In traditional brewing, juniper infusion replaces water for all purposes, like cleaning, mashing, etc etc. In Norwegian it’s usually called "einerlåg" or "sprakalåg". So the first thing we had to do was to start the fire under the kettle, fill it with water, then take some juniper branches and put them in. Carlo says it’s important to also take a branch and split it lengthwise, so that we extract juices from the core of the wood. When asked why he shrugged in a vaguely embarrassed way, and said "I was told this is important, but not why."

via Brewing a Norwegian farmhouse ale | Larsblog.