Sweden top 100 beers – pale lagers all the way

Peter M. Eronson runs the Swedish beer blog Fat & Flaska, and he has published a list of the 100 best sellers in Sweden’s Systembolaget. The ranking reflect sales in Swedish Kronor, but the right column shows the volume in liters. The category includes beer, ciders and alcopops.

This shows, that, for all the talk about craft taking over the world, it is all about pale lagers. The only exceptions, Newcastle Brown Ale (64), Falcon Bayersk (65), Brooklyn Lager (74) and Innis & Gunn Oak Aged Beer (88) are not something I’d go out of my way for, either.

This also show the contrast between the Swedish and the Norwegian markets. The beers below 4.7 % would be sold in Norwegian supermarkets, so you’ll not find them in the Vinmonopolet stores. And the super strength lagers are hardly to be found here.  I suspect the Norwegian tramps either smuggle strong beer from Sweden or stick to vodka.

Call me a snob, but I pass on the red rhubarb flavoured cider (82).

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On my way to Stockholm

I’m on my way to Stockholm. A city I used to visit several times a year. A beautiful place, both summer and winter. And a city that has a number of beer pubs with a splendid reputation. I have hardly visited since I started blogging, and not at all since I moved over to the WordPress platform.

A train journey this time around. Then I finally have the time to read Pete Brown’s book.

The blog homebru net Scandinavia has counted 400 new Swedish beers in 2012. (Check out their blog. A great resource for documentation on new breweries).

Add that to the figures for Norway and Denmark, and we end up with about 1400 new Scandinavian beers last year.

Who’s gonna drink it all?

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Christmas greetings from Norway

It has certainly not been the most productive of years at the blog. The beer scene is more vibrant than ever, it’s really me being busy elsewhere. But I thought it appropriate to share a few world, as we seem to have survived yet another solstice.

The number of breweries in Norway is almost at the same level as it was in the last golden age a century ago – except this time around they don’t all go for the same German lager styles. As I have started to document in my series of presentations of Norwegian micros, there is a diversity out there that makes it even more fun to observe.

The question is, of course, is this sustainable? Denmark is a few years ahead of us, and they have seen some bankruptcies in the sector. Can we expect the same?

There are some major differences between us, making me a cautious optimist. Many of the new breweries are brewpubs, supplying one or a very few pubs and restaurants. This means no bottling plant, no capital tied up in bottled beers in shops up and down the land, the opportunity of tweaking and adjusting the recipes to get the right beer. This also means that brewing is often a part-time activity, you don’t have to find room for a full salary. On the other hand, the driving force here is often pure enthusiasm, and this may wear thin over time.

Others bottle their beers, aiming for local or national distribution. This may work out well for a year or two. The supermarkets in Norway are concentrated in four groups, and as long as beer is trendy, there are opportunities. But this depends on sales, if they do not live up to expectations, the shelf space will be given back to Carlsberg and Corona. It is partly a question of price, there are limits to what people are willing to pay for a beer at 4.7%ABV.

The Vinmonopolet stores have a huge increase in beer sales,  and some of them now have a very good range. The seasonal Christmas beers were sold out in record time this year. There are a number of importers trying to cash in on the opportunity, but I don’t think all of them will be successful. There are splendid beers to be had – but there are also far too many overpriced Italian clones of standard beer styles not worth a premium price.

The new brewpubs in Oslo are to be applauded for not sticking to their own beer, but also offering the best domestic and import beers they can lay their hands on. I travel far less than I used to – but I can get some of the best beers on the planet close to home.

I have stocked up a few bottles for the holidays, and will be taking a long break in the Norwegian mountains with my family. Skiing, cooking, reading, playing cards.  Merry Christmas to all of you!

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A question of language

As you’ve noticed, I am writing a series of blog posts on Norwegian micro breweries  – in Norwegian. I put a few paragraphs in English at the end.

For my foreign readers – is that OK, or would you prefer separate posts in English?

Answers below or on a beer mat, please.

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Beers old and new

 

I enjoy getting the newsletters from BarleyWine in Copenhagen. This is a no nonsense beer shop that has been around for a number of years, before all things beery became hip or trendy.

The shop owner Jan Filipe does not only introduce his new beers, he also has some words of advice for his customers. He was the one who held back his stock of the Nøgne Ø Dark Horizon 2 until he felt it had reached a proper maturity for drinking. His recent mail raises the issue of neophilia.

This conditions was coined by the (highly recommended) writer Robert Anton Wilson, but it is highly apropriate as a diagnosis for a large number of beer geeks. Whenever we enter a beer shop or bar, the question is always What’s new?

Jan Filipe points out that he is surprised, and slightly disappointed, almost every day when he recommends a beer and gets the response I’ve already tasted that one.

When he gets this answer he envisages the millions of passionate beer drinkers in Germany, Austria, The Czech Republic, Poland, Ireland and the UK, who every day talks about nuances of the same beer they have enjoyed for 10, 20 or 30 years.

He also points out that for micro brews, separate batches of the same beer might be very different. The same label might contain very different brews.

I have to admit I am quite guilty of what he describes. But I have to say that with the better access to world class beers we now enjoy here in Norway, I tend more often to order something I have enjoyed before. At the end of the day it’s a matter of balance, isn’t it?

I don’t go out of my way to get another new pale lager any more.  But there is the thrill of the new sensations, too. And there wouldn’t be much to blog about if I stuck the same beer for decades.

Some years ago I was asked by a regular in a somewhat seedy Berlin Kneipe why I took a photo of a glass of beer. When I tried in my rather rusty German to explain the concept of a beer blog, he looked at me with the pity usually reserved for the mildly retarded.

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It’s beer day in Iceland!

30 years ago this summer, I attended a meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland. I spent two days in endless discussions, and I did not get to see the sights. But there is one thing I remember clearly.

The local organisers insisted in us buying our duty-free quotas on arrival in Iceland. A duty-free shop in the arrival hall was a novelty in itself, but the point was not the hard liquor, but the beer quota. You could choose between two options: A full case, 24 bottles, of domestic lager or half the amount, 12 cans, of Heineken. Heineken was considered far more sophisticated.

The domestic sale of beer was banned. The full strength beer was only available at the airport – in the shops and bars a watered down low alcohol beer was the only option. The paradox was that wine and hard liquor was available.

Pressure to lift the ban built up during the Eighties, particularly when some bars started to call themselves pubs and served low alcohol beer spiked with vodka or aquavit.

On March 1 1989 the ban was lifted. Since then, the Icelandic beer day is celebrated on this date.

I have a suspicion this is just another excuse for binge drinking, the Reykjavik scene is certainly lively during the weekend.

But, over the years, the Icelandic beer scene has evolved, as I observed when I visited last year. The market for imports is, of course limited, and they are cursed blessed by state monopoly stores similar to the ones in Sweden, Finland and Norway. But there are a few craft breweries selling their beers at home and abroad, and their quality is nothing to be ashamed of. There is an excellent beer blogger. And there is even a beer festival going on this week. In a pub I cannot claim I have first hand knowledge of.

I won’t be at the Sæmundur í Sparifötunum this week. But as this is billed as an annual event, perhaps another year?

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A word of welcome

I have to admit I do not follow all the dozens of Swedish beer blogs. But with twitter et al, I have a general overview. When I read that there was a founding meeting of the Swedish Beer Writers, I send off an e-mail asking if they accepted Norwegian members.

I have for several decades been  trying to do my bit for Nordic integration. Sure, I believe we all have to do our contribution to the European cause, but we have a tiny Northeastern corner of this continent where we share a common language (closer than English and Scottish, if you ask me. Closer than standard German, Italian or Spanish if you look at the varieties of the languages.) I feel offended when I turn up in a Danish or Swedish hotel lobby, ask for my room in standardized Norwegian and get a reply in English.

But for once, I have no reason to rant. Quite the opposite. It is another proof that the international beer community is about inclusion, not exclusion.

Because the first reply I got was Hang on, we’ll get back to you.

The next response was Do you think there are more Norwegian beer writers who you’d conceive as members.

My replywas yes, there are quite a few, ranging from beer bloggers to authors of beer books.

The final reply came today.

They changed the name.

To the Scandinavian Beer Writers’ Association.

Pelle Stridth is the first chairman.

Count me in!

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Beer quality, not beer quantity

Some food for thought at the Lieblingsbier.de web site. There is a general discussion on the trends in the German and Austrian markets, which is interesting enough. But the core of the blog post by Felix vom Endt is this (my translation):

I don’t mind if the beer consumption keeps falling in the years ahead. For me this is a clear sign that we as consumers don’t have less appetite for beer, but rather more appetite for the right beer. We choose more carefully and drink with more enjoyment, slower and with more thoughtfulness, mind and soul.

I could not agree more. And this is a good reason for having independent beer writers in the important beer countries of the world, pointing out that we care about quality, not about the quantity of the output om the global giants of the beer industry.

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Hide the beers, the government is coming!

Photo: drikkeglede.no

There is liberalisation, and there is not.

As I have told you before, the Norwegian beer scene is currently in a pretty good shape. The micro breweries are doing well, the industrial breweries are more or less standing still, but they are still making serious money on their markups. The selection of imports available, at least in Oslo, is more than most drinkers are able to cope with. And beer imports  by individuals are no longer illegal, just extremely expensive.

But there are certainly still areas where our puritan brand of Lutheran faith is shining through, however secular we claim to have become.

There is an endless debate on the maximum opening hours for bars and restaurants. It is a weird discussion. Most politicians are afraid of being labelled as too backwards. The ones in favour of closing the bars early are in desperate search of documentation from the police and others that their proposals are Good For You. I won’t go into the points about illegal night clubs, uncontrolled drinking at home and what have you.

But the debate about opening hours is not particularly Norwegian. What might be of more amusement interest to my global readers is the recent ruling of the Market Council.

To quote their own web site, The Market Council is a kind of administrative “court of law”. It carries out supervision of the Marketing Control Act, as well as parts of the regulatory framework governing prohibitions against advertising in the Norwegian Tobacco and Alcohol Act, and the advertising regulations in the Act on Broadcasting.

The Market Council has upheld the view of the Health Directorate (yes, the ones with the Dead People Division) that Aass Brewery and the Norwegian Breweries’ Association have to remove from their web pages all photos of beer, all descriptions of products, all press releases and so forth. For the lawyers among you (Hi Alan!), you can run this ruling through your favorite online translator.

Danish media find this hilarious, quoting this as yet another piece of evidence that we are stalking mad. They are particularly pleased with the porn-like masks of some of the photos on the web site.

For the record – these regulations apply to those who brew or sell alcohol. They do not apply to private blogs. So I will, for the time being, continue to publish my beer porn.

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It’s them BrewDog guys in the middle of the fight again

If you thought the British beer scene was all quiet pints and cobwebbed pubs, you obviously do not follow Melissa Cole’s blog.

She did not like what BrewDog has to say about other british brewers in a recently published book, feeling that BrewDog owes the industry as a whole a bloody enormous apologyy. It wasn’t exactly a big surprise that they don’t feel the same way.

Looks like James is able to stock up on new anecdotes to use when doing Meet the brewer tours.

Favourite quote? 

And we also don’t work for Satan.

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