On September 1st something pretty amazing happens in the beer world in Sweden because that’s the day September turns into October and stays that way until Christmas.

Next Wednesday marks the annual release of Oktoberfest beers at the Systembolaget and this year you’re being really spoilt for choice with no fewer than 12 Oktoberfest beers being released to celebrate the world’s largest annual beer party.

The sheer scale of the 16-day long festival held in Munich in late September to early October easily qualifies it as a ‘must-have beery experience before you die’. Just check out the stats:

• Over 6 MILLION people will attend the festival. That’s a LOT of lederhosen!
• Between them they will drink over 6.6 MILLION litres of Oktoberfest beer traditionally produced by six Munich breweries: Augustiner, Paulaner, Spaten-Franziskaner, Löwenbräu, Hacker-Pschorr and Hofbräu.
• With all that beer sloshing about festival-goers need something to eat too, and last year they scoffed their way through 488,137 pieces of chicken and 116, 923 pairs of pork sausages.
  

But what exactly is Oktoberfest beer and why do we get to drink it in September?

This picture sent to me from Carlsberg could be a contender for Beer is Art! Here are three of the 12 Oktoberfest beers going on sale at the monopoly next week. Spaten is a particular favourite of mine!

Oktoberfest beer has sprung out of the Märzen beer style, a beer (named after the month of March in German) brewed in – you’ve guessed it – March and stored in the cool caves around the city before the warmer summer months arrived and made brewing impossible. This underground beer stash would be drawn upon during the summer and finally exhausted around October. Märzenbier has a malty aroma and is a medium-strong version of the amber-red Vienna lager style.

In recent times a paler version of Märzen called Oktoberfestbier has been developed to suit more ‘international tastes’, which in my world means they’ve dumbed it down a little bit to appeal to the masses. It is normally around 5-6% ABV and moderately hopped, with a pronounced malt flavour and aroma and smooth, clean finish. Traditional Märzen beer is still brewed by many Bavarian breweries around October time.

Oktoberfest beer has become hugely popular in other parts of the world, particularly the US and even here in Sweden where a quarter of this year’s Oktoberfest beer release has been brewed.

The Oktoberfest itself was first held back on October 12, 1810 to honour the Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig’s marriage to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen (try saying that quickly after downing a mass – the traditional one litre glass of beer served at the festival!)

Many years later the festival, which by this time was a huge annual event, was moved back into September to take advantage of the better weather conditions and now normally takes place during the sixteen days up to and including the first Sunday in October.

So it’s the cold Autumnal weather that means we get to drink Oktoberfest beers in September.

Of the 12 Oktoberfest beers being released next Wednesday 4 of them come from the 6 Munich breweries traditionally represented every year at the festival, four come from right here in Sweden, one from Finland, one from the US and the last one from Germany (which also happens to be the second oldest brewery in the world).

A full list of all the Oktoberfest beers going on sale next week has been posted by Magnus over at his brilliant Ofiltrerat blog.

Prost!

Alcohol-free brands have become more popular while sales of beer and wine took a dip in the second quarter of 2010 according to figures released by the Systembolaget this week.

Sales of beer in particular started out flat against 2009 with a drop of 0.4% for the first three months. The trend worsened slightly in the second quarter as total beer sales fell by 6.2% over the same period in 2009.

These figures are posted against a backdrop of a small rise of 2.2% in total sales of alcohol in the monopoly for the first half of 2010 and an increase of 2.5% in the total number of customers compared to 2009.

The biggest winner in a quiet 6 months sales period are alcohol-free brands – which includes beer brands such as Estrella Damm Non-Alcoholic and Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier Alkoholfrei– with sales jumping over 27% on last year for the first six months of the year to 545,000 litres.

Relatively small in the bigger picture perhaps but a significant trend that the Systembolaget’s Press Officer Lennart Agén is happy to note.

He says: “It is naturally pleasing that demand for our alcohol-free products is so large. It demonstrates that many customers are interested in their health (Ed note: this rather suggests that drinks with alcohol in them are not good for us Lennart, which is not necessarily the case) and that more people would like to eat and drink well without alcohol being involved”.

Of the 107,991,000 litres of beer sold so far in 2010 it’s not possible to see what percentage of this is craft beer. My gut feel from talking to several of the Swedish microbreweries is that this is a great year for sales with more and more beer drinkers breaking out of the ‘stor stark syndrome’ and trying quality brews. If you’re a craft brewer reading this then let us know whether your beers really are bucking the trend here in Sweden!

Other than the usual figures released by the Systembolaget that prove we’re still happy with it (I always feel a mild sense of desperation when I read these stats, as though the monopoly is like one of those ‘career kids’ at school that desperately wants everyone to like them) the most interesting fact I could find involves midsummer.

Apparently a jaw-dropping 2.5 million of us paid a visit to the monopoly during the annual midsummer celebrations week in June, with 1.1 million people stocking up the day before midsommarafton alone – the most visits to the monopoly in a single day ever!

In a country with a population of just over 9 million that’s a pretty impressive figure don’t you think? It also sheds some light on the nation’s current relationship to alcohol, with the country’s unofficial national day one of its booziest too.

I’m sure Mr Bellman is looking down on us all right now with a big grin on his face. And a large glass of something extremely not non-alcoholic of course.

BeerSweden has just got word that Abstrakt 02 -  the second in Scottish microbrewery BrewDog’s range of whacky experimental beers – will be released in very limited numbers at the Swedish Systembolaget in the middle of August.

The Abstrakt series from BrewDog. It's likely the labels and colouring may change before they get over here to Sweden.

This time it’s a 16% Triple Dry Hopped Red Ale being released – although exact details of how this beer has been created are still pretty sketchy. The word is though that it’s going to be extremely hoppy, and coming from BrewDog that probably means insanely hoppy!

If you’ve been following the blog closely you’ll know that the original line-up has been changed. I suppose by now we should really expect the unexpected from BrewDog shouldn’t we.

Only 480 bottles of Abstrakt 02 will go on sale at 125 SEK for a corked, half-size champagne bottle.

More details will be posted as soon as I get them.

Tomorrow (June 1^st) sees the launch of six new beers at the Systembolaget.

This month’s batch is made up of three very interesting Swedish micro beers, an extremely European US bock countered nicely by an extremely US European strong ale and finally an oaky IPA from the UK.

Let’s start as we always try to here at BeerSweden with the Swedish beers first. I’ve already written about Nils Oscar Sorachi Blond so all that’s left to say is go out and buy it. In my opinion this has all the makings of a summer blockbuster but with only 4,200 bottles going on sale you’d better be quick!

The chances of Oppigårds from Dalarna putting out a bad beer these days is about as slim as Zlatan’s chances of playing in the Premier League next season.  This time they’ve made things really interesting by inviting the winner of the 2009 Swedish Home Brewing Championships Peter Högström to replicate his gold medal Belgium witbier (white beer).

The resulting Oppigårds InWit seems very promising, with talk of a sparkling citrus and spice beer that sounds just perfect for the start of summer.

Nynäshamns Ångbryggeri continues its series of speciality beers in those pretty 250ml bottles with Nynäshamns Dragets Kanal Dubbel IPA. This 7.7% ABV US-themed Double IPA is packed with five different hops and word is that it delivers a sweet fruity hop slap.

Staying in Europe we moved to Belgium and the artisanal brewery of de Rulles for their spicy ale with flavours of grass and grapefruit from the heavyweight US Amarillo and Warrior hops they use to brew it.

Crossing the Atlantic we travel to the city of Chico, home of the Sierra Nevada brewery, a perennial favourite of mine. This time it’s their Glissade Golden Bock being released and it’s a beer I’m really looking forward to trying. This light (if 6.4% ABV can be considered light) take on a heller bock promises restrained sweetness and a distinctly European feel from herbal and floral German and Slovenian hops.

The last port of call this time round is the UK, or the Belhaven Brewery in Scotland to be precise for their Innis & Gunn India Pale Ale. I will be trying this one with a bit of trepidation having been more than a little unimpressed with the previous I&G releases.

This time the beer has sat in oak barrels for 30 days before a further 47 days of maturation. The result is a beer that apparently displays a distinctive vanilla and wood character with orange and lemon aromas and a smooth finish.

I’ll be aiming to review all these six beers over the next few days on BSTV so check back soon for more details!

* (This is what happens when you spend a couple of days in the middle of the forest in a summer cabin and lose all concept of time and space. Suddenly Mondays become Fridays. Thanks people for pointing out that I’m losing my grip on reality. I’m back in town now so assume – but won’t guarantee – that things will return to normal now…..)

The Swedish alcohol monopoly, Systembolaget, continues to make my Mondays Fridays just that little bit more bearable with yet another ‘middle-of-the-month’ release.

This time  just five beers were drafted in to the ‘wine cellar stores’ in Stockholm, Malmö and Gothenburg – among them the insanely hopped Mikkeller 1000 IBU, a beer that caused something of a storm in a pint glass a while back after some beer fans accused the Danish brewer of resorting to gimmicks to boost sales.

A beer with 1000 IBUs (International Bitterness Units) is a little bit like making surströmming more…..smelly. There’s really very little point. You see most humans can only taste and tolerate bitterness up to around 100 IBUs, which is the top end of the IBU scale that measures the bitterness of beers derived from the alpha acids of hops.

After 100 IBUs it is generally accepted that your taste buds raise the white flag and surrender, so Mikkeller’s claim to have brewed a beer with 1000 IBUs was greeted by some beer drinkers with more than a touch of scepticism.

Mikkel (the gypsy brewer who is the man behind Mikkeller) explained his motivation behind releasing this beer on his website as well as pointing out that the 1000 IBUs was purely a theoretical, not actual, measurement. I’m not entirely sure what all this means to be honest but I do know that I want to try some and I recommend those of you who want to see just how much your tongues can take to get hold of a bottle too.

Second on my shopping list is Samuel Smith Yorkshire Stingo, an English strong ale with a whopping 8%ABV that is matured in old brewery oak casks for over a year before being bottled, where it continues fermenting until you decide to drink it.

Samuel Smiths is without doubt one of my absolute favourite English breweries with a thoroughbred stable of beers which includes several world classics (like this one). Yorkshire Stingo is a beer that I’ll be buying to age rather than drink now, as its thick, Christmas pudding flavours are a little out of sorts with the season and my beery tastes.

The remaining three beers are a little less appealing on paper although I am intrigued by the Herslev Brygghus Sparrisöl which is launched just as the first spears of asparagus ripen in the early summer sun in southern Sweden. This is a wheat beer that I understand has been flavoured with asparagus. Will it be a perfect match with this tricky food partner? Will it be drinkable?

Footnote: These beers were released on Friday so if you want to check to see if there are any bottles left then check out the amazingly useful Systembevakningsagenten and just punch in the name of the beer you are interested in.

It’s that time again. Tomorrow sees the release of 15 new beers at the Systembolaget stores, including several brands jostling for position to become your favourite fridge beer this summer.

Eleven of these beers are being released on a nationwide scale and will be available to pluck from the shelves at 10am in the morning. Four of them are a little more ‘exclusive’ (and consequently more expensive) and are only being stocked in around 30 stores so you might just need to order them in.

Here’s a list of the more widely available brands hitting the shelves:

And here’s those ‘harder to get hold off’ beers:

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I feel like dusting down my crocs and digging out my shorts when I read some of these names. Sigtuna Sommar Wit is summer in a bottle, Mohawk Summer IPA is a solid (if not spectacular) beer that will be in my hand when I’m BBQ-ing and Oppigård’s Summer Twist is destined, in my opinion, to become almost as folkkär as the brewery’s stupendous Amarillo Spring.

It will be fascinating to see if Jessica Heidrich’s summer sequel to St Erik’s Pilsner (you know, the beer in that bottle) is as hoppy and aromatic as the first and I’m curious to discover if Sleeping Bulldog has the bite a respectable IPA should have, or whether we should just let sleeping bulldogs lie.

Of course don’t forget Oppigårds’ ‘other’ beer, the grassy lager Slåtteröl or the big Mai-Ur-bock from Einbecker.

Probably the beer set to become the biggest seller of them all is Pistonhead Summer Brew. At just 10.90SEK and delivered in an eye-catching flaming skull can it certainly ticks the two largest boxes for commercial success. I’m really hoping it will be a bit more beer and a little less brand than the first Pistonhead. Fingers crossed.

Of the ‘harder to find beers’ the stand-outs are both American and both huge hop-bombs. Dugan A from Avery Brewing Co and Alesmith IPA from the Alesmith Brewing Company are certainly not beers for those looking for ‘light refreshment’ while mowing the lawn but they could be something to treat yourself to a little later on while watching the summer sun bounce down and back up again on the horizon.

Figures released today by the Swedish alcohol monopoly Systembolaget reveal that total sales of alcohol (measured in pure alcohol) increased by 8.4% in the first quarter of 2010 compared to the same period last year, with the beer category registering respectable growth of 7%.

Beers like Mohawk could be big sellers this summer.

The data shows the number of customer visits to Systembolaget during the same period rose by 4.8% to 26.2 million, an indication that more people are using the monopoly as their main source when purchasing alcohol, according to Systembolaget Press Officer Lennart Agén.

”More and more Swedes are choosing to shop in the Systembolaget stores as proven by a rise in the number of customer visits in the first quarter of almost 5%. We don’t see any indication that total alcohol consumption has risen, rather that a larger share of the sale of alcohol has moved from other sources to the Systembolaget”.

Other findings from today’s figures include:

• Trend tracking in the lead-up to the summer suggests consumer interest in beers from Swedish microbreweries is on the rise and together with rose wines could be big sellers this summer.
  
• Border trading rose by 11.7% on last year, with trade over the Finnish border most active.
• Public approval rating towards the Systembolaget rose by 1% from 64 to 65%.
• Alcohol-free and organic products recorded the highest growth in sales, the former by 20% and the latter with 24%. ”The fact that sales of alcohol-free and organic products have grown so strongly indicates that more and more people care about their health and the environment. We anticipate a continued demand (for these products) and are working actively in order to offer our customers even more choice”, says Systembolaget’s Purchase Director Marie Nygren.

Tomorrow sees the April ‘middle-of-the-month’ launch of five very unusual beers at the Swedish Systembolaget.

Three of the beers come from Danish microbrewery Nørrebro Bryghus which only last week enjoyed international success when it took two golds and one silver at the World Beer Cup in the US, although the winning beers don’t feature in this release.

Copenhagen-based Nørrebro is on a bit of a roll at the moment and it will be interesting to try the barrel-aged version of their popular Skärgaards Porter, even though my personal tastes are shifting towards beers that are a little ‘lighter’ in flavour now the sun is finally back and warming things up for us in Sweden.

Nørrebro Stevns CCC 2009 on the other hand is an altogether different prospect – a sour ale brimming with cherry, barnyard and vinegar flavours. Sound odd? Well yes sour ales aren’t for the faint hearted, but if you’re brave enough to try it you can be rewarded with a wonderfully refreshing beer that, when it has just the right level of acidity, can be served as a delicious aperitif and will certainly get your guests talking around the table.

If I had to leave one of the Nørrebro beers on the shelf it would probably be the Nørrebro Tripel de Lente 2010, although this Abbey Tripel style beer promises syrupy sweet flavours of peaches and apricots and funky yeast spices.

Also from Denmark comes Amager IPA, a highly regarded US-inspired interpretation that features the ‘holy trinity’  of US hops Simcoe, Amarillo and Cascade in moderate measure. Expect a hit of tropical fruit, grapefruit in particular, on top of a light malty body and a pleasant bitter finish.

Lastly comes the first of four zany experimental brews from BrewDog in Scotland that are planned to be released at the Systembolaget throughout the course of the year (as covered by BeerSweden here).

First out is Abstrakt 1 – a  12.1% ABV vanilla bean infused Belgium Quadruple beer! It sounds bizarre and will certainly be interesting and I’ll be hoping to try some when I’m down at the BrewDog party in Stockholm this weekend.

Remember these beers are only available to buy off the shelf in selected stores in the major cities and therefore to stand a chance of getting your hands on the limited number of bottles you need to be beating down the doors of your local Systembolaget tomorrow at 10am sharp to place your orders.

Race you there

Sometimes the reputation of a beer places such a burden on it that it is simply doomed to fail. The weight of expectation becomes so heavy, the immensity of anticipation so great that even amazing beers wither under the pressure.

Occasionally, and only very occasionally, a beer manages to pull it off. But then it has to be a truly great beer, a beer that does just hide behind the hype but lives up to every single word of it.

Founders Breakfast Stout is a beer that comes with a lot of baggage. Regarded as one of the world’s absolute top stouts it has been praised by the international beer community from the very moment it was launched on tap in Michigan back in 2002.

Therefore I felt a tangible sense of expectation as I opened my bottle. I had already started mentally piling on the pressure. However as I began pouring the beer into my glass I knew the hype was going to be justified.

If there is a more seductive looking beer on this planet I’ve yet to see it in my glass. Founders Breakfast Stout doesn’t pour out of the bottle. It oozes.

It looks black at first but hold it up to the light and the rim of the beer shines dark brown. It reminds me of the melted brown sugar you use to stick gingerbread houses together with at Christmas time in Sweden. The head of the beer is muddy cinnamon brown. Swirl the beer and it doesn’t just stick to the sides of the glass – it literally glazes it with frothy syrupy foam.

The smell is spectacular. Coffee is the dominant aroma but as with all great beers there’s so much more layered behind: vanilla, milk chocolate, rum and raisins and a puff of smoke.

The oatmeal flakes add a velvety smoothness to the mouth-feel. There is no carbonation here, just ridiculously rich, oily beer that delivers flavours of cold coffee, tar, milk chocolate, dark fruit and a drop of soy sauce.  The finish is dry, roasted and very long, with just a hint of alcohol pushing through.

To be critical of this beer feels almost rude, like trying to find fault in a Rembrandt painting, but I did feel the finish was just a little too dry and harsh. That’s something I’m sure a couple of years of ageing would take care of rather nicely.

It feels rather cruel writing this review knowing that it’s now impossible to get hold of a bottle at the Systembolaget. There are certain to be some bottles to be found in the better beer bars around Sweden and I’d urge you to hunt them down.

After all, unless we see a significant change in the law, this is one truly great beer you will never see in Sweden again.

Founders Breakfast Stout

An Imperial Stout from Founders Brewing Company, Michigan, USA

8.3% ABV

Systembolaget Article Number – well, that doesn’t really matter any more does it.

Swedish brewing giant Spendrups has been given a slap on the wrist by the country’s consumer watchdog after it ran an advert in a national newspaper showing a bottle of ice cold beer with the headline ‘Have a really Cold Summer’.

The advert, which appeared in Aftonbladet back in June last year, was deemed a breach of Sweden’s ultra strict laws on the promotion of alcohol and the brewery was earlier this month officially warned never to run it again or else they would be fined 400,000 SEK ($55,400).

The Swedish Konsumentombudsmannen ruled that the bottle of Norrlands Guld featured in the ad was in breach of alcohol law as the headline was designed by Spendrups ‘to associate the consumption of a cold beer with warm summer days’. It pointed out the use of ice in the ad only strengthened this message.

They concluded that the advert did not convey any relevant product information (required by law) and played on ”emotions and moods” to encourage consumption.

Legal bit over. Now time for a bit of reasoned analysis from the real world.

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This is the second time a beer brand has landed in hot water over the past couple of days here in Sweden. Only yesterday I broke the news that the government alcohol monopoly, the Systembolaget, had banned further sales of the US beer Founders Breakfast Stout as the front label features a picture of a young child eating breakfast – a contravention of Swedish alcohol law that forbids the marketing of beer to anyone under the age of 25.

Although I personally wonder why it took a whole two weeks for the Systembolaget to realise its mistake (by which time nearly all the 1680 bottles of Founders in the country were already sold) I do agree with those that think this specific label could be mistaken by a child as a being something he/she could drink.

To test this theory I showed the bottle to my 8-year-old daughter who thought it looked ”cute” and instantly picked out the word chocolate. So in this particular case I’m backing the Systembolaget’s decision 100%.

However the ruling against Spendrups is in my opinion an example of Sweden’s alcohol politics gone bonkers. As part of their manifesto to remove all emotion from the promotion of beer (which after all is an incredibly emotive product) they have assumed Swedish beer drinkers have all the powers of reasoning and control of a child with a sweet tooth in a candy shop.

After all, are they not effectively saying that by showing us a picture of a chilled bottle of beer with the headline ”Enjoy a Really Cold Summer” Spendrups is going to send us all into a frenzied summer binge drinking spree? Are we really that impressionable and susceptible to abusing alcohol as a result of reading this headline that we need to be protected from it by the Government?

Now the alcohol law is the alcohol law and Spendrups have clearly broken it in this case. However as a beer enthusiast, a consumer living in Sweden and as a free-thinking grown adult I have to ask the question…..was this the right decision?