This short story of 499 words is my entry for a writing competition being run on Zak Avery’s excellent ‘Are You Tasting The Pith’ blog over in the UK where the theme is beer and time. Rather than relying on my normal – some might say flippant – style of writing I wanted to experiment with something a little darker, more brooding and touch on subjects many fellow bloggers might secretly relate to, even if they don’t want to admit it. After reading it you may think my ‘real life’ wife is on the brink of leaving me. This clearly isn’t the case….is it sweetheart?

I sat there alone staring at the hands of the pub clock as they swept inexorably around and wondered whether there was time for a cheeky last pint.

I was suddenly griped by an overwhelming urge to burst out laughing. After all, isn’t time all I’ve really got left since all the problems with my blog began?

It had started innocently enough a few months ago after a boozy session with Harold the pub’s resident unkempt, bearded CAMRA guy who suggested I started a beer blog.

I began by posting the occasional beer review, excited to use new words like hoppy, citrusy (even though that really isn’t a word) and malty – words stolen from the countless Ratebeer entries I hungrily consumed every day.

It wasn’t long before I was following dozens of fellow beer bloggers and my morning trawls through the ‘beerosphere’ started replacing breakfast.

The wife was amused at first, even encouraging me to pursue my new-found hobby. I swear I could see the relief on her face that someone else could now suffer my constant moans about diacetyl and cask breathers.

Over the next few months I spent more and more time feeding my blog. And the more I posted the more comments I received, every one of them an addictive ego fix, a heady rush of belonging.

Soon whole evenings were lost in front of the computer, fingers dancing over the keyboard now, commenting, tweeting, trading and endlessly checking Google Analytics.

It wasn’t long before even X-factor or Emmerdale could hide the cracks in our relationship. ”You love that bloody blog more than you love me”, she’d often shout.

Once, just to prove I didn’t, I took her for a night out to the city. Things were going fine until I saw they were having a Marble Brewery night at the Old Pithy and I had to go in and try a pint. It wasn’t until I was ordering my second that I noticed she had left.

Despite all this I was still genuinely surprised the afternoon I got home after work and stepped through the front door into an empty living room.

All that remained was a cheap pine table on which sat my computer, quietly humming. Carefully balanced on the keyboard was a handwritten note from her telling me she’d left me for Derek, the thin-lipped, greasy haired landlord from the pub in the next village. I couldn’t help smiling at the irony of it all. Only last week I’d written a review of his pub on the blog, complaining about his dirty lines.

Staring up again at the clock on the wall I notice the hands had now worked their way to 11 o’clock. The jarring sound of the bell shook me out of my thoughts.

“Time gentlemen please”, declared the bored looking barman.

Rather fitting, I thought, as I drained the last flat drop of beer from my glass, that my blog should be called just that, and headed off home alone.

(Ps: Zak – I know I’m rather flirting with your ‘No Time at the Bar’ rule but hope this story’s other references to time will help pull it through )

Johan Eriksson from Örebro for this cracking beer name! Congratulations Johan – a very exclusive hoodie from Great Divide Brewing Co is on its way to you in the post courtesy of BeerSweden and Great Brands.

Without doubt this is the most successful competition we’ve had on BeerSweden (almost 30 of you sent in suggestions) so I’ll be taking another picture soon and asking you to ‘name that beer’ in return for a beer-related prize.

I can’t finish this post though without mentioning a few notable runners-up:

From Viktor Nyman: Teddy Beer – Smooth as the fur of a Panda, aggressive as a Grizzly robbed of it’s lingonberries (Ed note: What???) and dark as the American Black Bear itself

From Johan Granberg: Ursus Americanus – Big body, big bite!

From Peter Johansson: Sleepy Bear Extra IPA – It´s not dangerous as long as you´re gentle

From Mikael ‘Gonzo’ Porsklint: Björn Skifs Porter ”Hooked On A Feeling!”

Thanks to everyone who entered and watch out for a new competition soon!

The smell of wet grass after a cleansing thunderstorm, the feeling of warm wind on your face as you bike to the beach or the pleasurable pain of hot sand between your toes when you finally get there are just some of the things that make summer my favourite season of the year.

Not only is summer a time for relaxing and disconnecting from the internet while reconnecting with family and friends but it also provides us with the opportunity to savour one of life’s most pleasurable moments – the act of drinking a cold beer on a hot summer’s day.

Beer is not only deliciously refreshing it is unquestionably the most sociable summer drink there is. How many beers have you already cracked open standing in the garden with your Crocs on surrounded by good friends? How many times have you already had a chilled beer bottle in one hand and a pair of BBQ tongs in the other flipping burgers while jokingly moaning that the weather is too hot and you’re looking forward to winter? How many beers glasses have you already ‘chinked’ with a mate while sitting outside your favourite pub as the last rays of evening sun fade over the rooftops and you chat about life while staring at passers-by from behind your sunglasses?

Capturing that moment when beer and summer come together was the challenge I issued for last week’s ‘Give Me a Sign’ competition in which two stylish metal beer signs from a couple of America’s most popular ‘craft’ breweries were up for grabs.

After sifting through the pictures sent in to BeerSweden HQ over the weekend I have picked a stand-out winner that I think really evokes the joy of drinking a beer on a summer’s day.

So a big beery congratulations to Carl Ljungberg for this great shot. I’ll let Carl tell you the story behind it in his own words:

”Cyklade iväg en sväng här på lördagskvällen, utåt Uppsala högar. Vad passar då bättre än en utmärkt öl, dessutom bryggd i Uppsala? Det var varmt, men svalkan kom när man kände historiens vingslag både från den klassiska Imperial stouten och platsen i fråga. En iskall lager i all ära, men en trevlig Imperial Stout kan verkligen sätta guldkant på en het dag som denna!”

I loved the bike resting against the wooden fence in the background Carl as it really captured the mood of your moment with the beer.

An honourable runners-up spot has to go to Anders Thomas for this picture which could be entitled ”The Summer Beer Blues”.

As Anders himself wrote: ”It´s hot, I’m off work, the Mrs is away, the beer is cold and plentiful. I just can´t play the blues.”

I don’t know if coming second is going to make you feel any better Anders but I’m sure a cold beer will quickly cheer you up!

Thanks to everyone who took the time to enter and look out for another BeerSweden competition coming your way soon.

It’s been a while since we last had a competition here at BeerSweden so we’re getting back on track by giving you the chance to win these stylish metal signs from two of America’s most iconic breweries.

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If you’re a fan of US beers (and lets be honest who isn’t these days) then all you have to do to win these two stylish signs is to send me your favourite summer beer photo. A tip would be to not just take a snapshot of a bottle beside your kitchen sink – the winning photo is more likely going to be the one that really captures the mood of summer (and makes me thirsty at the same time).

Send your picture to me at darren@beersweden.se before the stroke of midnight this Sunday (July 11th) and please try to keep the file size to under 300K to avoid mailbox meltdown.

I’ll announce the winner on Monday 12th July and publish their photo right here on the blog. Good luck everyone and I hope you’re all having a great beery summer!

Last week I announced a competition in which I asked you to mix the best bits of two of your favourite beers to produce one awesome brew.

Some very creative entries have been sent in over the past few days (and some downright bizarre ones too) but after sifting carefully through them all I’ve finally chosen a very worthy winner

Fredric Sandell’s beer mash-up is not only inspired it’s also the perfect name for BrewDog’s next experimental beer (remember you saw it here first people).

Here’s Fredric’s description:

”I would mix 95% of Jolly Pumpkins Bam Bière with 5% of Founder’s Oatmeal Stout. This way I would have a nice farmhouse ale with some extra body added to it, and based on the combined labels I would call it Dog’s Dinner, which incidentally is what I will be fed tonight by my wife for spending too much time submitting stuff to BeerSweden competitions”.

I hope your prize of a set of 6 stylish lager glasses from those jolly nice people at Galatea might just be enough to get you out of the dog house with the missus Fredric!

Another opportunity to spark domestic unrest will present itself soon when I give away some pretty darn cool beer signs from the US of A. Stayed tuned for more details over the next few days!

Recently I tried two Swedish summer beers, S:t Eriks Sommarlager and Sleepy Bulldog Summer Pale Ale that I thought were both very drinkable but couldn’t shake the feeling that each one was missing that little ‘something’.

I won't win any Photoshop awards with this masterpiece will I?

In the case of S:t Eriks Sommarlager I really enjoyed the sandpaper rough hoppy finish but to get there had to go through a rather tame malt and citrus beer that didn’t have the freshness and vitality of summer fruits that I was searching for.

As for Sleepy Bulldog Summer Pale Ale the complete opposite was true. A sit-up-and-take-notice burst of peach and lychee aromas followed by a juicy smack of fruit and pine flavours…..but then this bulldog whimpered with its tail between its legs towards a disappointingly mild bitter finish.

But after a while these frustrating beer moments got me thinking. What if you could take the front bit of Bulldog and graft it onto the back bit of S:t Eriks? Imagine what an amazing summer beer that would be!

After that I just couldn’t stop.

What if I could take the drinkability of a 4% English session ale and match it with the hop intensity of an American Double IPA? Or how about the roasted chocolate and coffee dryness of a great stout mixed up with a complex spontaneously fermented fruit beer?

Sounds like the perfect idea for a BeerSweden competition right?(Ed note: it’s been a while hasn’t it!)

So here’s the deal – send me an email to darren@beersweden.se telling me which two beers you would mix and match to create an awesome beer and most importantly why?

The person with the most imaginative answer will get this rather stylish set of six Three Towns lager glasses (which are beautifully etched at the bottom with landmarks from Stockholm, Malmö and Gothenburg) – courtesy of those jolly nice people at Galatea.

They’d be perfect for pouring my S:t Sleepy Sommarlager into………

The competition is only open to people living in Sweden and will run until the stroke of midnight on Tuesday, May 25th. The judge’s decision (that’s me) is final and the winner will be announced the next day.

So get mixing beers people and good luck!

By now you know that BeerSweden loves to try doing things a little……..differently.

Here we like doing things fast and we like doing them first, which is why I’m really excited (and I mean jumping up and down can barely control my bodily functions excited) to announce yet another game-changing premier – Sweden’s first ever national live Facebook beer tasting!

Huh?? I can almost hear some of you saying? Here’s a little background.

Those of you who are regular followers of BeerSweden’s fanpage over at Facebook (and if you’re not, what’s keeping you?) will know that I have held a couple of completely spontaneous ‘live’ beer tastings there, updating the page as I go along and posting my initial thoughts and feelings live, raw and uncut.

It’s always great fun to do and the feedback from doing these tastings has been so positive that we’re now going to take the concept to a whole new level.

BeerSweden can reveal today that it is hooking up with one of Sweden’s most exciting microbreweries Sigtuna Brygghus to conduct the country’s first national simultaneous beer tasting via Facebook. Here’s how it’s going to work.

Sigtuna has agreed to send out 2 exclusive bottles of beer to five people nominated by BeerSweden to take part in this ground-breaking tasting. These beers are totally different from each other and are not due for release until after the SUMMER! That’s right people, you could be tasting these two beers MONTHS before anyone else can get hold of them. This is without doubt the beery scoop of 2010!

I’m going to keep you guessing as to what these two beers are for now but the idea is that on a date towards the end of May (as yet to be decided) the five lucky five beer tasters and myself will simultaneously open these bottles and conduct a live tasting via BeerSweden’s Facebook fanpage.

Sound amazing? Want to be a part of Swedish beer blogging history?

To stand a chance of being one of the lucky five tasters just write some tastings notes about your favourite beer in 50 words or less and send it to me at darren@beersweden.se. You can write in either English or Swedish and it can be as straightforward or as amusing as you like. Bear in mind though that what I’m looking for are creative ways to describe beer rather than the normal ”it’s brown with a white head” stuff.

The five most imaginative entries will be chosen and have the beers sent to them in the next couple of weeks.

This competition is open until midnight this Sunday (26th April) and the judges decision (that’s basically me) is final.

Good luck everyone!

BeerSweden Darren

(ps: this competition is only open to people living in Sweden)

I’ve spent the morning flicking through all the photographs sent in for the Beertography contest we’ve been running over the past couple of weeks and after much deliberation I’ve finally managed to pick a winner.

It wasn’t easy – the standard of entries suggested that beer was not only the main subject of most of the pictures but that it may also have played a significant role in the moments leading up to the photographs being taken.

Therefore although only one lucky BeerSweden reader is going to bag the cool beer glasses from those nice chaps at Wicked Wine I have decided to give honourable mentions in a number of new categories I just made up.

And therefore, without further ado, the winners of the first ever BeerSweden Beertography Competition are………

Best Use of Focus

Goes to Johan Lenner for this shot of a bottle of Sierra Nevada ESB. Note the pin sharp focus on the chequered tea-cloth in the background, leaving the bottle and beer itself perfectly out of focus.

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Most Questionable Use of Beer

Goes once again to Johan, who took this shot while making his very first beer float with home-made almond ice cream. Despite the quality ingredients and the fact I’m sure it tasted delicious I can’t help but feel a little queasy every time I look at that glass, can you?

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Best ‘Shaggy Dog’ tale

A clear winner in this category, thanks to Per-Gunnar Eriksson’s saga about his struggle to get hold of a green Guinness hat on St Patrick’s Day.

The story, which starts in London a year ago chronicles his attempts to find a Guinness hat to celebrate St Paddy’s Day with, only to be thwarted at every turn until eventually, in a pub in Umeå, he manages to find a hat. The fact that it is a Murphy’s Irish Stout hat and he’s drinking an extremely non-Irish glass of Fuller’s ESB somehow makes the picture complete. Confused? I thought so.

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Best Use of snow

Goes without question to Daniel Nieminen for his excellent series of beer bottles set in a winter landscape. Snow and beer was a bit of a theme among the entries but Daniel nailed it. Good work!

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Best Use of a Lighthouse

Another clear winner here. with Pelle Stridh’s summer vacation shot of”Långe Jan’, the lighthouse on the Swedish sunshine island of Öland, which provides a dramatic backdrop to a cold beer from Öland’s own microbrewery.

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The Runner-up

It was a close run thing, but the runner-up spot goes to Henrik Nordvall for this great shot of a bottle of St Peter’s beer. Vibrant colours, great bokeh, good focus on the subject and a fresh, spring-like feeling to the whole image. If I’m going to be really picky I’d say that a crop to lose the surface the bottle was sitting on and straighten up the image would have been great, and that a more Spring-like beer than a stout would have really made it. But that would be very very picky. Good work Henrik!

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And the winner is……

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Anders Lindberg for putting a smile on my face with this shot. Anders cunningly took one of my fav beers of the moment and gave it a seasonal twist with a clever bit of copywriting.

Congratulations Anders. A box of beer glasses is on its way to you later this week and I hope you put them to very good use!

Stay tuned for a new beery competition coming any day now. This time we’re giving away an exclusive hoodie from US brewery Great Divide Brewing Co – one of only 20 in the whole of Sweden!

We are now only a few days away from deciding the winner of the first ever BeerSweden Beertography competition.

The stroke of midnight on Sunday, March 21st is the absolute deadline for entries, so if you’ve got any beery pictures lurking around in your hardrive now is the time to finally put them to good use for the chance to win some funky beer glassware from those jolly nice chaps over at Wicked Wine (who despite the company name also love their beers!)

I’ve already received lots of photos from budding beertographers throughout Sweden and the standard is pretty high so please keep them coming in!

If you haven’t already got any beery pictures then just grab a bottle, your camera and take one! As way of inspiration here’s a beertography shot I took a few minutes ago (although I seriously wouldn’t recommend drinking Mohawk Extra IPA in the sauna – the combination of perspiration and extreme levels of hoppy beer would probably leave you looking like this).

We are now one week into the BeerSweden Beertography competition and already I’ve had lots of photos submitted from budding beertographers (bottles of beer and snow seems to be a clear theme developing here….)

Please keep them coming in and remember you’ve still got until midnight this Sunday, March 21st to send in your entries, so get your camera out and start taking more beery pictures people!

They make your beer taste better - that's a promise!

As if being crowned the country’s best beertographer here at BeerSweden isn’t enough the overall winner will get a parcel of cool glassware from those very nice chaps over at Wicked Wine. They represent some of the most exciting beer brands you can find in Sweden right now, including the sometimes controversial but always memorable Flying Dog range of beers from the US. These beers with their quirky, eye-catching labels can often be found in the fridges at many of the best beer bars and pubs in the country, so look out for them next time you’re out and about.

As well as x2 Flying Dog In-Heat Wheat glasses the winner will also take home x4 stylish Einbecker Brauhaus glasses which are perfect for pouring Einbecker Ur-bock Hell into. Doing this will raise your beer geek factor by x10 when you next have your friends around for drinks. I’ll probably be throwing in a mystery beer T-shirt or two as well for good luck (and to stop the glasses breaking in transit).

Are you ready to get out their and capture your best beery moments? Need a bit more inspiration (it is after all a Monday)? Well then here’s a picture I took yesterday while out on the slopes trying to disprove the myth that Englishmen can’t ski (unsuccessfully as it turned out). We can, however, take pictures of beer and drink it afterwards.

Good luck!

(ps: Send your photos to me at darren@beersweden.se no later than midnight on Sunday, March 21st! This particular competition is only open to people living in Sweden – I can’t afford the postage you see).