Monkey Brew

Always Evolve! - Our philosophy and promise. A promise not to stagnate, always try to improve even when you are considered among the best!

Monkey Brew - the long story.

It all started back in high school when the three of us, Pål, Bjarke and Jorg, found each other in our nerdiness. We spent the weekends playing Dungeons and Dragons listening to King Crimson, and as you understand we were the coolest kids in school. In the years that followed we shared a flat while studying at Dragvoll, and as most other students we spent many weekends drinking beer. But, good beer. While the majority back in 2006-2007 was still consuming those cheap light lagers, we’d got the taste for more hoppy, darker and weirder stuff. Nøgne Ø and Håndbryggeriet were both inspirational breweries and we often found ourselves sitting at Trondheim Mikrobryggeri and later Den Gode Nabo as their selection expanded. Sometime late 2008 Pål suggested that we should try to make our own beer. We went straight for a Double IPA, and it actually turned out quite good. We brought it to a local home brew competition put together by Det Gode Øls klubb where we took first place with that beer. Our love for good food and drinks met our nerdiness when it came to brewing beer. We dived into how temperatures affect fermentation, how IBUs are calculated and how the hops affect flavor. It was the perfect hobby and we were hooked! We bought more and more equipment, and in 2011 we started to rent a cheap apartment at Møllenberg fully dedicated to brewing, even though our time as roommates was over. Brewing once a week and always exploring different styles - gradually the equipment got fancier and the beer got better and better. In 2013, with a few hundred batches of experience, we entered the Norwegian home brew championship with eight beers. Six of them took either gold or silver in their classes and our double bock, Jesus, won the whole thing. Beside becoming Norwegian home brew champions, we also got to make a big batch of that beer at Nøgne Ø (under the name Primator as Jesus was "too controversial at Sørlandet"). Selling our first beer commercially and finding it on the shelves was a proud moment. After this, our plans of starting our own brewery really started to get serious. We thought that even though there were a lot of good beers and breweries in Norway at the time, there was still a huge potential for improvement quality wise. We got a few offers from investors, but we didn't feel ready nor good enough to start a brewery back then. So we decided to get more experience first. Pål took a summer job at Kinn Bryggeri and later started working at Vinmonopolet. Jorg spent the fall in California and Oregon visiting breweries and getting a feel for the craft beer culture there. In 2014 he started working part time at Austmann Bryggeri and doing evening shifts as a bartender at Den Gode Nabo.