Nøgne ø Brown Ale

This beer here is the Brown Ale from Nøgne ø Brewery ("ø" is my favorite Norwegian letter and is pronounced like "uh" or the "oo" in foot, in case you were wondering). It's a brewery I've been hearing a lot about and seeing around town quite often, but this was my first time trying it.

Can you guess how much it costs at Olivia Italian restaurant?

If you guessed around $13 (!), you'd be pretty close (it was 110 Norwegian kroner, I think). Seems crazy, huh? Believe it or not, I'd actually consider that a reasonable bargain (relatively speaking, of course) for this kind of beer. I've seen this beer going for over $15 at some other restaurants, which made me hesitant to try it - I'm generally skeptical about ever drinking beer at restaurants with the ridiculous prices here, in fact. But we were going to a concert after dinner (more on that in a moment), so I figured I'd go for it.

It's definitely a nice beer. The flavor, as described on the bottle, is as follows:

Brown Ale from Nøgne ø is a rich and well-balanced ale with notes of biscuit, caromel, nuts and coffee. It drinks smoothly and pairs well with many foods, but especially cheese, nuts, casseroles and burgers. We recommend to pour cautiously to leave the natural sediments behind.

Nøgne Ø Brewery

Nøgne ø undoubtedly takes pride in its beer, and it shows in this ale. In fact, their officially registered company name is Nøgne Ø Det Kompromissløse Bryggeri A/S...THE BREWERY FROM NORWAY THAT REFUSES TO COMPROMISE.

From their website:

Our mission: To create fantastic full bodied, and hand-crafted beers!
Nøgne ø is Norway’s leading and largest supplier of craft beer and the first producer of sake in Europe.
Our never ending search for new flavours and ingredients constantly results in new seasonal and experimental brews.

If you are a beer lover and find yourself in Norway with some extra Steem in your pockets, this is a brewer that I can recommend.

Xavier Rudd at Vippa

Our original plans did not involve the Italian restaurant where the beer came from. We were supposed to eat at the concert venue - the recently opened Vippa kultursenter. This is a really cool place to check out in Oslo if you are passing through. It's very young, but it features food from all corners of the world - from chile con carne to Syrian falafel to Chinese dumplings and everything in between.

We figured they'd for sure open the doors early to maximize the food sales, but to our surprise, they turned us away when we showed up 2 hours early. I think it is because this is such a new place and it may have even been their first concert there.

In any case, here you can see some of the restaurants including the Syrian place (left), "Duck It" (where you can guess what they serve) and its neighboring gourmet hot dog stand, and, finally, the chili con carne place next to the stage (below). We tried a sushi bowl from the Asian place - a modern take on the classic sushi roll. Not bad.

As for the concert, I didn't really know too much about Xavier Rudd going in. In fact, we had just overheard one of his songs at a breakfast restaurant a few weeks earlier, and then realized he was coming to Oslo soon.

An Australian with some Aboriginal heritage, this guy is really a dreamer. I'm talking like a John Lennon-type dreamer. And he has the aura to pull it off, with his laid back vibe and rugged looks. Not to mention his sort of electric didgeridoo amongst his repertoire of instruments - that helps! (Incidentally, I had to convince my friends that's really what it's called - they didn't believe me!)

I love music that brings abut an emotional response, and Xavier Rudd does that nightly with his Come Let Go - Change Coming medley. This is where he really gets the crowd involved whilst calling out causes he's pulling for. The chant: Ooooh oh-oh oh! Yeaaaah-ah ah-ah!

Here's about how it went, along with my general thoughts during: