{"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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"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? Peter and I were working one Saturday afternoon,1 and these things were staring at us from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Heather Ales 'Grozet'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Grozet-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3957,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/05\/10\/beer-diary-podcast-s02e01\/","url_meta":{"origin":2214,"position":1},"title":"Beer Diary Podcast s02e01: Collaboration","author":"Phil","date":"May 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Back for a second 'season' -- are more-or-less arbitrary division, but we watch a fair amount of (good) TV and can't help but think of things like that -- George and I sat down a little while ago to talk about collaboration in craft beer. As always,\u00a0a\u00a0direct download\u00a0is available, there\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Podcast episodes"","block_context":{"text":"Podcast episodes","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/podcast-episodes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":239,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2005\/08\/12\/badger-original-ale\/","url_meta":{"origin":2214,"position":2},"title":"Badger ‘Original Ale’","author":"Phil","date":"August 12, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Verbatim: Badger Original Ale. 500ml, $5, 4.6%, 12\/8\/05. Watching pirate West Wing. I really need to visit these boys. This is great stuff, too. It's just a big, solid ale. 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":152,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2004\/11\/06\/goose-island-honkers-ale\/","url_meta":{"origin":2214,"position":3},"title":"Goose Island \u2018Honker\u2019s Ale\u2019","author":"Phil","date":"November 6, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Verbatim: Goose Island Honker's Ale. $?, 12oz, @home, Nov 6. More West Wing, so a Chicago ale with burgers. Darkish, but hints of orange again. Bubbles not so enduring, no haze. Lighter taste + smell, still flat, muted ale-ish. More an afternoon beer. Perfectly respectable + tasty. Great everyday stuff;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Goose Island 'Honker's Ale'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Diary-1016-Goose-Island-Honkers-1-300x138.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":266,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2006\/05\/14\/youngs-special-london-ale\/","url_meta":{"origin":2214,"position":4},"title":"Young’s ‘Special London Ale’","author":"Phil","date":"May 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Verbatim: Young's Special London Ale. 500ml, $5, 6.4%, 14\/5\/06. Bottle conditioned, and it shows; gorgeous bubbles. Dark amber color, big round taste, malty + with hops for, well, England. All-around wonderfully beery. Brilliant, but definately not for everyone. Afterthoughts, October 2010: Everybody ready? We're about to fall off another cliff\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Young's Special London Ale","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Diary-1034-Youngs-Special-London-Ale-300x207.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":223,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2005\/04\/16\/belhaven-scottish-ale\/","url_meta":{"origin":2214,"position":5},"title":"Belhaven ‘Scottish Ale’","author":"Phil","date":"April 16, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"A.K.A. Belhaven 'Export', A.K.A. Belhaven 80 Shilling (when it's in casks). And, on the same day as the Diary gets its first English beer, it also gets this, its first Scot. Verbatim: Bellhaven Scottish Ale. 330ml, $5, 3.9%, 16\/4\/05. Ooh. 1719 est'd. Darker amber. Very full taste. Nutty, in fact.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Belhaven 'Scottish Ale'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Diary-1024-Belhaven-Scottish-Ale-300x139.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2214"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2512,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214\/revisions\/2512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}