The first seed for Kunstbryggeriet Far & Søn was sowed when, in 2007, Bo Rino Christiansen quit his job, sold his house, moved into a farm commune, and bought a small beer brewing system. Photo: Christina Damgaard-Sylvest
Turning brewing into an art form Ending a safe and predictable career path in 2007, Bo Rino Christiansen began a lifechanging journey – a journey that would eventually lead to him and his son creating the cult brewery Kunstbryggeriet Far & Søn (the art brewery father and son). Later, the alcohol-free drink Fizz by BoRino added another chapter to the adventure, and as father and son continue to experiment and create, the story continues. By Signe Hansen | Photos: Kunstbryggeriet Far & Søn
12 years ago, the then 33-year-old Bo Rino Christiansen had had enough of his career, his fancy furniture and, in his own words, “everything else”. “I looked at my life and everything looked so predictable, I couldn’t stand it,” he says. Deciding to take a gamble, the engineer took the decision to quit his job, selling everything he owned and uprooting his life completely. Then he bought into an organic farm commune, to live and farm in the middle of nowhere on Funen. At the same time, he decided to use his last resources to purchase a small beer brewing system for the farm, because he wanted to “make 30 | Issue 129 | October 2019
the ultimate beer” so that he never had to go to the supermarket again. However, he says, things were not quite that easy. “The first beer I made was horrific – I had no experience. So, I decided that what I needed was practice,” he explains. Luckily, living with 19 other people in the commune, Christiansen had a willing audience to test his experiments on, and so he did. Soon, his then nine-year-old son, Fabian Xander Nørregaard, joined him in the brewing activities. “We were living so far out in the countryside that having a paper round meant hours of cycling to
get out five newspapers, so he quickly realised that helping me out was much more fun,” laughs Christiansen.
An arty brew A couple of years into his and his son’s brewing adventure, Christiansen decided to tests the effects of different ingredients by creating six different Christmas beers. “Once I was done, it seemed to me that these beers had a story in them, so I gave them to one of my friends, an author with writer’s block, asking him to see if he could find it. Initially, he said no, he couldn’t see it. But after a night with the beers, which were all strong and pintsized, he wrote a short story; we thought that was hilarious, and thus the art brewery was created,” Christiansen explains. The story became the first of many works by artists, writers and poets to be interpreted in beer, and the art collabora-