Red Bear Brewery (Красный медведь)

The world’s northernmost brewery. Located at Barentsburg, Russian town on Svalbard. Krasny Medved is the first brewery on Svalbard that was open in 2012. There are only two breweries on the archipelago and the second one was open in Longyearbyen in 2015. Since 1928 there have been “a dry law” on Svalbard meaning that you could buy only limited volume of hard alcohol. Until 2014 it had been forbidden to produce alcohol drinksincluding beer stronger than 2.5 degrees so the first beer in Krasny Medved was brewed in less than 2.5 degrees. ​The brewery has a complete production cycle: beginning with malt grinding and up to refinery procedure and maturation without use of semi-products, artificial additives, conservants and pasteurizers. ​ Belgian equipment of the company CoEnCo, Belgian malt Castle Malting, high fermentation yeast and water from the glacial lake Stemme – these are all ingredients of the beer Red Bear. Bryggeriet i Barentsburg startet med å lage lettøl, fordi produksjon av sterkere alkoholholdige drikker var av norsk lov forbudt på Spitsbergen. Så snart denne gammeldagse loven ble endret kunne produksjonen av ekte øl starte. Siden da har «Den røde bjørn» (Красный медведь = Kracnij Medwed = Den røde bjørn, dette er navnet på bryggeriet) produsert mange ulike sorter øl som er tilgjengelige i de lokale barene.