And action!
So, for those of you who know me
, it’s pretty simple. Everyone knows that
I love New Zealand hops.
And if I have to make a choice from
, it’s Mothueka for its big freshness
and its big lime flavour.
It’s very complicated to choose a favourite beer, I’ve got lots of them,
but if I had to choose just one, it
would be a beer from Verdans called Flute
Carsight Exhibition, which is a double IPA made with only
Citra, so it’s a bit more classic than everyone
uses, but it’s pretty amazing.
What’s your favourite beer pairing?
I’m not a big fan of beer pairings.
I’m more into simple things.
So, I mean a big IPA with pizza.
And something I used to do quite a lot
a while ago was a La Sponta Basile beer with a tomato
mozza, a basil beer with a tomato mozza.
It worked perfectly.
Without a doubt, it will be Tallinn.
Tallinn is a beautiful little city,
but for such a small town, it’s amazing
to have so many high-quality craft spots.
What’s more, the big advantage is
that Tallinn is home to the
Pojala brewery, which I adore.
And having visited it a few years ago, it
was also a bit of an XM trigger that made
me want to go so far with this project.
What is your music, album and artistic style?
I think this will surprise a lot of people
but it’s Linkin Park’s hybrid theory and meteor album.
I swear to you, I’m still listening to the whole thing
on Saturday, it’s OK, I didn’t put the two albums together.
I’ll probably be somewhere in
fashion or coffee or
something to do with design.
I like the creative side of beer,
the artistic side, the label side, so
I could have gone into that.
Who has been your greatest inspiration?
I’d say it’s
all breweries, different breweries.
There are many that I like
, but if I had to name just one, it would be Verdant.
And if it’s a character, it’s the
responsible for the approach, it’s Verdant, James Efron,
who really does an incredible job on
beers, particularly IPAs, with
hops that are sometimes complex, sometimes not.
But whatever happens, the beer
behind it is always pretty crazy.
What did you like about it?
I think it’s two things.
Well, there were two factors.
I think the first was a friend.
A friend who, some
years ago, had a beer shop.
As a result, I found
a lot of myself in that shop.
And the second thing is, I think, travelling.
Particularly one trip to Stockholm, where I found myself
in beer shops where the beers, as well as being very good, had beautiful, well-thought-out visuals,
with a much stronger identity.
And that’s something we didn’t have at all,
which we still have very little of in Belgium.
So he said to me, and I thought
well, that’s something I’d like to do.
In Belgium we have quite a few
festivals that are quite good.
But every year in November
we have Billy’s Craft Beer Festival.
And that’s definitely going to be the one.
Great quality, great beer, great atmosphere.
The last beer to be brewed was
, of which there were two, because
there were two brewed at the same time.
The first is a beer we brewed
last year and are bringing back this year,
Borealis, which is a double aipier brewed with
Talus, Idao 7 and Laurel.
And the second beer is a new one, a
limited edition beer, and we’ve revisited a white
by adding more hops than usual.
So it’s a white aipier
but with mostly German hops.
And what can we expect?
The next step for the brewery,
, will be to have a brewery.
Right now, we’re still operating as a contract brewery and as
gipsy, so we’re brewing left and right.
And the next step, which is the path we’ve
wanted to take from the start, is to have our own
brewery and our own facilities.
Norm Brewing's - Five Minutes With Faram
