Learn about what the Vikings drank while enjoying beer and mead Viking-style at Skål Beer Hall!

Join Mika Laitinen, author of Viking Age Brew, and Jereme Zimmerman, author of Make Mead Like a Viking and Brew Beer Like a Yeti as they discuss their research on what the Vikings drank. The authors will discuss what they have learned about the ales and meads Viking-era people made and drank, as well as their attempts at recreating these drinks at home. Zimmerman and Laitinen are possibly a bit too full of Viking and Nordic lore and are happy to entertain your questions about Viking life, Norse stories, and the food and drink the Vikings would have enjoyed.

Jereme and Mika will be bringing limited quantities of a Sahti (Finnish farmhouse ale) that they brewed in collaboration with Ale Apothecary using a kuurna (traditional Finnish mash-tun) for attendees to taste.

Zimmerman is a Viking-obsessed Kentucky native and former Seattle resident. His writings have appeared in Mother Earth News, Grit, New Pioneer and the new magazine Fermentation, among others. He lives in Eastern Kentucky, where he makes Appalachian variants of Nordic ales and mead. Laitinen’s articles on Nordic farmhouse ales have appeared in beer magazines, including Brew Your Own and Zymurgy, and many of his writings about local Nordic beer culture are featured on his website www.brewingnordic.com. Laitinen lives, writes, and brews in Finland, where he has crafted hundreds of homebrews, many of them to test how various farmhouse methods work in practice or explore how people brewed in ages past.