• November 27, 2014

Valamis Beer – Internet & ATK

A small storage room is filled with sweet, slightly bitter smell of hops. Shelves are lined with foil bags bursting with a variety of the finest hops, the ingredient that contributes so much to the taste of a quality craft beer. These are the building blocks of a real magic.

Crafting beer is a modern day alchemy. The smell of malts, hops, and yeast playing together, breaking into enzymes, coming back together to form something way bigger than any imaginable sum of its’ parts.  The whole process of skill and science, creativity and playful experimentation is orchestrated by the head brewer Tatu Hiitola.

The process

Looking several months back it’s almost impossible to pinpoint the exact time and location when someone said the idea aloud for the first time: let’s make our own beer. Maybe it was during one of the snobby beer tasting evenings, or maybe it was conceived in one of the dozens of conversations between friends and colleagues.

What really matters, is the way the idea resonated among people, grew from thoughts and speculation into actual actions towards the common goal. Finding the most suitable brewery to make the dream come true and deciding on the type of the beer to be created.  Furthermore, finding the perfect name for the beer and creating the label worth the whole project.

That’s really how Valamis works. It takes a group of talented eager people willing to collaborate in order to nail the essence of creating something unique. You can’t really give birth to something real without loving what you do.  Some things have a soul that requires passion to come alive.

Panimo Hiisi in Jyväskylä shares some of the same values with Valamis. They pursue perfection in every brew they make, evading mediocrity at all costs while offering their customers not just good but the best possible experience. That youthful professionalism made them the perfect partner for the Valamis beer project.

The end result

Now, after months of planning, test brew tasting, and fine-tuning of the recipe with Hiisi-Tatu the Internet & ATK is finally ready. It has taken over four weeks for the yeast to turn the sugars of mash into alcohol, forming a perfect union of smoothly roasted aromas and bitter fruitiness.

The result of Black Indian Pale Ale is a combination of tradition and invention. It’s a type of a beer that’s rarely seen yet slowly gaining more popularity. Thus, what would be a better choice for the first beer project of Valamis Snobby Beer Club than something that stands on the frontline of the progress?

When all Valamis employees gather together to enjoy the result of the long craft beer project for the first time, it’s a celebration of the ability to create something wonderful together. Sadly this is not something that can be bought from a grocery store or brought home from the local liquor store. But maybe, just maybe you know someone, who will be able to let you have a taste of what it means to be a part of Valamis. That’s what the Internet & ATK is all about.

Author

Juho Anttila

Head of Engineering, Valamis

Juho Anttila has been working in IT-industry for almost 25 years in variety of software development, architecture design and team lead -related tasks. In Valamis Juho is responsible of technical leadership of product development. Juho is a DevOps enthusiast whose biggest ambition is making Valamis an elite level performing technology organisation.