Dugges Ale & Porter Brewery at Denver?

Yes I know it has been a while since GABF-07, but we promised ourselves to show our nice T-shirts from Dugges over at GABF when we brought them with us to the USA.

So here it is, you could not get the great beers at GABF or anywhere else but we at least brought the T-shirts and did some advertising for our favorite Swedish brewery.

I guess you have to start somewhere, and you never know, you might come across a High Five IPA or a Idjit somewhere in the States quite soon, or at least in a distant future, :-).

What about Dugges?, well it is tiny brewery in Gothenburg on the west coast of Sweden that for me is a Swedish version of breweries like Stone or Moylans. Classic beers inspired by the USA, England, Sweden and beer styles like IPA, Stout, Barleys and Imperial Porters, etc, in short beers with a attitude.

The have great beers like;

Dugges Avenyn Ale
Dugges Bollox!
Dugges Britannia
Dugges Celebration Ale
Dugges Fuggedaboudit!
Dugges Gnoffs APA
Dugges High Five!
Dugges Holy Cow!

And when we are still at it, here is picture number 2 of "Dugges in the States" advertising campaign (not sponsored by the brewery, if you thought so), :-).

Stockholm Beer 2007: A new Swedish beer classic?

Last night at the Stockholm Beer a new beer was presented (so far as I know) over at Dugges in the form of a idiot! A limited release has been available before, but this was the first real stuff.

Idjit is Imperial Stout which will be a new beer from Dugges and a test brew was released in bottles during the festival (just for fun, according to Dugge).

At 18.00 sharp we got the opportunity to test this new beer that had only been stored for 2 months and was very young compared to the final product. But it was big news anyway and the line was long for actually getting a full Idjit!, as you can see below;

Dugge the brewer serving the new Idjit! beer

How about the beer?, well it is still not ready and the plan is to actually store it for a additional year, and in that sense you actually do not know how it it will evolve. It has a dark brown colour, the flavour is very woody with a strong alcohol buzz (ABV 16%),coffee, and you can feel some raisins and a touch of porter and sherry.

What can you say?, it feels like a hit and it will be very exiting to actually taste this beer when it is ready, with the knowledge of Dugges I am sure that last night a new beer legend was born. It can not be compared to my favorite Imperial Stout/Porter (Närke Kaggen Stormaktsporter), at least not with the current appearance, but at least something similar and a good beer continuing the dark beer tradition in Sweden in form of porters and stouts.

Seems that the Idjits is slowly being built up as a series of beers. Because currently we already have the amazing 1/2 Idjit which is a very potent porter and in the future Dugges will also provide a "Perfect Idjit" which will be a oaked stored Idjit for 2-3 additional months.

It also seems that Dugges (best brewery in Stockholm according to me) also got recognized as a brewery through winning several prizes at the festival. Here is the result for Dugges;

Category: Best Swedish Draught Strong beer over 6% ABV
Bollox! - Bronze!

Category: Best Draught Ale 4,8-5,9% ABV:
Avenyn Ale - Gold!

Category: Best Swedish Draught Beer:
Avenyn Ale - Gold!

Thats a very good result for Dugges, a brewery that has only been brewing a couple of years. Thanks Dugge for creating such great brevs like "High Five", "Bollox" and "Avenyn Pale Ale (APA)".

Stockholm Beer 2007: A new brewery from Gothenburg!

It is not so often we get new breweries in Sweden, especially from Gothenburg. So it was very fun to see that we now have two breweries in the second city of Sweden. Dugges has given us many new exiting brews the last couple of years and is for many the best micro brewery in Sweden (I am one of them). So it is great to see a new brewery from the same city in the form of Oceanbryggeriet.

The brewery has a short but interesting history;

The "Oceanbryggeriet" was started during the winter of 2006. They are located at the old brewery of Lyckholm in Gothenburg and has recently started the production. The brewmaster is Thomas Bingebo and has a passed from the DWAN Brewery (Ireland), Messrs Maguire Brewpub (Ireland) and the Swedish brewery Jämtlands. The malt comes from Thomas Fawcett & Sons in Castleford, West Yorkshire, England. The hops also from England, but also American and german hops are used. The brewery has plans to produce both draught, bottled and cask-conditioned ale.

The location has been a brewery through the Lyckholms Brewery between 1880 and 1975 when the owner Pripps closed them down. Lyckholms was a pioneer in many areas, for example they had the first cooler facility in Sweden already in 1881, a automatic bottle machine in 1887 and was first with filtering beers in 1889.

The brewery was purchased by Pripps and became the Pripp & Lyckholm brewery. Production was stopped during the 60s and finally closed completely in 1975. All of the brewery equipment come from the Jämtlands Brewery and formelly the closed brewery of Gamlestaden in Gothenburg. So the equipment was bought back to Gothenburg when Jämtlands upgraded too new equipments. As a brewer Thomas B has the knowledge for creating great beers after doing over 700 brews for the Jämtlands brewery.

As the first couple of beers that were provided at the festival comes;

1. Ocean Red Ale (4.8 ABV, hops; Northern Brewer, Challenger, Bramling X & Cascade, A English Porter)
2. Ocean Porter (5.6% ABV, hops; Northern Brewer & Challenger, An Irish Ale)

We tasted them both and it looks very promising, especially the Porter was a direct winner, a tobacco & coffee combination that makes a real English style porter.

We within the beer community says; Great with a new brewery in the old beer capitol of Sweden and good luck in the future.

One more thing; the next 2 beers will the Ocean India Pale Ale & Ocean Pilsner.