79 US-breweries & 453 different beers at Monks

I guess the news about Monks bar in Stockholm to be serving 453 different beers from 79 US-breweries from Sept 1th is some kind of record (must be, at least in a bar).

The complete list is specified below and from the list its surely some interesting breweries that I have been thinking about trying, including Big Sky Brewing and SKA brewing.

The news is at least that they will have bottles from all these breweries from Sept 1th connected to their biggest US beer festival and guest beer list ever (the initial goal was 500 beer). Do not know if this includes both locations in Stockholm, but I guess that would be the case.

 

1. Abita Brewing Company
2. Allagash Brewing Company
3. Anchor Brewing Company
4. Anderson Valley Brewing Company
5. Anheuser-Busch InBev
6. Arcadia Brewing Company
7. Avery Brewing Company
8. Barley Island Brewing
9. Bear Republic Brewing Company
10. Bells Brewery
11. Big Sky Brewing Company
12. Black Mountain Brewing Co.
13. Boston Beer Company
14. Boulder Beer Company
15. Breckenridge Brewery
16. Brooklyn Brewery
17. Brownings Brewery
18. Buffalo Bills Brewery
19. Capital Brewery
20. City Brewery (Melanie Brewing Co)
21. Coors Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
22. Dark Horse Brewing Company
23. Dogfish Head Brewery
24. Eugene City Brewery & Rogue Ales
25. Flying Dog Brewery
26. Founders Brewing Company
27. Goose Island Beer Company
28. Gordon Biersch Brewing Company
29. Great Divide Brewing Company
30. Great Lakes Brewing Company
31. Half Acre Brewery
32. Harpoon Brewery
33. High Falls Brewing Company
34. Hoppin Frog
35. Iron City Brewing
36. Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales
37. Lagunitas Brewing Company
38. Lakefront Brewery
39. Left Hand Brewing Co.
40. Leinenkugel Brewing Company
41. Lion Brewery, Inc.
42. Lost Coast Brewery & Cafe
43. Magic Hat Brewing Company
44. Matt Brewing Company
45. Mendocino Brewing Company
46. Metropolitan Brewing
47. Miller Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
48. Minhas Craft Brewery
49. Moylans Brewery & Restaurant
50. New Belgium Brewing Company
51. New Holland Brewing Company
52. North Coast Brewing Company
53. O'Fallon Brewery
54. Olde Saratoga Brewing (Mendocino Brewing Co.)
55. Ommegang Brewery (Moortgat)
56. Otter Creek Brewing
57. Pipeworks Brewing Co.
58. Port Brewing/Lost Abbey
59. Pyramid Breweries Inc.
60. Redhook Brewery
61. Rogue Ales
62. Sand Creek Brewing Co.
63. Sea Dog Brewing
64. Shipyard Brewing Company
65. Sierra Nevada Brewing Company
66. SKA Brewing
67. Southampton Publick House
68. Southern Star Brewing Co.
69. Southern Tier Brewing Company
70. Spoetzl Brewery (Gambrinus Company)
71. Sprecher Brewing Company
72. Stevens Point Brewery
73. Stone Brewing Co.
74. Sudwerk Privatbrauerei Hubsch
75. Summit Station Restaurant & Brewery
76. Three Floyds Brewing Company
77. Two Brothers Brewing Company
78. Tyranena Brewing
79. Victory Brewing Company

So I guess its time to give Monks a new visit in a close future. Hopefully the list above actually means that the beers are available in real life. Simply if you are a bit frank I really hope that this do NOT mean that 453 beers means just a couple of bottles per beer, that has been the case before.

Because if that would be the case again you can really question what the purpose is, except to be able to impress the public with nice numbers. To be serious (and this time it truly looks amazing) if this is a hit it need to mean that you have the chance to get what you want and when asked for during a visit. I understand that beers from the US are limited and will be out of stock during the coming weeks, but seriously if a beer is only available with 2-3 bottles it does not matter if the list is impressive, it is still just a nice facade and nothing visit or recommend.

Enough with complaints- I will give it a chance and recommend others to come, and I hope all the luck to Monks that this is a true success that will make all US-craft beers in Stockholm happy and satisfied.

I at least already have a short list building up that I want to test.’

If interested here is the complete list of beer from each brewery; Monks US Guest Beers.

Finally a session beer...

Sorry for being a bit slow, but finally I found a short and describing information what a Session beer is. When listening to US-brewers or reading different blogs you often see the term session beer, and often in connection to "this is not a session beer but..." or "this is a great session beer compared to...".

And now and then you wonder (as a Swede not having full control of english) what the hell is a Session beer, except that it is a "normal" beer compared to the hops monsters many of us like.

But now in the latest BA I saw it, and finally I know what it is, so now I am also with you. Anyway the short and simple description was;

"Low ABV & highly drinkable"

Do anyone argy with that?

Cheers

Mattias, drinking a amazing Stone Ruination on draught at OT, which in short is not a Session beer.

New England Report 12:2008-07-23 (New London -- Greenfield)

The next day started south in New Hampshire and the city of Manchester. Fun to see that so many cities are influenced with English cities and you get names as Manchester, Dover, Gloucester etc, even more interesting that we just before New London came from West Lebanon, wonder where that name comes from. The goal for Manchester, which is pretty large town, was "Millys Tavern" and to sample some of their beers.

Millys is located in a large brick building at the river front (merrimack river) in central Manchester.

The place does their own handcraftet beers on site and most often has up to 9 different styles on tap plus a couple of seasonals. They have a 15 barrel DME system install and uses water from Massabesic with northwestern hops.

We came early and did not have time for lunch, otherwise it seems they had a good choice in food.

Decided to have the sampler and came up with the following result;

113. Manch Vegas IPA
114. Mt. Uncanoonus Golden Cream Ale
115. Tashas Red Ale Tail Ale

116. Hells Bells Belgian Strong Dark Ale

117. General John Stark Dark Porter

118. Millyes Oatmeal Stout

119. Bo's Scotch Ale

Good quality beers, not worldclass. What I remember is that I really liked the Hells Bells ale which was really a kick in the ass strong ale that made you warm inside out.

The official information tells you;

"Hell's Bell's is a Belgian-inspired Strong Dark Ale. You won't have to sell your soul for a taste of this devilish concoction of the finest imported malts and hops, Belgian Candi Sugars and spices. Fruity phenolics and a hint of vanilla enhance the flavor of this 9% ABV ale. Do Hell's Bells toll for you?O.G.: 1.083 F.G.: 1.018 ABV%: 9"

This beer was a seasonal so do not expect to see this so much in the future. From the standard choices I would recommend the outmeal stout. A rich beer in color, smell and taste and very traditional to the style.

We had earlier arranged at meeting with one of the brewers over at Pennichuck Brewery in Milford NH. We got some help from Jugge over at Oliver Twist in Stockholm as he had met the owner a couple of times. So through Jugges help we were invited to this tiny brewery located in a old workshop garage outside Milford.


As we finally found this place it was at start really difficult to understand that it was hiding a fullscale brewery. A brewery that is not much older that a couple of years, but already is making a name in the industry with big beers like belgian trippels or barley wines. When you talk about big you can also notice that they like to use large bottles influenced by Belgium, meaning 1 liter bottles. Nice to look at, but really a hell to get home in your bag, :-).

(Exterior of the brewery, what happened to this poor car??)

The owner Phil Jewett was not at the brewery when we entered the place arround 14, but we instead were helped by the new headbrewer Damase Olsson (yes he has some connection with Sweden). They were in middle of brewing so we got a nice quick tour of the brewery during the same time as Damase were brewing and putting stuff in the brew. Fun to see. The brewery is not large but they already have 4 different standard brews plus a bunch of special brews that they package on 1 liter bottles.

(Brewery interior)

(Damase the headbrewer giving us a quick tour of the brewery)

Asking if they also did their own botteling the answer was of course yes and we got to see the very tiny and very manual equipment where all the botteling was done. Not large but very effective it seems.

We got to sample all of the standard beers including;

120. Halligan IPA (my favorite)

121. Fireman Pale Ale

122. Feuerwehrmann Black Lager (Schwarzbier)

123. Big O Oktoberfest (which was the new oktober beer that we sampled directly from the brew, great experience)

The visit was short but exciting and we thanked for the visit and bought some beers to get home to Sweden. Hope to see more from this brewery in the future and it will interesting to see how it will grow from the current limited quantities. Maybe we can expect some beers to turn up in Stockholm in a near future?

Continued to Westminster in MA and the "Wachusett Brewing Company". Had the standard beer tour and also sampled some of the beers. Wachusett seems quite large and uninspring, it says quite much when the breweries large seller (arround 80%) is a very boring Blueberry Wheat. It is difficult to do a good wheat and sometimes you do not understand why american breweries like to do it so much when the result is so bleak.

Maybe it is has to do with sales and warm summer days. Anyway it is very rare that you find a good beer when you have to sample a seasonal wheat in the US. Some times it happens but then you need to try to do it much more traditional belgian or german and it is much more interesting if you do a hefe wheat instead, good examples include; ÜberSun and Hop Sun from Southern Tier.

Sampled beers;

124. IPA

125. Black Shack Porter

126. Blueberry Wheat

After the brewery visit we ended up in Greenfield and headed for the "Peoples Pint" bar. Not much to say about this place. Quite good beers but I do not really understand the hype.

127. Pied pIPA

128. ESB (cask)

129. Provider Pale Ale

130. Helles Bock

131. Oatmeal Stout

132. Farmers Brown

Maybe it was the town itself or maybe the peanut wok (I can understand pasta with some peanut, but not cold peanut with some pasta, :-), better to get the burger at this place, probably a much better choice) that made it bad place. I did not like it much but it seems to very popular arround this area and the beers get quite good rating over at beeradvocate.

As Greenfield did not offer any more beer experiences (at least good experiences) it was just to get home to the motel and recharge for a new day.

New England Report VIII:2008-07-19

The report from our New England Beer Trail now continues, the trip is already finished, but I need this for the future, so lets continue.

The day after the festival in Burlington ended up in central Burlington with a visit to "Nectars".

Recommended by BeerAdvocates that we often turn to when you need a good place. This time it maybe turned out a bit wrong as the place was a club that describes it self as; "the club is a sultry, down home juke joint providing cocktails, dancing, live Blues, Boogie, Groove, Soul, and straight up Rock SEVEN NIGHTS A WEEK!".

As we are not the club-people anymore (probably never been, :-)) we sort of did not like the place too much.

They have a impressive amount of craft-beers (probably why BeerAdvocate had it on the list) but that does not matter if it takes ages to actually get the beer and had to sit in a extremelly loud environment. We had some food and at least got a local craft beer, but then left the place in a hurry.

67. Magic Hat Circus Boy

After that it was just to get home and have some rest so that you could load your batteries for a new day in burlington.

New England Beer Trail: "The Result in pictures and locations"

More information will come and as usual it seems I had the normal problem with the internet so my goal to update everything during the trip failed.

Anyway I think we achieved most of the things we planned for a added some new fun stuff a long the way, when the original plan proved to be impossible to follow (you are always so optimistic back home, but often forget that you also need to spend some time at each place, not only travel between them, :-)) and we had to change a few things.

New England Report V:2008-07-18

Now the report come from a very rainy Greenfield, MA. It is pouring down and we have to see how the travel will work south tomorrow morning. We finished the day in the Peoples Pint in central Greenfield.

Coming back to the normal report where the goal is mainly just to write some points down about the places we visited it is now down for day II outside Boston.

Second day in outside was supposed to be a brewery tour outside Portland.

We started out early with a visit to the Allagash Brewing Company. A brewery that was for me most connected to belgian inspired strong ales and tripples. A bit surprised the girl at the beer shop helped us with a very short and informal tour of the new brew house, and we were very happy with the information and tour we got. As the normal tour was 15.00 and we came to the brewery just after 11.00 it was great to have a couple of beers and a quick peak at the brewery.

Sampled beers included;

45. White (5% ABV)
46. Trippel Ale (9% ABV)
47. Black Stout (Belgian Stout), this was a great beer and something new for me, showed that they can do beer outside the standard belgian styled strong ale, great stuff and something we took with us from the brewery.

(Kegs at Allagash with the oaked barrell "Curieux", that we sampled at Sunset in Boston i couple of days ago)As the Casco Bay Brewing company had been closed down and that all brewers at Stone Coast Brewery were all occupied with the Vermont Brewers Festival (1 of 3 was not a great result) we instead continued to the Sea Dog Brewpub in Topsham. Time for lunch and;

48. Pale Ale (cask)

The beers are not really to exiciting at Sea Dog but the location in Topsham is worth checking out, has a large outdoor terrace along a small river.

Continued just as the very tiny Oak Pond Brewery opened up for visiting and free samplers. This brewery is actually just a one person operation.

We met the owner and brewer himself (see pic) and sampled;

49. Pale Ale
50. DoorYard Ale
51. White Fox Ale (best one)
52. Nut Brown Ale
53. Oktoberfest (biggest seller)

Coming to Bethel during we evening we also managed to find the brewpub in the ski resort, meaning the Sunday River Company and then finally ended up in central Bethel and the Suds Pub.

Sunday River Company:

54. Black Bear Porter
55. 420 IPA (also served here as the brewpub is owned by the people at Stonecoast brewery)

Suds Pub:

56. Magic Hat #9
57. Long Trail Ale
58. Gearys London Porter

Need for sleep now so I say goodbye with M and S saying goodnight from Suds and sunny Bethel, cheers to all.

New England Report IV:2008-07-17

Reporting from the Fairview Motel outside New London NH. Here the trip also can continue on the web.

We have had a couple of more amazing beer days with loads of New Hampshire and Vermont beers, including the Vermont Brewers Festival (more about that later on).

If we continue with the actual trip and after the Cape Ann brewery (I later actually got a cap from the brewer himself outside burlington, thanks) if looks like this;

We took the car and continued back in the country from the coast and took us all over to The Tap in Haverhill, MA, a bit north or Boston. The was a natural spot after several pints of the amazing Leatherlips IPA.

(Tap handlers at the Tap in Haverhill)

The Tap has several great beer and is really a nice little town outside the Boston area. They are located in a town that was ages ago very famous for the shoe industry. Therefore they use the old shoe samples as part of the tap handlers.

Sampled beers included;

25. Rejuvination
26. Haverale
27. APA
28. Leatherlips IPA (amazing IPA at only 5% ABV, but in hops tastes like a double IPA, we even got a six pack to go)
29. Fresh Roasted Coffee Stout

After Haverhill we took the car up to Smuttynose Brewing Company in Portsmouth NH. We got the great opportunity with some talk with the bartender to be able to get a short brewery tour. Very fun to just have a quick browse through this brewery. As Smuttynose and especially the IPA is one of our old US IPA bit was really fun to check out the brewery. We got to see all of the production and even some of the future oaked barell experiments they are playing around with at the hidden corner of the brewery.


Sampled beers include;

30. Pale Ale Shoals
31. IPA
32. Portsmouth Lager
33. Old Brown Dog

The list expanded and as you see some people takes the beer list very seriously;

After the samplers and the brewery tour we had to continue and with some free samplers given to us at Smutty we went down to Portsmouth Brewery (sister brewery for Smutty) and sampled the following beers;

34. Bottle Rocket IPA
35. Black Cat Stout
36. Imperial IPA

After finally coming to Portland, maine we got rid of the car and headed down to downtown Portland. Portland by night included;"Grittys"

37. Bitter (cask)
38. Pub Style Pale Ale (cask)

"Sebago Brewing Company"

39. Fryes IPA
40. Boathouse Brown Ale
41. Roadhouse Red Ale

"Great Lost Bear" (Best bar in Portland, just sorry that it was the last place for the night and so far away from everything else, took us 40 minutes to walk between Sebago and the lost beer)

42. Stone Coast 420 IPA
43. Gearys Porter
44. Gearys Ale (cask)

At least you could understand that if you only need one place in Portland, the Great Lost Bear is the place. A cool place with loads of beers and atmosphere. But as always this should have been the first place to visit instead of the last place after a very long beer trail.

New England Report III: 2008-07-17

First day if we talk about breweries and the beer trail took us to the "Cape Ann Brewing Company" in Glouchester, MA.

Sampled beers included;

20. Fishersmans IPA
21. Fishermans Pumkin Stout
22. Fishermans Brew (lager)
23. Fishermans Tea party Barley Wine


24. Bavarian Wheat

New England Report II: 2008-07-16

Day II in and still in Boston. So this is the day that we need to show our beer friends the best of greater Boston beer scene.

The beers and places that we succeeded in getting to during the day includes (the weather was sunny and sunny etc)

"Beer Works", Canal Street

7. Fenway American Pale Ale
8. Back Bay IPA
9. Victory Red (cask)

"Bukowski Tavern" (during the wait of the Stone beer 12th anv.)

10. Lagunitas IPA
11. Sixpoint Bengali Tiger IPA
12. Cambridge Brewing Company Porter

"The Sunset Grill & Tap"

13. Bear Republic Racer 5
14. Boulder Beer Hazed & Infused
15. Moylans Double IPA
16. Allagash Curieux (cask)
17. Stone Oaked Arrogant Bastard
18. He'Brew Lennys RIPA

"The Deep Ellum"

19. Ipswich Mild Brown

New England Report I

Hi,

Yes we actually came to the US and started our New England Beer Trail 2008. The problems with my internet access has continued so a few days has passed with many beer experiences that you could talk about.

As always it is getting a bit late and I really hope that this one is a good choice to try something out on the net. Couple of the last attempts has ended with giving up and instead going to sleep.

So lets get some facts so far.

2008-07-15

Arrived in Boston and our hotel; "Midtown Hotel.

Straight to our favorite bar in Boston; "Bukowski Tavern" on Dalton Street.

1. Stone Arrogant Bastard
2. Cisco Whales Tale Palse Ale
3. Smyttonose IPA

"The Other Side Cafe"

4. DogFish 60 Minute IPA

"The Lower Depths Tap Room" (owned by the Bukowski team)

5. The Tap Leatherlips IPA (amazing IPA at 5% ABV)
6. Otter Creek Copper Ale

Yes I am still here!

If anyone is still reading this blog except myself I just need to inform that our New England Beer Trip 2008 will just start in a couple of hours.

Hopefully I will have access to some kind of network and hope to make at least some comments about the trip.

It will start tomorrow (actually in a couple or hours) with going over to Boston, MA and end on July 30th.

We will probably not finish everything as planned but here is at least the main plan and where you can check were we probably are on this little beer trail.

New Spring beer from Sam Adams at OT

Not that I like american style weiss\wit beer much but at least I need to give Oliver Twist some credit when they serve new beer from the US on draught, and even on the standard list of beers.

This beer showed up a couple of weeks ago at my favorite pub i Stockholm. It is called a "White Ale" and is a seasonal spring beer from Samuel Adams. So to categories it in style I would say simply a "Sam Adams"-style beer inspired by belgian witbier, meaning more Sam Adams instead of a normal witbier.

So if you like the taste of Sam Adams beers (as I do) and want to try something different this is your beer.

I like Sam Adams in the sense that it is a great starting point for people that usually drink international lagers. It is a beer that you can give a ago and often people like it and through that can learn and understand that a beer can actually taste something without being too much.

Often you hear that I want a beer, but it should not be dark, as to say that all dark beer would taste to much and different compared what they normally drink. Is that not strange?, why would just a dark beer taste more, at least you can not generalize like that. It is like say that a red wine would always taste more than a white wine, just because red is more color than white!.

According to Sam Adams this beer "has clear malt & wheat notes, and dominated by 9 spices and dried fruits". Personally I would say a beer with light orange color with a white head for a short while. For a wit-bier it has the lemon and orange you like in a beer like hoegaarden, quite refreshing as a summer beer and at the end very drinkable.

Not great and nothing I will drink much of but at least I will recommend it to people who wants something different and like to sample a US-beer.

In average I would give it a 4/10.

Tribute to my favorite pub; all categories

What should a great pub\bar be?

Many beers? From many countries? Quality beers? Friendly Staff? Good food? Great location? Large? Small? Modern? Old?

Well that is a tricky question. But at very few occurences you just feel that this is it, this is something I like in pub, and this is a place that I like to return to.

This little tribute is such a place.

Barcade located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York city started out as a car workshop that was bought by a couple of micro beers & arcade enthusiasts in 2005. The place opened up in September 2005 and has quite quickly developed as a beer heaven for US-micro beers on draught, also recently on cask that is being more and more popular in the state.

So what about the hype, lets start with the actual building.

When you first arrive to the place it is really not easy to understand that this is a pub and a place where you should actually get close to. It looks like something that should actually been teard down ages ago, but that is part of the charm.

It is a rought place that just with its little sign saying "Barcade" shows directly what the place is about.

A place where you primarly drink beer (no food is served except beer nuts and chips) and can enjoy it with others also liking the beers to be based on quality and love to the craft brewing industry.

When you enter the place you will notice the exposed brick walls and the 25-foot ceilings, on the

left side a row of arcade games from the 80s, on the right hand side a long bar that strechtes out from start to end of the place.

And this is also one of the key things with a great bar, meaning the bar, you should be able to sit at the bar and not just get the beers from it. For me beers should be consumed at the actual bar, through that you can really get the atmosphere of the place.

So to summarize so for, it needs to be rough, meaning a place with a built in athmosphere and soul that shows that the place is primarly for beers and not just a place that has been heavily designed to be cool and classy. Secondly we need a long bar, either on the side or placed at the end of the place.

Barcades primarily serves micro beers through out the country and almost always on draught. The beers are handled with care and served with a understanding of glassware and suitable amount of beers (bad example of that is an other great place but that has no understanding of amount and glassware, at Mugs Ale Hourse also in Williamsburg I was served a Weyerbacher Double Simcoe India Pale Ale in a English pint!, great bargain but without understanding that you can not drink a English pint of a beer with arround 10% without loosing your touch and the touch of the beer), so you get a double ipa or a imperial stout in snifter or tulip, a american pale ale in a american pint glass as it should be.

One of the strange things that I have noticed the last couple of years in NY is the trend to replace the glass from american pint to english pint, why?, you should keep the glass that it should be not try to copy the english tradition.

Becuase if so, you are missing one thing, english beers are often light beers with ABV between 3 and 4%, american micros are often stronger in taste and ABV, so it is not a good idea to serve a 6-7% ABV Pale Ale or IPA in a larger glass, you just get drunk people not enjoying your beers.

Other things you notice is the staff, who has the knowledge and love of beers. They know what they are serving and they can talk about what the beer is about. If you do not know what you want they can help you out, and they have that special ability just by asking a couple of question can get the beer you really like, or just by knowing your last beer can spot out the next you should have, just before you realize it yourself.

Amount and number of changing beers is on my list of a good place, but is not the most important thing you look for. But anyway here you have a large number of taps and that is constantly changing in line and a great collection of beers from both the east, west coast and the rocky areas.

For example in this particular moment I could have enjoyed the following beers (unfortunately you can not be in NY every weekend, :-);

Allagash Four, Avery Karma, Blue Point Oatmeal Stout (cask), Middle Ages Kilt Lifter, Rogue Shakespeare Stout (Nitro), Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Ale, Sly Fox Saison Vos, Southampton IPA, Victory Prima Pils etc etc.

So this place is on my number one spot, it can not be any better, only pity is that NY is so far away. So I have to enjoy most of my beers locally. But at least everytime I am in NY Barcade is the number of spot.

Thanks to the folks at Barcade, thanks for giving me the ultimate beer experience.

Beers from Argentina enjoyed in Sweden

Monks Café on Wallingatan 38 Stockholm/Norrmalm speciality is large number of beers, estimated to 1200 different bottles and arround 16 on the tap. I am not there so often (you can not visit every good place in Stockholm) but at some occurences we get up to the place and to try out some new brews from around the world.

This time I like to get the opportunity to give some credit to beers from Argentina. Maybe not a country that is famous for the beers, but why not, if Sweden can produce great micro beers why not Argentina.

So we sampled some of the beers available (Monks had a little Argentina beer festival, but I am sorry to say that I do not know the rest of the available beers) and discovered the beer from Antares. This is a small Brew Pub/Brewery located in the city of Mar del Plata (located on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean in the Buenos Aires Province) brewed at the New Patagonia Brewery.

Antares beer is one of the fastest-growing premium beer in Argentina and has recently started to be available outside the country, exported to countries like Canada, Germany, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, and Japan.

Even in May month it has been announced that the beers (at least the lager) will be available in the US through the distribution of Aladdin Beverage (Brooklyn , NY). The lager seems to be the largest beer when talking about sales but we instead concentrated on the more interesting styles of port and stout.

First one was the porter that at start due to the cold storage did not taste much, but when the beer was warmed it turned out to be a very well made porter. This is a classic porter with aroma of toffe, coffee and and the end some roasted malts. It has has a quite thick beige head and quite oily in the mouth. Not a favorite in porters for me but at least very drinkable.

Second one was the stout (Antared Imperial Stout) that also comes with a deep dark brown color with a similar brown\beige head as the porter. This is of course something else compared to the porter, simply because of the storage and ABV. It has a very strong roasted malty character with quite smoky tastes. Not a favorite in imperial stouts (like Bells Expedition Stout and Närke Kaggen Stormaktsporter) but it has the standard characters of a imperial stout and can be recommended to at least try out.

Always interesting to learn new beer countries and it will be interesting what the planned beers from Brazil that Monks is going to provide for us.

For the interested, here is a complete list of beers from Monks that are or at least have been available;

1. Antares Barley Wine
2. Antares Imperial Stout
3. Antares Kölsch
4. Antares Porter
5. Antares Scotch Ale
6. Aracuana Bock
7. Aracuana Doppio Malto
8. Aracuana Pale Ale
9. Aracuana Weizen
10. Otro Mundo Golden Ale
11. Otro Mundo Nut Brown Ale
12. Otro Mundo Strong Red Ale

The Beer Summer in Stockholm has arrived

Last Saturday the summer finally arrived in Stockholm and took us all with storm. Seems that everyone was out enjoying the short opportunity to get some sun. Stockholm looked like a enormous beach area and you could not understand that we had snow just a couple of weeks back.

So it was a good time to get together and drink some great beers. The normal beer meeting with the The Swedish Beer Consumers Association had this time been transformed to picnic in the park.

We all met at tantolunden on Södermalm and had a great time with some sampling of beers and chocolate.

It felt a quite interesting experience to sit together and drink great quality micro beers from all over the world, when people at the same time arround were enjoying the maybe more "normal" fizzy yellow macro lagers in large scale. It was like a little island thrown out on a big field of international lagers and cheap wines.

Most of the beers came fram Anders H and Lasse and from one of their many beer trips to Copenhagen, so the quality was great and we were lucky enough to get some great beers from escpecially the USA.

How about the beer list that I personally enjoyed, can it be any better, micro beer and summer in Stockholm,

1. Oskar Blues Dales Pale Ale

2. Oskar Blues Old Chub

3. Green Flash Double India Pale Ale

4. Närke ?

5. Runöl

6. Guiness export 7.5% (from a stach of beers that Carlsberg wanted to throw away due to the date, 2004!, very sweet beer and not really what you think a Guiness should taste)

7. Oppigårds Påsköl

It was a good day and I think we should do this more often, it is not always you get such great beers at a park in Sweden. Thanks to who ever came up with this brilliant idea, instead of just sitting inside in a dark pub sampling beers that we usually do when we have such gatherings.

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.

Spring US Beer Festival 08: The result

I reported earlier (What about a beer festival in 08?) that we were planning a spring beer festival somewhere in the US. It was a bit difficult but mainly due to the exact timing and a reasonable distance from Europe during a extended weekend we finally came up with a suitable place. Yes, I know there are plenty of great beer and breweries on the west coast (like Portland that has been mentioned in some of the comments I got) and other places in the country but this year the journey will take us to;

The Spring Craft Beer Festival, Uniondale, Ny; March 29 + that we are also planning a short stop over at the 1st Manhattan Cask Ale Festival@Chelsea that I just stumbled upon a few days ago.

This will be great, a couple of beer festival and then the rest of the time heading for some beer journeys to my favorite places like;

1. Barcade, at 388 Union Avenue, Brooklyn, ******

2. Blind Tiger Ale House, at 281 Bleecker Street, *****

3. Mugs Ale House, at 125 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, ****

4. Ginger Man, The, 11 East 36th Street, ****

5. CB Six, at 252 East 51st Street, ***

6. Spuyten Duyvil, at 359 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn ***

Sadly the earlier number 3 spot; The Collins Bar, at 735 8th Ave. @ 46th St., as I earlier reported is no more so we can not start the trail anymore over at this amazing little place close to Times square.

But I guess we can live with House Of Brews - W. 51st Street close to the hotel. And hopefully some other places can be included that we have not visited in NY before.