Who is Anders Kissmeyer? The Nordic name was on my mind after seeing it on a number of craft beer labels: Leo’s Early Breakfast IPA, a collaboration beer with Brasserie Dunham, brewed with Earl Grey tea and guava purée; Nordic Pale Ale brewed with sweet gale, yarrow, dried heather, rose hips, cranberries, and maple syrup released under Beau’s Brewing Company B-Side Brewing Label; and most recently, Nordic Saison, a collaboration with Hill Farmstead and Cambridge Brewing Company.
"You can say I’ve gone from working at a mega brewery to working at a microbrewery and then I’ve sort of gone downward to the smallest part of the scale, which is a one-man company. You can’t get any smaller than that,” says Kissmeyer, when I called him to learn about his background and the beer he is brewing these days.
Kissmeyer’s brewing career started with an education as a master brewer, followed by a long stint at Danish “mega brewer” Carlsberg before he left to found his own craft brewery, Nørrebro Bryghus. Since 2010 he has been on his own as a one-man brewing company, Kissmeyer Beer and Brewing, traveling the world, collaborating on craft beers, and experimenting with and advocating for indigenous, Nordic-inspired ales.
"I wanted to take advantage of the huge network of people I knew in the brewing industry, not just in Denmark, but worldwide. So I thought I could create a brand around this knowledge and friendship and brew my beer in many different locations.”
Even among the more common nomadic and contract brewery models, Kissmeyer’s brewing model is unique. It is a two-strand philosophy, he says. He partners with three or four breweries in Denmark and a few globally such as Beau’s in Ontario, to brew, package, and distribute his line of craft beers, which include the popular Stockholm Syndrome double IPA, a Honey Porter, and an Espresso Stout. Then he also collaborates with breweries across Europe, North America, and beyond to create Nordic-inspired saisons, pale ales, and more.
"We’re trying to explore our own backyard in terms of inspiration for the beers, rather than going for the more standard beer styles: IPAs, porters, stouts, brown ales, wheat beers. We’re trying to find something that’s more indigenously our own,” says Kissmeyer.
That means brewing with traditional Nordic ingredients such as the tart sea buckthorn and rhubarb that work well in Belgian styles, and herbal additions such as wild heather flower, rose hips, and piney spruce tips, which play along well with hoppier, resiny styles.
Subtlety is essential for these styles, says Kissmeyer. The ingredients should be used in a way that adds “some complexity and a hint of Nordic without it smacking you in your face.”
His most recent collaboration was with two old friends, Shaun Hill at Vermont’s Hill Farmstead Brewery and Will Meyers from Massachusetts’s Cambridge Brewing Company. Called Nordic Saison, it is brewed with heather honey and rose hips and was released this July at Hill Farmstead. The next collaboration in the queue, with Norway’s Nøgne Ø, is a “lambic-style Nordic beer” brewed with local black currant juice.
I asked if his nomadic brewing, world traveling, and collaborating lifestyle ever get a bit tiresome. While he’s cut down on travel a bit, he says, he usually finds it just the opposite.
“Even though I’m not exactly young anymore, I still find it very invigorating. It revitalizes you. First of all it’s a lot of fun, and from a professional point of view, you always learn something, and get new ideas and inspiration.”
Pictured at top: Rose hips go into Nordic Saison at Hill Farmstead Brewery.