name of\u00a0this<\/em>, N\u00f8gne \u00d8 do<\/em> also produce a lot of non-bizarre beer also; I just haven’t had any yet. I guess the more-whacked-out stuff just catches my attention, and that of the people in the import-export game, more readily.<\/p>\n

But anyway, this isn’t overpoweringly strange. The lemongrass is fantastically fresh in the nose, and provides interest-maintaining herby edges to the flavour. It’s probably unfair to compare across vast temporal distances (especially with my half-useless memory, no Diary<\/em> entry to point to, and the possibility that it’d been neglected and forgotten in the Malthouse fridge for too long), but I massively preferred this to ‘Taiphoon’, a likewise lemongrassy golden ale from\u00a0England’s Hop Back Brewery. ‘Aku Aku’ just rode that difficult line of weird-but-not-too-weird very well. The important core of “tasty golden ale” was still there, it just has some well-chosen background music playing as it does its thing.<\/p>\n

Verbatim:<\/strong> N\u00f8gne \u00d8 ‘Aku Aku Lemongrass Ale’ 2[6]\/3\/11 4.5% on tap @ HZ $11 Dom himself just had one too; today was his wedding party. These guys give me pronunciation headaches, but I like their stuff, especially the weirds. Their Sahti (sp?) was awesomely odd, this is sedately so. Nice warm gold, lemongrass easy on the nose, and in the nice mild [body] (not “thin” in the pejorative). Gentle herby edges. Enough to be interesting. Recognisably just a nice light golden ale at heart. In a good way.<\/p>\n

\n
\"N\u00f8gne<\/a>
N\u00f8gne \u00d8 'Aku Aku Lemongrass Ale', tap badge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"N\u00f8gne<\/a>
Diary II entry #82, N\u00f8gne \u00d8 'Aku Aku Lemongrass Ale'<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hanging out at the bar at Hashigo was doing my addled brain some good, so I stayed for another. Dom, the owner, had had his wedding party that night as so was in with a crowd for a few afters and he was having one of these while I was having my ‘Black Magic’. I … Continue reading N\u00f8gne \u00d8 ‘Aku Aku Lemongrass Ale’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[27,6,38],"class_list":["post-2214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary","tag-ale","tag-pages","tag-norway"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2535,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/04\/09\/heather-ales-grozet\/","url_meta":{"origin":2214,"position":0},"title":"Heather Ales ‘Grozet’","author":"Phil","date":"April 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"As you'd probably guess, we buy a lot of beer at work. And frequently, it seems we fill in the corners of an order with some half-dozens of especially random stuff. Because why not? 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Afterthoughts, October 2010: The relative terseness of this note seems to suggest I was suffering from a sort of (enjoyable)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Badger 'Original Ale'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Diary-1028-Badger-Original-Ale-300x110.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":289,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2007\/10\/27\/atlas-three-sisters\/","url_meta":{"origin":2214,"position":3},"title":"Atlas ‘Three Sisters’","author":"Phil","date":"October 27, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Verbatim: Three Sisters Scottish Ale. 500ml, $7ish, 4.2%, 27\/10\/07. Watching Top Gear and having a beer to normalise after going to a mad Christian thing. Bubbles vanish. Smells very dark \/ burnt coffee and choc. Decent dark ale, but. 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