Kjartan and Sveinn of Grugg & Makk capture the flavours of Iceland with their wild ales
“It’s a little bit too much work to be a hobby, but not quite enough to be a full-time job,” says Kjartan Óli Guðmundsson, laughing as he describes his wild ale venture, Grugg & Makk. A chef turned product designer, Kjartan co-founded the company with tour guide Sveinn Steinar Benediktsson after the two met while studying design at the Iceland University of the Arts. “We started talking about microbes, ideas we’ve been thinking about, home brewing, beer, ecosystems and all kinds of things like that,” Sveinn recalls. Today, they work their respective day jobs while dedicating their spare time to Grugg & Makk. “It’s always fun when people say right away ‘We don’t like beer,’ and then they taste ours and go, ‘Whoa,’” he adds.
Brewing partnership
Founded in 2022, Grugg & Makk now produces around 3,200 bottles annually, with plans to expand to 4,000 and eventually 6,000 bottles. Available at Vínbúðin, a number of bars and restaurants around town and at local pop-up tastings, the company sprung from Kjartan and Sveinn’s curiosity. Kjartan’s interest in home brewing and wild fermentation developed during his chef days, but the demanding kitchen life — with its 12-hour shifts and constant pressure — had taken its toll. “It’s a very hard job with lots of hours sweating and lots of effort,” he reflects. “When it’s not giving you any joy to send plates out of the kitchen, maybe you should just quit.”
Having collaborated on several projects previously, Kjartan and Sveinn would spend days discussing different brewing ideas — from the microbial landscape in different parts of Iceland to water sources and their effects on flavour. When they finally applied for a research grant, it marked the beginning of Grugg & Makk.
“The market here is tiny, especially for a niche project product like this,” says Sveinn. Given Iceland’s strict regulations on alcohol and food production, what began as a passion project quickly needed to become a formal company. “When I do projects, I really don’t like to do them unless there is some kind of a result,” Kjartan admits. “For me, the only way this would become a reality was to create a company around it and try to test it on the market. Because of the legal situation around brewing and distributing food products in general, you need to have a full company around it; plus, there is more value in having a product that people talk about and interact with every day — that’s the best way to transmit an idea.”
The yeast hunters
Wild ales are made with wild yeast, which means the yeasts aren’t industrially produced — Kjartan and Sveinn collect them from Icelandic nature. “We go out into Icelandic nature and collect them. We don’t get one strain — we get a collection of yeasts that we work with — different cultures from different places. We don’t buy yeast anywhere,” Sveinn explains.
“The first time we went to mass gather yeast, we drove around the Snæfellsnes peninsula, stopping in 10 different places. We were just picking out what smelled and tasted nice,” he continues. The collection process uses a medium designed by the duo, filled with wort, and left in nature with a sanitised cloth over it for 24 hours. “Then we bring it into our lab, where I put it in perfect heat conditions and give it some air, basically creating the perfect environment for it to multiply, which can take up from two to four months to reach the necessary quantity for us to start brewing,” Kjartan explains.
Due to the Icelandic weather, yeast collection is only possible between spring and autumn. “When the ground is frozen, it’s too cold. There’s not so much life going on,” Kjartan explains. However, yeast collected during a single season can last a long time. Because of the lengthy fermenting and brewing process, Kjartan and Sveinn are still working with cultures they harvested in 2020.
“It took two or three years until we were happy to have something that we could produce and reproduce. Just the fermentation itself takes a year,” says Kjartan.
In addition to three wild ales made from yeast collected in Snæfellsnes — Djúpalónssandur, Svörtuloft and Kirkjufell, specifically — the duo has also introduced berry-infused beers, including blackcurrant and blueberry varieties, with a blackberry beer currently brewing. They’ve ensured that any yeast from the imported berries is neutralised, preventing the introduction of imported yeasts.
Currently, Grugg & Makk operates its yeast lab at Kjartan’s house and contracts brewing facilities from Ægir Brugghús. They also rent two storage units. Looking ahead, the duo plans to expand to their own space, where they could produce small batches of beer and host tastings, while continuing to rely on Ægir for larger productions.
Wild wild yeast
The wild ales from Grugg & Makk come in 750 ml glass champagne bottles. Kjartan notes that, although canning would be cheaper, the acidity in the beer could corrode the metal over time. “We wanted to have it in 750 ml bottles to show that it’s a quality product that we are selling,” he says. “It’s not cheap, it costs similar to a bottle of wine, and we really want to compare its consumption to wine drinking.” The company also recently introduced 375 ml bottles.
Reykjavík Michelin-starred restaurants Dill and Óx pair Grugg & Makk wild ales with their meals, as do other restaurants and bars around town, including Brewdog, Bingo, Kaldi, Vínstúkan Tíu Sopar and others. The duo is already exporting their beer to several locations, including multiple places in Denmark. They also offer group tastings upon request and weekly tastings at Litli Barinn.
“People have a lot of fun,” says Kjartan of their wild ale tastings. “It’s interesting to learn about the places in Iceland, the history of beer here, our wild ale project and how it connects to nature. We’re mostly working with yeast from Snæfellsnes now, but we’re adding more locations, so it’s fun for people to taste the beers if they’ve visited those places.”
“We like Snæfellsnes a lot — it’s a beautiful area, relatively close to Reykjavík, easy to access to collect yeast and come back. You can also find diverse landscapes, which is something we were interested in researching: would there be a difference between the yeasts found close to the ocean and up on the mountain?,” says Sveinn, who has a far-flung goal of brewing beer with yeast from a protected volcanic island. “I’d really love to go to Surtsey. It’s off limits, you can’t go there, but if we could get scientists to collect for us, or maybe go with them, that would be really cool,” he shares.
Bold brews
“You always have to taste something. It’s hard,” Kjartan laughs at the challenges of the job as he pours me a glass of earthy ale with citrusy notes that needs to stay in the barrel for at least another six months. “Sometimes you’ve not been drunk for a week, but you’ve been drinking two glasses or something every day.”
Grugg & Makk aim to shake up the Icelandic culinary scene with something unique, even if the consumer market is small. “There is a world of microbes around us that is very different from one place to another, and it’s a part of our environment as well. We harvested yeast from human bodies,” says Kjartan. Noticing my surprised expression, he adds, “Yeast is everywhere. Everybody has yeast on them. It’s in the air.” During a dance performance called MOLTA at the Reykjavík Dance Festival, they asked dancers to collect yeast from their bodies and transfer it into a growing medium. Kjartan reassures that the yeast is sterilised and purified before being used in brewing. The final product, still in development, will contain no human tissue or flavour.
This isn’t the last experiment from Grugg & Makk. In collaboration with craft bar Skúli, they’re currently brewing a batch using yeast harvested from the tree outside the bar. Kjartan has also been exploring the idea of a “discarded series,” where fruits and vegetables discarded by supermarkets could be used to flavour the beers.
“It’s never going to be a product that’s going to sell like lager or anything like that. It’s not the goal either. If you look at the craft beer sales in Vínbúðin, the numbers are really low,” says Kjartan. Grugg & Makk’s target audience includes foodies, beer and wine enthusiasts, and anyone eager to try new things. “People who are interested in beer are familiar with something similar and have been liking our product a lot,” he explains. “It’s similar to when natural wines or IPAs started to gain popularity in Iceland, it takes time, but gradually, you get more people who are interested.”
After all, for Grugg & Makk, it’s not just about selling beer — it’s about starting a conversation and fostering a new drinking culture in Iceland. “It’s about transmitting an idea to start the conversation about biodiversity, while also introducing a new beer culture in Iceland — focused on sour beer, wild ales and such, which hasn’t been very explored that much here,” says Kjartan.
Sveinn adds, “So people driving around Iceland might think, like we do, ‘What does this place taste like?’”
Learn more about Grugg & Makk and find out where to buy their wild ales at gruggogmakk.com
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