BRUS is a brewpub, restaurant and bottleshop owned by the brewery To Øl. It’s situated in the middle of the cool district of Nørrebro, right next to an array of excellent restaurants, cafés and the Empire Cinema. It’s a very lively neighborhood all week long and a perfect gateway to the numerous craft beer bars and brewpubs in Copenhagen.
The bar and atmosphere
What used to be an old locomotive factory now holds no less than 19 fermentation tanks, foeders, and a barrel project full of…well…barrels. It also doubles as the decoration for the brewpub. The style of the bar is modern and Nordic, and the simplicity of that plays well with the steel tanks and huge industrial windows. There’s also outdoor seating which actually really give soul to the neighborhood. The atmosphere, in general, is very vibrant.
The beer
The bar has 32 taps with mainly in-house brews as well as cocktails from Mikropolis, also blended and mixed at BRUS. You can also buy beer to take home because integrated into the brewpub is a bottleshop. It holds a huge variety of beers from BRUS (or To Øl Cph as the beers are now known) and To Øl City as well as Mikkeller and other Danish breweries. Every last Saturday of the month they arrange a tour of the brewpub as well as a tasting.
The brand
To Øl has been on the scene since 2010, initially brewing the majority of their beer at De Proefbrouwerij in Belgium. In 2016 BRUS was opened, so as to have an outlet of freshly brewed local beer and in 2019 the brewery took home their entire production as they opened in huge facilities in Svinninge and named the old ketchup factory, To Øl City. If you’re on the lookout for great core range beers form To Øl, let me recommend the following:
- To Øl Black Malts and Body Salts – a Double Black IPA that shows exactly why the style had a short blossoming 5-6 years ago.
- To Øl My Honningkage Is Bigger Than Yours – a series of barleywines brewed around Christmas, where especially the barrel-aged cognac and bourbon versions are fantastic.
- To Øl Yule Mælk – a series of stouts brewed for Christmas, with the Rum version being my personal favorite.
- To Øl 1 Ton of… – a sour series that showcases different single fruits (rather than single hops)
- To Øl Liquid Confidence – probably the brewery’s flagship stout. Excellent! Comes in various BA shapes.
- To Øl Extreme Measures – after moving productions to a nearby facility, the brewery has upped their game immensely when it comes to hazy IPAs in all shapes. This one is one of their best, recent achievements, but really you can’t go wrong with anything in that style for To Øl.
- To Øl CPH The Boss – which works a little bit better if you keep in mind that the pub is still called BRUS. A great New England IPA.
- To Øl CPH Lost All Reason – a series of DIPAs that explore different hop compositions on the same base beer. Interesting, especially in comparison to each other.
Food and events
The restaurant offers a great variety of foods. Whether you’re just looking for a small snack, a burger, or even some finer dining, BRUS has it all. During weekends they have an excellent brunch menu as well.
There’s one event in particular I want to point out and that’s their fantastic “maternity bar”. BRUS invites mothers and fathers on leave to come join the fun. A unique initiative, that really shows how much they care about their community. In turn there is a lot of local support for this brewpub.
