Tromsø: The Northernmost Brewery in the World

The Mack Bryggeri is located on the Storgata in Tromsø. It is 130 years old and, coincidentally enough, employs 130 workers. Ernie, a Tromsø native in her late thirties, proudly counts her place among the Mack workforce.

"I've been doing the tour for seven years," she boasted, as we all gathered around her at the Ølhallen, the "brew hall" or brew pub across from the brewery where Tromsø natives indulge in freshly pumped Mack beer (Mack pumps its beer through pipes into the Ølhallen storeroom) and lapskaus, a traditional Norwegian stew of beef and potatoes. Clad in knee-high black boots, she led us up a series of steps to the brewery's pub-side entrance.

Ernie looked like what you would expect someone from this part of the world to look like: she had blue eyes like a glaciar, and her permed blond hair spilled out from under a black Ølhallen pub cap. Before letting us into the brewery, she briefed us on Mack brews and the Norwegian people's drinking preferences.

"Norwegian people don't drink bitter beer," she told us quite matter-of-factly. As a result, Mack brews mostly Pilsners and Lagers, tempered to Norwegian tastes (there is no market for wheat beer or ales, apparently). They brew German beers and follow the German purity law: their beers are restricted to malt, hops, and water (nearby arctic water is exceptionally pure). You won't find any cloudberry beers at Mack; no crazy Lambics or Krieks or Belgian-inspired beers either. Mack's brews can be divided into three categories: alcohol-free, normal (3.5-4.5 % alcohol), and strong (6.5 %). Surprise of surprises: the alcohol-free beer is one of Mack's biggest sellers!

Mack also makes an Aquavit, an 80-proof Norwegian liquor that typically accompanies fish during meals (it helps break down the fat). One of the Norwegian's on our tour, an older, white-bearded man with no mustache (lending him an Amish look), had served on the Mack's Aquavit taste-testing team and brought it up. (Lucky him, what a dream job! Here's hoping, Dogfish Head, or Allagash, or Brooklyn brewery.) Ernie bobbed her head in agreement and added, "in Norway, we have this ridiculous alcohol law."

Ridiculous how?

You're not allowed to advertise alcohol in Norway. At all. You won't ever see an alcoholic beverage sponsoir a sports team in Norway. Nor will you be assaulted by Mack or Hansa or even Heineken (a.k.a. international Pilsner king) commercials on Norwegian television (man, I would miss the dancing techno robot).

Even on Mack's website, Ernie explained, they can show pictures of their beers, but they can't discuss them directly; which is to say they can't describe each different beer, how it's made, what dish it's meant to accompany, etc.

"People don't know we have over thirty flavors!" Ernie was livid. "It is a way of cheating us of our culture!" As a mother, she accepted that it was a law meant to "protect the children," but "we have to behave ourselves." Ernie also bartends at the Ølhallen and has seen her fair share of drinking.

"Of course people get drunk. But we can't be blamed for that. People must be responsible."

I wholeheartedly agreed, as, I think, did the entire group; we all grunted and snorted in outrage throughout her diatribe.

Ernie was quick to point out another risk to drinking, besides winding up drunk:

"You know if you don't exercise and you drink too much beer, you get this thing that is called 'love handles.'"

Mack considers itself a very traditional brewery and doesn't export outside of Norway. It is a local operation; they mostly serve the northern regions of the country. In addition to brewing beer, and, you know, for more moneys, their factory also recycles glass and plastic bottles. No cans.

They collect the bottles, send them through a gauntlet of cleaning stages, and then, off to the ultimate test: the "sniffers." These machines "sniff" whether the bottles have anything toxic in them. The "sniffers" can handle anything but diesel: if they catch a whiff of diesel, they shut down, as does production (sometimes for a whole day). My question is, how does diesel end up in a coke bottle in the first place?

We donned smurf-esque blue slippers over our shoes before entering the filtering area, where filtering sleeves and rods with tightly packed metal washers work in conjunction to remove impurities from the beer. Ernie emphasized the importance of removing our protective gear before venturing outside again, as our new smurf feet would likely make us slip and fall:

"You forget, and you go out, and you do the split on the ice. I don't like to do the split."

The filtering room also doubles as the pasteurization room: after the filtering process, Mack pasteurizes its beer at 72 degrees Celsius. As if they didn't do enough before all this! The vats of beer are actually brought down to near freezing level right after fermentation. Ernie explained it's on account of "some soldiers" that just don't want to quit fermenting! (Now every time I drink a particularly fermented beer, I'll envision yeasty soldiers making their way to my tummy.)

Nobody suffered any splits, thankfully, and we all headed back to the Ølhallen for the tasting portion of the tour. We were invited to two different pints of beer on the house: on Ernie's recommendation, I tried the Afterski and the Christmas beer. I can't say I tasted much through my cold; pity, I can't relate the flavors. But both beers went down cold and smooth. And I had a pretty damn good time.