Ammutsøn

Review

A beer with the goddess of death

Photo: Heribert Corn A place where nothing has ever worked for very long or very well; a pub that has no furnishings apart from a few desks, a bar and a few massive wooden beams, where old 60s rock rags blare out of bad loudspeakers at high volume and which actually only has one item on its menu: bitter beer. That's supposed to work? And how it works. Wednesday evening, packed to the rafters, polyglot thirty-somethings mingle cheerfully, drink cloudy beer and try to speak to each other in Finnish, English, German and Italian louder than Jimi Hendrix sings "Hey Joe".
One man stands out from the crowd in this new beer pub called Ammutsøn, firstly because of his remarkable beard and his wuckerln, and secondly because of his remarkable personality: Misho Omar was until recently managing director of the Innsbruck craft beer temple Tribaun, which opened in 2014, and thought that Vienna could also do with an independent center for bitter beer. Incidentally, "independent" is pretty rare when it comes to beer pubs. In the vast majority of cases, a large brewery provides the dispensing system and technical equipment, which is then sold off through beer tapping. This is not necessarily a bad method of partial financing, but the choice of beers on tap is subject to certain restrictions. Not here, Misho has twelve taps in operation, and what comes out of them can be read on a screen. Or rather, not only the name of these anti-mainstream beers from Germany, Spain, Italy, Denmark and Austria, but also the alcohol content and the names of the hop varieties. And because we're all so virtual and screen-fixated, you can also read which keg is about to be tapped. If you ask Misho Omar how the name Ammutsøn came about and whether he comes from Scandinavia, he tells you a longer story. Namely that he comes from Egypt and that Ammut (or Ammit) was the goddess of death there in the 18th dynasty, who would only let you into the realm of the dead if you were at peace with yourself, otherwise she would eat your heart. And after two or three beers, you are very much at peace with yourself, says Misho. The "søn" was added because a Norwegian polar explorer, who made it to the North Pole and back completely alone and independently, reminded him of his business principle, and probably because the craft beer scene is generally very Scandinaviphilic. Incidentally, there are only sandwiches to eat here, which in the case of the salami and red cabbage version were not bad at all, but in the processed cheese, nuts and spinach version were dispensable. A heart sandwich would fit in quite well here, wouldn't it? Summary: craft beer is the new black. And there's not much else at Ammutsøn apart from this. Ammutsøn 6th, Barnabitengasse 10 Tel. 0664/479 91 30 Mon 16-1, Tue, Wed 16-2, Thu-Sat 16-4, Sun 14-24

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