2008-02-14

Bistro Double IPA Festival

The yearly Double IPA festival has been held once more over at Bistro, San Fran, California.

And as normal I which I had the time to actually be there, sigh!!

2008-02-12

Närke Kulturbryggeri Festival: Missed a hit

Well I have really nothing to report except that I missed the Närke brewery festival at Akkurat, yes the whole weekend. I had to go on a business trip so I had to leave all the great beers from Örebro to the rest of the beer community at Akkurat and instead drink "Stor Stark" for 50 SEK in Åre!. So the only thing I have is the menu!.

For those enjoying this event you could drink amazing things like;

1. Stormaktsporter from 2005!!!
2. "!", An Old Ale at 8% ABV

etc etc. Well a classic that I missed but anyway it was a hit (500l was served during a few days) and hopefully Akkurat will have the great taste to have a rerun in a close future,

please?

Never mind the Bollox!: Swedish Imperial IPA

Today it was time for a new beer in the form of a American styled Imperial or Double India Pale Ale and a new masterpiece from the brewery in Mölndal.

What I am talking about is the new Bollox! beer from Dugges Ale & Porterbryggeri. It has been served in Gothenburg for a couple of weeks now, but it is now time for Stockholm and the North branch of the Bishops Arms chain.

Dugges is most often a great brewery, simply that you get everything you want as a beer geek; new inventions, no restrictions, always a new type of beer, never boring, always something to wait for, much of everything etc etc etc.

The problem with bigger craft breweries is that they tend to start sticking with the big sellers and develop on that, and as a beer geek you instead tend to like the smaller craft breweries simply because they bring you something new every week or month or quarter.

So now it seems that Dugges has continued the success of the Bollox! branch, which is still a US-inspired IPA with bitter dry hopped aroma hops with tons of Centennial, or simply as the brewery says;

"No bullshit, this is the bollox!"

The new beer is the same beer with the same type of sweetnes with tons of hops but developed in the same category as Imperial IPAs (at least inspired) as "Russian River Pliny the Elder" or "Dogfish Head 90 Minute Imperial IPA".

A very dark amber color with a steady white head, sweetnes comes first and when the beers matures in the glass & gets warmer you get a malty bitterners and warmness from the alcohol (9.2 ABV), and finally it explodes in hops touches. Simply a Swedish hop monster that will be a hit among the beer geeks, or at least the hop heads.

It is not up in hop heaven (cheers to pliny!), but as for a Swedish beer and for a brewery as Dugges (1 person) it is a big achievement and it is always great to have a hop buzz not only all the way over at the US.

You can close you eyes and you could believe that you are sitting drinking a US ADIPA at Barcade or Toronado or at a local brewery in Southern California.

So thumbs up for Dugges and it looks like 2008 will be a great new beer year, so whats next?, at least we are waiting for the "Perfect Idjit!".

2008-02-10

The new cupboard...

The new cupboard has arrived, so now we can finally get some order again in the increasing number of beer glasses. Feels great to have a place to store all the glasses that you "need".

So the cupboard is now divided into four different categories;

1. US Beer pints
2. Large & small tasters
3. Belgian lambic glasses
4. Assorted glasses from Stockholm beers

+ assorted belgian glasses for all kind of purposes.

QUICKTAKE: Middle Ages X Double India Pale Ale

The Middle Ages X Double India Pale Ale was brewed once to celebrate the 10th anniversary and brewed in the style of an American Double IPA.

I purchased the beer in beginning at 2007 (Boston in feb during the extremen beer fest) and it has after that been stored until now. Seems that the beer was better than ever and it had matured good during the years (brewed in 2005 as the info on the site says) and with the 10% ABV it had the potential to store well.

It poured a deep copper & with a white head, smell was grapefruit aroma with a strong underlying bittering hoppy aroma, taste is also grapefruit with a bitterness to it, its rich & creamy with a slight alcohol bite. It is simply a great hoppy (Warrior?) ADIPA and it was worth wait and getting this beer all the way from Boston.

Finally the beer is a bit of a mystery for me, on the bottle design like the one at BeerAdvocate it says 1995 -- 2005, showing that the beer was done once in 05. But on my example this is removed and is not saying anything when it was actually brewed. So it seems maybe that the brewery has continued to do the beers after 2005?

VS.

Anyway a great DIPA that I will give 4+ on my beer scale. Seems that I have to check for more beers from this brewery when we get to New York in March.

QUICKTAKE: The beers from Skinners

We have recently been enjoying real ales from both Rudgate and Skinners lately in Stockholm. Escpecially Skinners is a very good example for a great new brewery from Cornwall. Well "new", at least the brewery is quite new when it started up the business in 1997.

The brewery was started by Steve and Sarah Skinner in 1997 in Truro, Cornwall and they have quite quickly established themselves as one of the major craft breweries in the South-West. The brewery is family-run and operates all brewing in Truro and where they have a great selection of cask conditioned ales that has earned them prizes including twice Supreme champion of the South West and SIBA UK National Reserve Champion of Great Britain.

One of the fun part of the brewery is the quite hilarious labels that they use for the bottle design and also the beer name. What about; "Pennycomequick", "Jingle Knockers" or "Bishop Bills Truro Brew"? and these labels;



Served beers at OT that I have sampled so far is Skinners Keel Over and Skinners Figgys Brew.

The first one is a classic styled bitter, with a clear deep golden to amber colour and big white head, a decent real ale bitter. Second one is a darker bitter, copper in color and white head, a bit of hops with notes of malt, also very decent and drinkable.

The beers are not master pieces but they do decent drinkable beers that you can drink much of. Beers do not always need to be strong and hoppy and master pieces, some times you just feel for a drinkable beers and that is where breweries like Skinners have a place for me.

A strange beer from Carlsberg

In the list of strange beers sampled this one from Carlsberg is probably on top 10. I recently found the bottle again when I was trying to get rid off all the stuff that due to some strange reasons you keep at home. I sampled this beer "19B" a few years back when Akkurat was having a beer sale and was selling beers that was coming to its end. I just remembered that the beer was drinkable but it was a bit unknown what beer it actually was, simply because it had passed its best form.

So does anyone know anything about this beer? Doing some searches on the web does not say much, at least I can not find the beer over at Ratebeer or BeerAdvocate so it must be quite rare.

Checking some more it seems that the beer is a export beer sold in Belgium and was a Dopplebock with around 7.5 ABV.

Some information I found at the Danish site says something like;

19B
Oprindelig lavet som Carlsbergs påskebryg i 1952. Den var mørk, markedet begyndte at efterspørge en lysere påskebryg. Derfor blev den erstattet. I stedet kom den til at hedde 19B og blev eksportøl.

More of the Danish beers in Stockholm (and some "bad" news)

The Danish beer tour is still strong and alive around Stockholm. I can report a great beer experience over at the Mackinlay's Inn a few weeks back.

Available beers on draught from Denmark was the beers from Ølfabrikken. We sampled the amazing Rug IPA that was served in smaller glasses, mainly due to the very high price (85 SEK). But it was worth the price and the opportunity to have such a great beer also here in Stockholm.
This beer has been my favorite one from this brewery and it was also a hit to drink it locally.

It has a dark mahogny color with a small white head. A strong hoppy taste and flavor with hints of orange, apricot touches. It is strong and hoppy, but in the same time very balanced and I really like the extremely bitter finish.

During the time I started to write this entry I saw some very disturbing news regarding the future of the brewery. It seems in short that the brewery has been bought by the Gourmetbryggeriet (GB). What this actually means is a bit uncertain but it seems that it has been taken over in a deal that has not been appreciated by all parties, at least it seems so based on the bitter comments.

The co-founder Christian Skovdal Andersen has suddenly decided to leave the company and what GB wants with the brewery is very uncertain. This does not sound so great, bad news, especially now when it seemed that everything went so well with the brewery. It was becoming a world hit, with good ratings both around Europe and also especially in the US.

I am not sure want it means, but the fact that the site http://www.olfabrikken.dk has been shut down maybe is saying something what the future will be???

More entries about this news:

1. "This is the end of ölfabrikken"
2. What happened to ölfabrikken
3. Ölfabrikken offline