Subjective ramblings about beer, pubs and associated topics

Plain Kitchen, Gothenburg, Sweden

A side street local, with an amazing range of beers on tap and in the fridge. Stripped brick walls. Some noise from the sports being shown on the TV in the back room, but you can easily find a quiet corner, at least on a weekday when no major sports events are on. And if the sports bar/ ale heaven combo is what it takes to make this place a sound business, I’m all in favour of it. A limited food menu, too.

The beers are a good mix of Swedish micros and high quality imports. Most impressive is the wide range of beers form Jämtlands brewery. I have tried a few from their range before, but there are some who are not widely available at Systembolaget which are stocked here, and they have some on tap, too.
Jämtlands Bärnsten is an Amber bitter. Very smooth, and at the same time tasty. Their Oatmeal Stout has a fine aroma of toasted malt. Light and refreshing without being watery. Not outstanding, but fine.

Jämtlands Tiotaggare was the most interesting, a beer brewed for their 10th anniversary. Elk vocabulary, this, a tiotaggare means “ten spikes” and refers to the horn of a ten year old elk. Appropriate for a beer from the deep forests of Jämtland. Dark with a ruby shine, a 7 % ale with a lovely fruity flavour and a finish that is crispy dry.
This one can compete with the very best strong ales from England or Scotland. It is deceivingly smooth at the same time it packs in sour cherries, bitter almonds and spices. This ale shows that you can brew whatever you want from hops, barley and yeast.
With food? It would be appropriate to have some of this with a game stew. You could probably pour some of it into the pot, too, if you have enough bottles.
We may never reach perfection, but we are working on it.,it says on the bottle.  What a lovely slogan!

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 08:52 | link | comments (6)
beer, sweden, microbreweries

Not worth a detour

Drammensølets venner, the fan club for the beers from Aass brewery in Drammen, Norway, produces an eight page tabloid with some entertaining stuff. They review old and new pubs in the town and its surroundings, and do not hesitate to be honest if they find a place lacing, be it the decor or the quality of the beers.

In the latest issue they have visited a new place, which they feel will have trouble facing the competition:

It does not get any easier when you choose to call the new place "C'est la vie", have an interior like a bordello and only have Carlsberg/Ringnes on tap.

......Both the choice of beer on tap and the price of bottled (Aass) beers is downright rude.

They then go on to describe the interior in more detail....

No interior photos of bordellos in my files, I'm afraid, so you'll have to make do with an English pub door.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 15:01 | link | comments
beer, norway

Old ale

Some beers get better after a few years of aging, but that does generally not apply to pale lagers. I have a feeling that most of the beer in the warehouses of the Swedish customs authority is pale lager.

I wrote earlier this year about the companies selling booze to Swedish customers wia the Internet. Well, some of the shipments are intercepted, and so far this year 31 600 liters of hard liquor, 52 800 liter of wine, 49 000 liters of cider and alcopop and 112 350 liters of beer has been confiscated.   

The legal status of the liquids are still disputed, so everything is held in custody until the European Court of Justice has come to a decision. The whisky and vodka will keep, but the rest are perishable goods, which are slowly getting spoilt.

If the Swedish alcohol monopoly is overturned, one can expect price cuts of up to 50 per cent. And the ones who got their goods confiscated will get their money back. I'll keep you informed.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 08:39 | link | comments
beer, sweden

Royal pretentions

I spotted this at Nordstan, a shopping mall in Gothenburg. I have some difficulty finding words, but at least it seems the Swedish monarchy is going down the drain.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 07:06 | link | comments (1)
beer, sweden, usa

Beer rating in Gothenburg

There are several international networks of beer drinkers that exchange views on beer. Ususally this is done on the web, but on occation there are gatherings to celebrate the beers of the world.

Last week a number of people turned up for a ratebeer  gathering in Gothenburg, Sweden. I was unable to attend all of it, but as Gothenburg is only a few hours away by bus or train, I managed to get away for two days.

I will come back to the highlights of the event on the blog. Focus was naturally on Swedish micros, and I can report that there are some great beers being brewed in Sweden at the moment. Many of those are only available on draft, so you'll have to make your way over there to be able to enjoy them!

One of the highlights IMHO was the visit to Dugges ale and porter brewery, and today's photo is from there.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 15:43 | link | comments
beer, sweden, microbreweries, ratebeer

Behind closed doors

The Gulf steam is the only thing preventing Norway from being covered by glaciers, which means that we enjoy every ray of sunshine that comes our way during the summer months. With a trend towards a more liberal attitude to many things in life, this means that you even can have a beer outdoors, as long as it is being consumed on the premises of a licenced bar.

Not everyone approves of this developement, and recently the head of education in the municipality of Ørsta on the Western coast has stated that role models such as teachers should not drink beer outdoors. He refuses to elaboarate on this to the regional paper Sunnmørsposten, but presumably he can accept that they do their drinking indoors with the curtains drawn.

And they still wonder why young people shun the rural areas and move to the cities?

(Note that no teachers were involved in the taking of this picture)

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 12:19 | link | comments
beer, norway

New British beers

At the Tromsø beer festival recently, there were English beers available from Wychwood, Brakspear and Greene King which haven't been on sale in Norway before. The importer/distributor tells me that some of them will be more generally available - they have to talk to the retail chains and Vinmonopolet first.

 

 

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 12:35 | link | comments
beer, england

A beer odyssey

I promised a post about the really good beers in Greece, which can be summed up in two words: Craft Brewery. I have tried to e-mail them, and their web site is long gone, so they are presumably busy brewing, distributing and selling their beers, which is probably the best anyway.

Being in Greece with my family, we had a few days in Athens before hitting the islands. The schedule did not permit a visit to the Craft microbrewery, but fellow drinker Rune had told me that their beer was available in Crete, so I had a glimmer of hope. But surely not in Antiparos, a small sleepy island filled up with Norwegian families? Yes, indeed, in the middle of the main street there was a canvas parasol advertising Craft beer – the fresh beer.

I used the first opportunity to try the two varieties on offer, the Pilsener and the Red Ale. The pilsener was a classic Bohemia-style pilsener, soft, but with a fine balance between malt and hops. Fine bitter finish. The red ale is brewed with ale yeast and cascade hops, and has a nice aroma of cascade hops. A bit sweet perhaps, but a fine ale.

I think I spotted a sign for Craft at Naxos, but I am not sure, so I had to wait a few weeks before trying the rest of the range.

At Syros, a perfect island with both a town of some size, actually inhabited by Greeks throughout the year, and sandy beaches, Craft seemed to be available all over the place. in the main square, on the waterfront, in a small café next to St Nicholaus beach and in a beach bar on the other side of the island.

The Athens Lager is a bit sweeter than the pilsener. They use malt from Bamberg for this, and it is a perfectly fine lager, though no match for the pilsener. More interesting was the Smoked Lager, with a fine aroma of smoked malt. This malt is also imported from Bamberg in Bavaria, an area that specialises in this type of beer. The smoke is more subtle than overwhelming, but it certainly makes the beer stand out.

And finally, in the very welcome shade of a beach bar in Kini beach, a Craft Weiss with lots of fruity yeast aroma, the proper taste of the wheat malt and the lemon-like finish appropriate for this type of beer. Fine lacings on the glass as appropriate for this type of beer, which tastes of summer to me!

They have a black lager in their list, too, but it was not available this summer.

I almost forgot to remember – all the beers are on tap. As far as I know, they do not bottle anything, but I may be mistaken, as this is one of the questions I e-mailed them.

So, despite all the boring lagers that dominate the Greek beer scene, take a look around the corner, and you might find a splendid alternative. And, looking at the pics as the temperature gets lower up here in the North, there is a definite possibility that I'll be back next year!

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 09:52 | link | comments (1)
beer, greece

Beer Tycoon

Want to start you own brewery? Not in the kitchen, not a micro,  I mean big time? No money or real estate? Maybe Bier Tycoon is the thing for you.

Germany is the country with the largest number of breweries, so it's natural that it is launched there first. I do not know if there will be versions in other languages, or on which platforms the game will be available. It should be in the shops before Christmas, with a retail price around 15 Euro.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 10:51 | link | comments
beer, brewers

Welcome to Geir Ove!

I've had the pleasure of having a beer (several, actually!) with fellow ratebeerian Geir Ove on a few occations. He has now joined the selected crowd of Norwegian beer bloggers. He is blogging in English like the rest of us.

His angle is different, as he is a home brewer, and so far is posting about various aspects of the brewing process. Unlike some of us beer drinkers who are just about able to find the bottle opener and a clean glass, he knows what he is writing about. (Who knows, maybe flattering him will get me an invite to taste his beers?)

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 09:40 | link | comments (1)
beer, norway, oslo

Up the creek

If you intend to have a beer during the weekend, don't paddle home in a canoe. At least not if you live in Ontario. Don't even float slowly down the river....

Over here, Jan Arild Snoen is engaged in a debate with the temperance movement, who somehow got the idea that beer is cheap in Norway. (To save hime more calculations: No, beer is not cheap. But NGOs are a dime a dozen!)

Well, enjoy life the best you can!

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 13:58 | link | comments (2)
canada, beer, norway

Beer wars

The second largest brewery group in Denmark, Royal Unibrew, is challenging Carlsberg in the market for import beers, according to the Danish media. The Carlsberg subsidiary House of Beers currently controls 40 per cent of the market.

Accoring to Royal Unibrew, their new import company Xbeer aim to win 10 to 20 per cent of the market for "speciality beers" before the end of 2007.

Well. The list they have is not very impressive even if they have thrown in the more odd beers from their own production and a few domestic micros, so they will have to add quite a few beers to achieve their target.

What is interesting here is that you get a glimse behind the scenes, and see the profit margins for their beers, as everyone can download the price list. 220-230 Danish kroner for 24 beers wholesale is not bad. And the glasses are practically given away for free - nor need to feel guily for the glass you nicked last night, as it cost the pub only a few ktoner!

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 13:04 | link | comments
beer, denmark

Light and dark

I am approaching the end of my haul of Austrian beers, and here are two beers from the Ottakringer brewery in Vienna. The Dunkel has a beautiful brown colour (sorry for the bad quality of the photo today!) and pours with a nice head. Nice malty flavour, with hints of roasted cereal. Rather sweet, but not cloyingly so. Not dissimilar to a good English brown ale, really.

At 4,2%, this would be fine for drinking with food. Not much hops here, but it is well balanced, with an aftertaste of dried fruit - prunes and apricots.

The Helles has a more pronounced hoppiness on top af a grainy flavour that echos the barley fields. Quite fizzy. An all right beer, but not as interesting as the Dunkel.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 09:50 | link | comments (1)
beer, austria

Haandbryggeriet Weizenbock

This beer was launched earlier this summer, and is available from the Vinmonopolet stores in Norway. The beer is very dark brown, with a red tone. Lots of carbonation - they seem to like it that way, as most of their brews are rather fizzy. It pours with a big head that implodes rather quickly.

When you get through the foam and bubbles, you find a rather thin beer. The flavour is elusive. Some sweet and sour aroma, a little toasted malt. Deceivingly easy-drinking given its stength. The beer is OK, but it is by no means a great beer.

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 12:24 | link | comments
norway, microbreweries, haandbryggeriet, bayer

Mentana 104, Parma

To round up my Italian travels this summer:

Just a few minutes walk from the 20 settembre restaurant I wrote about the other day, there is a fine bar with a very impressive beer list, the Mentana 104 - like the previous entry named after its adress. (Useful for vistiors, but hardly inventive!). I wrote about my anticipation before I went to Italy, and I can certainly confirm that it is well worth a visit. The beer list is not the longest I have seen, but it is hand picked, with the best Italian, German and Belgian beers generally available.

The only problem: The most interesting beers are strong and are sold in 75 cl bottles. So bring a friend, try to be moderate - or face the consequences. I tried two beers from Italian micro brewers, first  an Isaac from the Baladin brewery. A very refreshing blonde, just the beer for a summer’s day. Not a lager, more like the best Belgian blondes. Very aromatic.  They have a number of ales from this brewer, which I will try at the next opportunity. The Del Borgo Re Ale was also inspired by Belgian ales, this one more orange in colour. More on the sweet side, but definitely worth a try.

It was tough getting up and finding the bus to the Panil brewery the next morning!

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 13:13 | link | comments
italy, beer, microbreweries

From a Greek island

The weatherman here says rain, rain, rain, and my tan is fading fast. I am putting together an entry on the Craft brewery in Athens, whose beers is also available in many of the islands between Pireus and Crete. Their web site is down, and I have not received an answers to my e-mail questions yet. So you'll have to make do with some beer porn today! Thirsty?

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 12:52 | link | comments (3)
beer, greece

Out of Africa

As far as I can recall, I have never tried any North African beers, so when I spotted a can of Celtia beer from Tunisia on a rather dusty Italian shelf, I just had to buy it. The expecations were not too high, despite the can declaring this to bie a "biere de luxe, and the beer was not up to much, either. Another pale lager. Very pale and very watery. Low carbonation, few traces of the malt, and only a remote hint of hoppy bitterness in the finish. I don't know anything about the Tunisian beer scene, but if this is an indicator, I would stick to wine if I went there. (On the other hand, being a beer geek, I probably wouldn't!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 12:40 | link | comments (3)
beer

Parma again

High summer. The heat is strong for a Northern visitor to the Po plain, though the natives probably feel it is quite chilly yet. Luckily the flight and the transfer went fairly smooth, and the traffic on the Milan-Bologna road moved along at 120 kmph.

The sun is setting, and it is cooling down as I follow a whim and turn down a side street  from via Garibaldi. The hostaria e cantina 20 settembre, in the street of the same name, has a few outside tables, and I spot a few customers drinking tall glasses of cloudy beer. I look inside for an English menu,  which they don't have, but the staff translate some of the highlights for me. What I can spell my way through, however, is their special beer and cheese menu, with beers from Birrificio Italiano. It seems like there is a company disributing speciality cheese and beer together in this region- a good idea.

I need a more substantial meal than cheese, though, so I order soem pasta with crayfish followed by Angus beef in a balsamico sauce. The Typopils arrives with some nibbles of aged parmesan cheese - just the thing to whet the appetite. Despite the name, I would not call this a pils. It is a brown beer that tastes fresh. Sort of farm style beer, full of sweet malt supplemented by a fair amount of hops. More of a zwickl or kellerbier, really. Unfiltered is an understatement - lots of particles floating around in the ale stopped me from giving it higher marks. I shall have to try this beer on another occation to see if is in better condition.

Some scooters roar past on the street - this is Italy, after all, but the swallows dominate the sky calico now before it turns rosy and then dark.

With the pasta I had a Bibock. A stronger ale, also cloudy, but not with as many yeasty globs in it. Round and aromatic, malty sweet, but with a bitter, sourish twist at the end.

Their best beer was the Ambrata, a bock at 7%. This is more of a Belgian type ale, and it looks filtered. Amber colour, tastes like a fine trappish ale. Triple hopped, with Hallertauer Magnum and Hallertauer Perle. Also on the sweet side, but a fine sour finish. A good match for a steak flavoured with balsamico - the sweet-and sour elements in food and beer compliment each other.

No room for a dolce, but the cassis-flavoured Cassinova is fine to round off the meal. An original beer, I like the way this brewery dares to try to make novel beer types. The blackcurrant aroma gives a fine tone to this beer. Sweet, but not too much so. A beer to have with ice cream - or some stilton cheese, perhaps? Or maybe in the shade of a tree on a warm afternoon.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 13:31 | link | comments
italy, beer, pilsener

Product placement

I went to see Superman Returns on Sunday, and as this is a mythology I grew up with, I tend to overlook most of the weaknesses. A bit too much of a triangle drama, perhaps, but overall very good.

One problem, though. When Clark Kent returns from five years absence, he goes out for a beer with Jimmy Olsen. What kind of beer? A Bxxxxxxxr. A man that is the sole survivor from an advanced civilization and has saved the world many times over had deserved a craft beer. A well hopped IPA is what I would have bought him.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 22:33 | link | comments (1)
beer, bud

Beer bloggers meet

There are three beer bloggers here in Oslo, but we hadn't met until last week. I invited Tore and Lars Marius along as well as Geir Ove, who does not have a beer blog, but is active on ratebeer with the rest of us.

We met at Beer Palace, which is one of the few pubs in town where you can find a range of interesting beers. A friendly bunch, and we must try to set up some sort of scedule for meeting once in a while, both for beer talk and for testing.

The photo is not particularly good, but it's what I've got.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 11:39 | link | comments (5)
beer, norway, oslo

The banned poster

CAMRA thought they had a brilliant idea for promoting the Great British Beer Festival this year - wihh posters based on the London Underground map. The got permission to use the famous design many months ago, but at the last minute, London Undergound decided that thy did not want to be associated with the promotion of alcohol. Read the full story at thisislondon.co.uk. Anyway, here is the poster!

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 15:55 | link | comments
london, beer

Beer travel in the Czech Republic

The New York Times has a lengthy article on beer travel in the Czech Republic. (They claim it is published on 6 August, but it is there anyway!) I managed to get through most of it before they put it in their premium section. If you plan to got here, it is worth checking out, otherwise you might wait and see if it becomes freely available later.

Also at the NYT, Eric Asimov blogs about wine and beer. In a recent post, he writes about the ambivalence of hardcore beer-lovers to the rising popularity of craft beers. On the one hand they are desperate for the public to recognize how great beer can be and that most mass-market beer is swill. On the other hand they resent or reject people outside of a small, approved circle who perhaps have gotten too close to the mainstream for their tastes. Comments, anyone?

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 11:33 | link | comments
beer, brewers, microbreweries, czech republic

No premium price for Carlsberg

Carlsberg has given up the effort to sell its pilsener in new design bottles at a premium price on their home turf, according to Jyllandsposten. They tried to relaunch the beer in new bottles and crates in 2004, retailing at the same price for 24 of the new bottles as for 30 of the old ones. They admit that this was a flop. Carlsberg is being sold by the Bilka supermarket chain at 2,83 Danish kroner per bottle this week. Real premium beers - imports and Danish micros - start at ten times the price.

Maybe there is justice after all.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 15:30 | link | comments
beer, carlsberg, denmark

Greek lagers

The Greek beer scene has been dominated by pale lagers for many years. For some reason licence brewed Dutch beers - Amstel and Heineken -  used to be in total control of the market. If you wanted something else, you had to ask for an ouzo or an ice coffee instead. (Their ice coffees are splendid, btw. The tins may say Nescafe, but the blend is certainly something else.)

The picture has changed sligtly. The Craft micro brewery in Athens, which I will come back to, seems to have a growing number of outlets, and there are some interesting imported beers as well. Some good German and Belgian beers - a hefeweisse is well suited to a hot climate - are available, but I was not able to find much of a system in the distribution. The range is usually better in bars and cafes than in supermarkets, particularly in the islands, where the shops often stock a limited range of goods anyway.

In addition, though I don't know if it counts as much of an improvement, there is now a number of domestic lagers that are present just about everywhere. Mythos seems to be the biggest, at least in the Cyclades, but you often find Alfa as well. Both of these are avaialble on draft, canned and bottled. They are both pretty bland lagers, and the custom of serving them in glasses kept in the freezer means their main job is quenching the thirst after too many hours in the sun. Fix is a domestic lager that has come back from the dead, and it is predictably rather pale. Vergina is available canned and bottled - I did not see it on draft. It seemed to me to have a bit more hops than the rest of this bunch, so you should have your eyes open.

A pleasant surprise were the local wines, at a few Euro for half a litre from the barrel. Some of those were fare better than the bottled wines we tried - storage temperature might have something to do with this.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 09:22 | link | comments
beer, greece

Back from the beach

I am back in the treadmill again. I could certainly have wished I was at the Great British Beer Festival, which opens today, but after nearly four weeks in the Greek Cyclades, I hardly have anything to complain about. Not too hot, not too crowded, good beaches and fine accommodation. I will come back to some of this over the next few days.

This was not intended as a beer odyssey, but the brews on offer were more than the Amstels and Heinekens you used to find.

If a cold climate is what you fancy, Greenland is a rather exotic destination. As one of the last corners of the globe, they now have their own brewery, and yesterday they were handing out samples of their first beers in the Tivoli garden in Copenhagen. The beers, a pale ale and a brown ale, are brewed with water from the glaciers, which makes the novelty value even higher. But, for the time being, Copenhagen is the place you have to go to find the Greenland beers. (More convenient for most of us, probably?) Current legislation bans this beer for sale in the shops in Greenland, though the locals are lobbying to change this now. It seems it is more a matter of how to recycle the bottles than alcohol policy. This echoes the situation in Iceland a few decades ago, when the only place you could legally buy domestic (or imported) beer was in the arrival hall of Keflavik airport.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 09:17 | link | comments
beer, denmark, greece