980 Raøl
No hops. No boil. Juniper branches. Farmhouse yeast.
Raøl is one of the oldest surviving forms of beer in Europe.
For centuries, people believed beers like this had vanished. Then, hidden in isolated farmhouses in western Norway, brewers were discovered still making raw ale much as their ancestors had generations before. Some families had preserved their own yeast cultures for hundreds of years. These yeasts, now called kveik, turned out to be genetically distinct from modern industrial brewing strains and uniquely suited to hot, rapid fermentation.
The discovery stunned the brewing world.
Because this was not archaeology. It was a living tradition.
Raøl is very different from modern beer. The wort is often not boiled. Juniper branches line the mash tun. Juniper-infused water replaces hops as the bittering and preservative agent. Smoke, spruce, raw grain, and the forest itself become part of the flavour. Historically, every farm brewed differently. Every valley brewed differently. There was no single recipe.
And there still isn’t.
Our 980 Raøl is not an exact recreation of a beer from a specific year. It is an exploration of brewing traditions that may have existed across Scandinavia from the Migration Period through the Viking Age and well into the medieval world.
To understand this beer, it helps to understand the people who brewed it.
In the centuries after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Scandinavia entered a period of hardship and transformation. Volcanic eruptions in the 500s triggered years of cold summers, crop failures, famine, and social collapse across northern Europe. Archaeological evidence suggests farms and settlements across Scandinavia were abandoned.
Something ended in the North.
And something new emerged.
Over the following centuries, Scandinavian society reorganized itself around harder realities. Power concentrated around war leaders and sea kings. Shipbuilding advanced. Trade routes expanded across the rivers of Russia, the North Atlantic, and beyond. The Viking Age began.
But most Scandinavians were not raiders. They were farmers.
Life revolved around weather, animals, timber, fishing, survival, and honour. Hall culture became central to elite society. Mead and imported wine carried prestige, but beer belonged to everyday life. In Norway, medieval law required farmers to brew beer for major feasts and seasonal gatherings. Beer was tied to hospitality, ritual, and community itself.
And the beer they brewed often looked more like this than anything sold today.
Cloudy. Rustic. Fresh. Sometimes smoky. Sometimes sour. Often consumed young. A beer shaped by grain, wood smoke, local water, and generations of inherited practice.
Our version changes slightly from batch to batch as we search for the character of the old Scandinavian farmhouse ales. Some lean further into smoke and roast. Others into spruce, juniper, or grain. We treat each batch as part brewing experiment, part historical interpretation.
Because there was never one authentic Viking beer.
Only thousands of farmhouse brewers making beer from the land around them.
980 Raøl is our attempt to reconnect with that world: a world of long winters, timber halls, wet earth, sea spray, smoke, and firelight.
A beer from medieval Scandinavia, where survival itself was uncertain, and brewing was simply part of being alive.
Availability: Year round
First Produced: 2025
Alc/vol. 6.5%