About HoppyGeek

I’m Espen Acklam Solberg, a homebrewer from Norway.

I started brewing in 2015, and somewhere along the way a hobby turned into a long-running experiment in making better beer, understanding the process, and finding out which bits of brewing advice actually matter.

That’s what HoppyGeek is about.

For shops and manufacturers: read about working with HoppyGeek, gear testing and editorial independence.

I learn by brewing

My first steps into homebrewing came through my brother, who introduced me to small batch all-grain brewing. A visit to Larvik Mikrobryggeri pushed the curiosity a little further, and before long I was brewing all-grain beer with a simple BIAB setup — Brew in a Bag.

It was basic, slightly messy, and more than enough to get me hooked.

From there I built my own mash tun with an Igloo cooler and a DIY copper manifold, added better fermentation temperature control, moved into kegging, and eventually bought a Grainfather G30 in 2022.

The equipment has changed a lot since that first brew. If you’re curious about what I use today, I keep an up-to-date overview on My Homebrewing Gear.

The basic approach hasn’t.

Brew something. Measure what happened. Taste it. Work out what I’d change next time.

The geek part is probably unavoidable

I’ve spent more than 25 years working with Unix and Linux systems, so I naturally approach brewing with a fairly technical mindset.

I like equipment. I like measurements. I like understanding why something works instead of simply being told that it does.

But I’m not interested in making homebrewing complicated just for the sake of it.

A gadget, technique or extra process step needs to earn its place. If it makes the beer better, makes the process more repeatable, or solves a real problem, I’m interested. If it mostly adds another thing to clean, configure or worry about, I want to know that too.

What you’ll find here

HoppyGeek is where I document what happens at my brew bench.

You’ll find practical homebrewing guides, recipes with the actual numbers from my batches, experiments, and notes about equipment I’ve genuinely used.

When something works, I’ll tell you why I think it worked.

When something doesn’t, that belongs here too.

The goal isn’t to present every brew as perfect. It’s to leave behind useful information that can help with the next batch — yours as well as mine.

Homebrewing, tested one batch at a time.

Why I write it down

Homebrewing gets better when you keep track of what actually happened, not just what you planned to do.

That’s why I like documenting the numbers, the process and the mistakes as well as the finished beer. Over time, those notes become far more useful than memory — and often more useful than another piece of generic brewing advice.

The beers I like to brew

I tend to gravitate toward hop-forward beer: IPA, pale ale, golden ale, wheat beer and the occasional amber ale.

That means you’ll probably see more hops than roasted malt around here.

Some batches are attempts to improve a beer I already like. Others start with a technique, ingredient or piece of equipment I’m curious about and a simple question:

What happens if I try this?

Those are often the most interesting brews.

HoppyGeek on YouTube

I also make HoppyGeek videos on YouTube.

The videos are spoken in Norwegian, with English subtitles available. This website is written in English and isn’t meant to be a transcript of the YouTube channel — articles here should stand on their own, with the measurements, details and conclusions that are easier to dig into in writing.

If you prefer watching the process happen rather than reading about it, the channel is the other half of HoppyGeek.

I’m also enough of a camera geek to care about how those videos are made. If you’re interested in the cameras, lenses, microphones, lighting and editing setup behind the channel, you can find that on How I Film HoppyGeek.

Ten years of homebrewing

The video below tells more of the story — from the early equipment to the brewery I use today, and some of what I learned along the way.

The video is in Norwegian, with English subtitles available.