Today I am delighted to reveal the winners of the inaugural BeerSweden Forum Awards 2012!

More than 160 BeerSweden Forum members voted for their favourite beers, breweries, bars and beery personalities in eight categories during January. All the finalists had previously been nominated by BSF members, with those attracting the most votes advancing to the final voting round.

So without further ado let’s see who took first place in the country’s biggest online award scheme organised by beer drinkers for beer drinkers!

Best Swedish Brewery

Oppigårds Bryggeri was never in danger of losing this category. Having started out strong the Darlana brewery just got stronger, taking home first place with an impressive 70% of all the votes cast.

Best Swedish Beer

Again it’s Oppigårds in pole position with Drakens DIPA (which was brewed to a recipe created by hardcore homebrewers Tomas Lundqvist, Rick Lindqvist and Magnus Ahlström).

Best International Beer

This category went down to the wire and at the last second it was one vote that meant the category was tied between Great Divide Brewing’s Yeti Imperial Stout and ‘Hello, My Name is Ingrid’ from BrewDog in Scotland. The honours are shared!

Best International Brewery

I know, some of you may ask how can a guy from Denmark called Mikkel Borg Bjergsø be called a brewery? Well he’s a new kind of ‘one-man’ brewery that travels to breweries around the world where he transforms his very active imagination into beer. The so-called ‘Godfather of Gypsy Brewing’ Mikkel is also one of the most prolific brewers out there and is threatening to close in on 100 different Mikkeller beers in a single year. The BSF-ers salute you!

Best Swedish Beer Bar/Pub/Restaurant

Beer emporium Akkurat in Stockholm once again leads the field and underlines its status as a must-visit bar whenever you’re in the capital (particularly if you like cask ales and lambics). Congratulations to Stene, Rille and the whole ‘A-Team’!

Best Swedish Importer/Distributor

Those nice guys at Brill have really spoilt the Swedish beer community with a succession of hard-to-get craft beers from both sides of the Atlantic over the past year and their passion for what they do has clearly paid off, earning them an emphatic pat on the back from BSF members.

Best Swedish Beer Event

Probably no surprise here. The Stockholm Beer and Whisky Festival is not only the largest beer show in Sweden but it’s one of the largest in the world. Ultra-professionally run with the largest gathering of Swedish beer brands and personalities in one place the SBWF continues to set the standard for how a beer show should be run.

Swedish Beer Personality of The Year

I have to confess to feeling more than a little awkward here as I have ended up winning this category myself (I’m putting it down to home advantage). I am obviously incredibly grateful and humbled for all the nominations and votes. I’d like to give a special mention to Magnus and M2 and Magnus Bark who were both also nominated in this category and who all – in their own unique ways – do so much to contribute to the beer community in this country. The fact that three bloggers were nominated says a lot about the role beer blogs are playing right now in spreading knowledge about our favourite drink.

A huge thanks to everyone who took the time to nominate and vote. As the awesome BeerSweden Forum continues to grow (now over 20,000 posts, 575,000 post views and almost 700 members) I’m confident next year’s awards will be even bigger and better!

All winners will shortly be receiving swanky certificates as recognition of their achievement. Once I’ve made them that it…..

Cheers and Beers everyone!

Darren

 (ps: If you’re not a member of the BeerSweden Forum yet then why not sign up right now? It only takes seconds and costs nothing. That’s right – nix! Within minutes you could be chatting to other beer enthusiasts, checking out food and beer pairings, discovering the latest beer scene news and reading honest reviews of beers from fellow BSF-ers. And that’s just for starters! What are you waiting for?!!)

Sound like anyone you know? Seriously though I’m not calling anyone names – just reporting a couple of beery news bites that have just broken.

If you were quick on the draw and put your name on the waiting list for the Bitter and Sour event in Copenhagen on May 10th (the day before the much anticipated – and sold-out -  Copenhagen Beer Celebration kicks off) then you should just have received an email giving all the latest details of what to expect as well as the list of the outstandingly rare beers that are being lined-up. Please click to enlarge!

For those of you who weren’t quite quick enough here’s the details anyway (please click to enlarge) and if it’s any comfort there seem to be a few tickets left and those not collected by people on the list in the next two weeks will also be made available so my advice would be to get in touch with Jeppe at Drikkeriget as soon as possible!

Swedish rockabilly band Fatboy has done an ‘In Flames‘ and put its name to a new beer being brewed by Oppigårds for sale exclusively in Stockholm’s elite beer bar Akkurat.

Here are the details of the new beer published on Fatboy’s website earlier today:

I say, how rude!!!

”Every rockabilly band worth its salt should have its own beer.

When the multi-award winning Dala brewery Oppigårds contacted us in Fatboy and offered to brew an exclusive Ale in our name, it took exactly one second before we said yes. With Stockholm’s number one beer hall, Akkurat, in the boat it felt like a match made in heaven!

We are currently working on our fourth album, but will take a short break at work to drink beer. Sunday 4th of March we welcome fans and friends to taste our delicious beer and listen to Fatboy live.

Fatboy Brown Ale is a darker ale with malt flavors and taste of toffee, brown sugar and dark chocolate. The beer also consists of a number of American varieties of hops that gives it a modern touch of citrus.

Where: Akkurat Restaurant & Bar, Hornsgatan 18, Stockholm
When: Sunday, March 4 at 20:00
How: Win tickets to this uniqe evening by e-mailing brownale@fatboy.se

See you there/
Fatboy”

I’ll get straight to the point.

Yes it is.

When Oppigårds Drakens DIPA was launched at the Systembolaget at the beginning of this month it followed in the steps of a small but high quality bunch of other Swedish DIPAs, including the Sigtuna/Kissmeyer mash-up Stockholm Syndrome, Mohawk Extra IPA, Dragets Kanal Dubbel IPA and Eskilstuna Ölkultur’s Anders DIPA (in my order of personal preference).

One of the many things that makes this beer so special is that it was created by three home-brewers Tomas Lunqvist, Rick Lindqvist and Magnus Alström who took home the gold at the 2010 Swedish Home Brewing Championships with it. As part of their prize they got to see their beer being brewed ‘full-scale’ at Oppigårds Bryggeri, considered by many to be the best craft brewery in this country right now.

In the glass Drakens pours a clear vivid coppery orange with a persistent head the consistency of whipped egg-whites. It’s at that moment you bring the glass towards your nose that I dare any lover of hops not to break out into a grin. Waves of freshly squeezed mango, grapefruit and papaya (as though someone poured one of those breakfast juice cocktails into it) and the promise of a bitter high with suggestions of pine needles and resin.

There are very few Swedish beers that smell this good (although one of them that does comes from the same brewery).

Thing only get better (and bitter) when you taste Drakens. The balance between sweet, slightly overripe tropical fruit, the caramel and bread malts, the hefty yet subtlety hidden 8.5% of ABV and the stinging bitter hop finish is nothing short of masterful. Be warned though – this beer has some serious bite. If you love hops you’ll be in heaven. If you’re not a fan then watch out!

And to top it all off there’s the price – 22.90SEK for a bottle of a Swedish beer of this quality is daylight robbery. The only negative I can find is that it is only available in limited numbers and is likely to be sold out within weeks. Which is why I’m signing off now and rushing back to the Systembolaget to stock up on more bottles of Sweden’s best ever DIPA.

Rating: 4.7 out of 5!

Right this second I know exactly how that crazy Microsoft founder felt.*

After three days at the first ever European Beer Bloggers Conference 2011 in London I feel so pumped I could run up to complete strangers and shout things like “THE FUTURE OF BEER MEDIA IS ONLINE!” and “BLOGGERS ROCK!” right into their startled faces.

But I won’t because quite frankly that would be a little silly (although both statements are true I don’t think people are really ready for that just yet).

So instead I’ll try and climb out of the bloggers bubble I’ve been inflating around myselft over the past few days, exercise restraint and say that I believe I have just witnessed the genre of beer blogging come of age in London and stake its claim as a credible and indispensable media source of the future.

Over 70 delegates attended this inaugural event with the vast majority from the UK blogging scene as well as representatives from Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and of course me waving the flag for Sweden.

*It might not look cool when learning how to detect faults in beer but it was a fascinating experiment to sample beers spiked with off-flavours. Food and beer pairings were a major theme throughout the conference and some of the leading UK bloggers (and an international panel of bloggers with me in it) gave a series of talks on where we see the future of online media heading.

Over three days of fascinating sessions and passionate debate (fuelled by some amazing beers) we took a long hard look at ourselves as a community, talked about how far we’d already come and more importantly how far we’ve still got left to go in establishing beer blogs as a respected and trusted source of beer content.

What I learnt has left me in no doubt bloggers are the vanguard of modern beer media. As conference organiser Allan Wright put it: “You (bloggers) have an opportunity to become the leading source of information about beer on the planet. You just have to take it”.

The people I met at #bbc11 (just twitter search that for an entertaining timeline rundown of what happened in London) were possibly the most passionate, engaged, driven and inspiring bunch I’ve ever met. The vast majority spend hundreds, even thousands of hours each year blogging about beer without a thought for reward.

They do it simply because they love beer and because they want more people to feel the same way about it as they do.

*Some random images from the conference, which attracted some big beer names, a goblin and the opportunity to try some amazing beers from all over Europe. Oh and if anyone from Camden Town Brewery has seen the other half of my glasses I’d be grateful if you’d get in touch

But blogging aside the European Beer Bloggers Conference was a breakthrough for an entirely different reason as four Swedish breweries took their first tentative steps into the world of export.

Sigtuna Brygghus, Jessica Heidrich (with her S:t Eriks beers), Nynäshmans and Oppigårds all had their beers represented at the conference’s headline event ‘The Night of Many Beers’ and I think it’s fair to say we grabbed more than our fair share of attention.

It was amazing to see beers from 4 Swedish craft brewers being poured in London. Here's Mattias and Jessica getting ready to greet the bloggers.

To see Swedish beers being poured up in the UK capital was pretty special and to witness the smiles on the faces of hardened beer bloggers as they tried them (in-between furiously scribbling down notes) confirmed something I’ve been saying for some time now.

Swedish craft beer is world class. **

There’s a lot of people I’d like to thank for the last few days. Firstly the four Swedish breweries that took the time and the initiative to be a part of this amazing event. It was important to showcase just how far the Swedish beer scene has come and in my opinion we did all that and more.

I’d also like to thank the conference organisers Zephyr Adventures for staging an amazing event that far exceeded any expectations I had and Mark Dredge for helping pull everything together.

Then there’s the sponsors, headed by MolsonCoors, whose financial contributions made the event happen but more importantly made us bloggers feel valued. I’ve also got to pick out Pilsner Urquell for cleverly transforming a room in a London conference centre into a little bit of Pilsen and serving us their beer in all its unfiltered and unpasteurised greatness.

Finally I want to say thanks to all the amazing bloggers I met, who shared their passion for beer with me and made me realise that I am a part of something incredibly big and exciting.

The talk is the European Beer Bloggers Conference 2012 will be held in either the UK or the Czech Republic. Wherever it’s held BeerSweden will be there and I urge as many of the other Swedish beer bloggers who can make it to join me there.***

*minus the horrendous level of personal sweat of course.

** I know a big statement like this will inevitably get some of you rolling your eyes up to the heavens and itching to post a comment telling me to get a grip on reality but our beers were poured up together with some amazing beers from the US, France, the UK and Italy and they more than held their own. So say what you want but we were there and we owned it!

***I apologise if this post is a little too much blog and not enough beer but hope you’ll humour me just this once.

Next weekend it’s ”all London Baby!” as I pack my bags and head over to the UK capital for the first ever European Beer Bloggers Conference!

Now I can practically hear the sniggering in some quarters already. A conference for beer bloggers? Are you serious? Whatever next? A conference for hundreds of fans of a particular make of American BBQ that like to call themselves Eggheads? (actually there already is one of those).

The serious truth is that beer blogging as a genre has developed in recent years to such an extent it now feels grown up enough to stage its own conference. In fact the first North American Beer Bloggers Conference was held back in November last year in Boulder, Colarado , where over 100 delegates participated.

The first European sister event runs over a packed two days and has attracted some of the most influential beer bloggers, food and drink writers and drinks industry figures, mainly from the UK but also Italy, the Netherlands and yes me representing Sweden!

And the good news is I won’t be all by myself as I’ve managed to talk Sigtuna Brygghus’s Head Brewer Mattias Hammenlind and flying brewer Jessica Heidrich (the creator of the S:t Eriks series of beers) into joining me in London to spread the buzz about Swedish beers among conference-goers.

Not only that but both Oppigårds Bryggeri and Nynäshamns Ångbryggeri are also sending over cases of their beers which will contribute to a formidable Swedish table that we are jointly hosting at the main ‘Night of Many Beers’ event being held at the Camden Town Brewery.

I’ll also be joining an international panel of bloggers to share experiences with delegates about the pitfalls and pleasures of writing and running blogs and to explore the possibilities of cooperating on an international scale.

I’m unbelievably excited to be a part of this inaugural conference and have high hopes it will underline what I have been saying for years now about the increasingly import role of blogs in spreading the word about great beer to a growing community of ‘on-line drinkers’.

To borrow a line from an article I wrote for Maltsen a few months back: “The responsibility to improve the status of beer blogging, is, of course, largely that of the bloggers themselves. As a group we need to take ourselves seriously first before we can expect anybody else to”.

This conference is a giant step towards this goal. The fact that four of Sweden’s most ambitious craft breweries will be represented at the conference in London next week also tells its own story.

I’ll of course be blogging the whole trip (you can’t attend a bloggers conference and not blog it now, can you) so remember to check back to see how we get on!

(ps: It’s still not too late to join us if you fancy a few days drinking world class beer in one of the most exciting cities in the world!)

There’s been a lot already written about the Stockholm Beer and Whisky Festival on the blogosphere (as well as probably the most film footage of any of the 19 shows to date) so I think it’s about time for closing statements and a verdict.

I’ve already written quite a lot about the show itself and despite a few on-line moans the overwhelming majority of people I have met and shared beer with over the two weeks of the show agree that this was one hell of a showcase for the beer scene here in Sweden. At times standing in ‘Snickeriet’ (a hall dedicated to the Swedish craft breweries) was about as hot. sweaty and uncomfortable as rush hour on the London Underground but it didn’t stop people cramming in all the same to try some of the best beers this country has to offer.

Some people have complained there were too many people. I say look at it another way – there was not enough space. Clearly something for the organisers to think about next year!

One of the most fascinating (and least covered) sections of the show was the Danish craft brewing contingent brought over the Baltic Sea by Swedish importer Elixir Wine.

Amager has produced its own version of the trendy 'Cascadian dark ale' beer style that is all the rage in the US right now.

A total of 7 Danish craft brewers were conscripted by Elixir to invade the show and they seemed to relish taking the fight to the Swedish craft brewers, presenting beers that in my opinion sent out a clear message that although craft brewing might be growing up in this country in Denmark it has already moved out, got a job and drives a nice car.

I loved the label artwork on all the Hornbeer bottles. The beer wasn't too bad either!

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The sheer breadth and ambition of the Danish beers meant I spent nearly two hours glued to the stand, during which time I tried around 15 beers, ranging from the delicious partnership of Hr and Fru Frederiksen (he just pipped my vote) and a bitter chocolate (and I mean 200 IBU bitter) Black Double IPA from Amager to an Oak Aged Cranberry Bastard from Hornbeer that somehow blended the sourness you get from crushing freshly picked cranberries in your mouth with a whisper of smoke and the smell of an antique oak chair. Talk about complex!

The fast-talking Eddie Szweda, brewmaster at Midtfyns, is clearly passionate about his beers. He's also not scared of experimenting with new flavours!

As if to drive the point home I marvelled at the cleverly subtle yet warming use of chilli in Midtfyns Chili Tripel (you just need to sip it and wait 10 seconds….) before struggling to come to terms with the brewery’s appropriately named Rough Snuff, a Belgium strong ale brewed with seaweed (and as if that wasn’t weird enough) snus. It came a close second to Närke and their Bäver Beer, a blend of Örebro Bitter spiked with the stinky spray of a beaver’s butt.

I then moved on to a range of wheat beers from Indslev Bryggeri who seem intent on redefining what you can do with wheat. Their Sort Hvede was my personal favourite, with a runny caramel nose and a thick. velvety chocolate and coffee body. My Danish tour ended at the Bryggeriet Djævlebryg taps, where I gladly sold my soul for a taste of Pride of Nekron and ended with a smoked brett beer in the form of Mareridt that was so wonderfully confusing all I could manage to scribble on my notepad was ”?”.

In closing it would go against all my journalistic training if I didn’t formally record all the winners of the Festival beer competition. The full list can be found here. Good to see Nynäshamns Ångbryggeri bring home gold in the ‘Best Swedish Bottled Beer’ category while the hotly tipped Oppigårds Bryggeri didn’t disappoint the bookmakers, taking gold for the ‘Best Swedish Draft Beer’.

So the final verdict? It was a great festival. In my opinion the best one yet.

That’s it. Next stop for me is the Örebro Beer Festival in November. See you there!

One of the best Swedish Spring beers ever produced will soon be available all year round. That’s right – Amarillo Spring, the beer I urged you to throw all the food out of your fridge for back in February this year is making a comeback under the shortened name Oppigårds Amarillo.

This seismic bit of news was casually mentioned in the brewery’s latest email newsletter and seems to have slipped under the radar of most other beer bloggers so just so we’re all clear on this AMARILLO SPRING IS SOON GOING TO BE AVAILABLE ALL YEAR ROUND!!!!

Aren’t you excited? You should be because this Swedish produced American pale ale (the 5th highest ranked APA in the world according to RateBeer) is one of the best beers to come out of this country – period! When it was released at the Systembolaget back in the spring it was only available for three months so many of you may have missed out on the opportunity to try it. Well now it seems as though you’re going to get a second chance, with the brewery informing me that it will start brewing Amarillo from next week for sale on draft in selected restaurants and then as a ‘beställningsvara’ (order product) via the monopoly.

The exact date when Amarillo will be available to order is not yet known but as soon as I find out rest assured you’ll read about it here first.

What a great bit of good news to start the week off with!

Happy Monday everyone.

Bottles from Swedish microbrewery Oppigårds are the beer equivalent of Paul Potts. From the outside they can look rather boring, a little awkward and forgettable. If you didn’t know you might even pass them by without ever giving them a try.

They may not look all that amazing from the outside, but it's what's on the inside that counts!

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But if you do give their beers a chance, if you do allow them the opportunity to open up then oh how they sing!

Rarely have I felt so elated as a beer drinker as the moment I opened my first bottle of Oppigårds’ Amarillo Spring. Just like that magical moment when Mr Potts the goofy-toothed mobile salesman from south Wales walked onto the stage and said he was going to sing opera, I had absolutely no idea what magic was coming next.

The aroma of freshly picked, green leafy hops was simply overwhelming. It stopped me in my tracks.

I can’t recall a more exhilaratingly hop nose on a Swedish beer. It reminded me of the smell of broken Dandelion stems I used to snap as a child playing outside during the summer. If every colour had its own unique aroma then this beer is how green would smell.

There’s a dash of white wine in there to, along with subtle hints of red berries and pine needles. Malt must be present too but if it is it’s not telling anyone – and quite frankly who cares.

In the mouth this maestro continues to perform beautifully, delivering a fleeting sweetness before a swell of citrus climaxes in a crescendo of lingering balanced bitterness.

Oppigårds Amarillo Spring is an outstanding example of the role hops can play in the aroma and taste of a beer. It is one of the absolute best European versions of an American Pale Ale I have ever tasted.

The beer was originally released to celebrate Oppigårds’ 7th year in business and has been renamed to fit in with the current seasonal theme at the Systembolaget. With its assertive bitterness (measuring 50 IBUs for you beer nerds) it almost strays into IPA territory, so if you like hops you’re going to love this.

But here’s a warning – the beer is only available at the Systembolaget for the next three months. I therefore urge you to go and buy it – lots of it. Then go home, throw all the food out of your fridge and fill it with bottles of this beer instead.

It’s that good.

Oppigårds Amarillo Spring

5.9% ABV

An American Pale Ale from Oppigårds Bryggeri

Systembolaget Article Number: 1440