Jens Dalsgaard puts it this way at Nanobryg: This is the end of Ølfabrikken.
Dalsgaard’s take on Gourmetbryggeriet acquiring the remaining 50% of Ølfabrikken is pretty despressing.
Look, I don’t care if I never drink another bottle of Ølfabrikken Porter (though I know just where to find several). I’m not thinking first about my beer drinking convenience. In fact, my least favorite thing about Ølfabrikken could be that the brewery ships its beer to the U.S.
That might sound strange, but (trust me, this is proof you don’t want to be living inside my head) the logic goes likes this: If they didn’t ship us beer then I wouldn’t know they made really good beer and wouldn’t care when Dalsgaard writes: “We shall see if the brand stays unchanged, but I seriously doubt it.”
You hate it that it appears what looked to be a cool little brewery is changing. One where you knew just who was making the beer and what ingredients they were using.
Without the Internet we might have ever heard of Ølfabrikken (ranked 12th in the world by Rate Beer). Maybe this has already by discussed to death at the beer sites, but I lean on beer blogs, via rss feeds, to get news like this. News I could have missed without Nanobryg.
And, yes, there is the possibility that Dalsgaard is totally off base which is why brewers scream about “those damn bloggers” but he’s earned my respect and will have to be proved wrong. (I hope he is, but as already noted, it can get strange inside this head; maybe I need a beer).
It will suck for drinkers in Denmark if what were beers of conviction won’t be brewed with the same character. It doesn’t make me happy knowing what I now know, but I am happy to know Nanobryg and the 193 other blogs really simple BEER syndication currently tracks are out there digging up stuff like this.
(Full disclosure: This is not intended as a shot across Alan’s bows, but his post a few days ago caused me to stop and find a silver lining in what looks like pretty sucky news.)