Listen, we’re beer lovers: we’ll accept just about any excuse for a special brew. Feel like putting out a beer for a public holiday (like our Czech Christmas beers)? Sounds like a great idea. Maybe it’s the anniversary of the founding of your brewery? We could always use more Fuller’s 1845. Or perhaps your country is hosting the 2008 World Championships in Sheep Shearing?

Wait. What?

At least that seems to be the reason why the Norwegian microbrewery Berentsens released its Sorte Får Stout last year. When sheep-shearing teams from around the world descended on the Norwegian town of Bjerkreim last autumn, they were met with far more than mere wool: a special dark beer, named after the local wild sheep, was brewed to celebrate the occasion.

Thanks to Gunnar Jensen from the frozen land to the north, I was able to try the Sorte Får Stout (apparently a rare thing, as the beer has just four evaluations on Ratebeer at this point). To put it through its paces, I compared it simultaneously with Guinness Extra Stout and Primátor Stout. Here’s what I came up with:

Berentsen’s Sorte Får Stout
(4.7%, 330-milliliter bottle)
Pours a very dark amber, nearly black. It has better coffee and smokiness in the aroma than the drain-pour Guinness. Its loose, sandy-colored head is upstaged a fair bit by the creamy microfoam of Primátor Stout. The nose has plenty of cold coffee with some vinous, stewed-fruit notes. In the mouth, it has a tart fruitiness reminiscent of raspberries with a bitter chocolate finish, like raspberries or under-ripe strawberries dipped in bitter chocolate, then dusted in ground coffee. Very good.

Mr. Jensen was kind enough to include an English translation of the label, which I’ll reprint here.

Sorte Får, the Norwegian wild sheep, brings the tradition from Rogaland further on. An autumn market, sheep shearing an a good brew belong together. The 2008 sheep shearing championship was held in our area in October, and our contribution was this dark and tasty stout beer, made of the best ingredients. Drink this brew cold, in the shadow of your barn.

An excellent idea. What remains to be seen is how many more excuses we can come up with for brewers to make special beers. Some of them seem quite obvious, and yet they are often overlooked. In the Czech Republic, for example, last year’s big beer festival aimed for thirty beers — but not a single one of them was brewed for the occasion.

One of beer’s most intriguing features is its sense of place, the idea that you can taste something from a certain region, even a highly specific location, and that each particular combination of sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami — as well as untold millions of individual flavors — only exists for a particular brew from a particular place. At least in Czech terms, this is considered to be true for Pilsner, though elsewhere “Pilsner,” “Pilsener” and “Pils” mean vastly different things. In Norway, it could be something like Rogalands Pils, from Egersund, in the south of the country, or Mack Arctic Beer, a lager from Tromsø, way up inside the Arctic Circle.

These two showed up here via Kjetil Haugland and Geir Taule, two Norwegian beer fans who brought some of the local goods with them on their recent trip to Prague. When someone asks “Have you ever seen this beer before?” while offering up a can from the world’s northernmost brewery, you pretty much jump at the chance to make a trade.

So if the true Pilsner is a reflection of a specific place in the Czech Republic, what do Pils beers from Norway taste like?

Light in body. Grainy. Sweet but not sticky. Mildly aromatic, like the breeze from the heath over the hill. And definitely not bad.

I didn’t expect either one to blow my mind — rather, I just thought they might go well with the AC Milan-Arsenal match last night. The Rogalands Pils initially reminded me of honey and cornbread. In the finish it made me think of a highly aromatic northern German beer like Jever; though not the same, it merely brought the Friesisch-herb to mind. The light body made me think I’d probably be glad for something like this on a hot afternoon of barbecuing.

The Mack Arctic Beer, poured from a half-liter can, was also light in body, though it seemed to have a bit more character. I could definitely taste the barley, and it had a bright, mouthwash-like, minty hoppiness in the finish.

I don’t think either of these can really be compared to a Pilsner from the Czech Republic. First of all, that term is reserved for Pilsner Urquell. Furthermore, our other beers in the Pilsner style are all deeper in color, have thicker, maltier bodies, and of course real Saaz hops in the finish. The overall impression is not very similar at all.

And while I was surprised that neither of these two so-called premiums had as much flavor as Bohemia Regent’s 8° lager — a true table beer, mind you — I appreciated the fact that both Rogalands Pils and Mack Arctic Beer let me watch Milan and the Gunners battle it out in peace. You could argue that sometimes you don’t want a high-maintenance beer — sometimes, like when you’re yelling at Jankulovski, a beer that constantly begs for attention is the last thing you need. Sometimes you don’t want to have the top of your head blown off by big hop spice or a syrupy finish. In this case, low maintenance was just what I got; neither of these asked much more from me than the drinking of it.

It ended up as a 0-0 game — both sides played well, though neither scored. And yet I enjoyed it completely.