It may only be a few hours ago that it went ‘live’ but I’m already prepared to throw my hat into the ring and say that the new S:t Eriks website is the best branded Swedish beer site on the net.

Followers of this blog will of course know that I am a huge advocate of putting beer online. It’s the axis around which this blog spins because although no-one can confidently predict the future of craft beer what we do know for certain is that it will be somewhere online.

Which is why I have always been more than a little frustrated that the majority of the Swedish beer industry has yet to totally grasp the importance of providing good-looking, engaging and updated content to us, the growing legion of virtual beer drinkers.

And which is also why I almost jumped off my chair with excitement when I clicked into the new S:t Eriks website. Finally here’s a site with back stories, character, an elegant and sophisticated design and usable content in the form of in-depth product details (it even has handy tasting spider graphs). Throw in an in-built blog, a picture library and much more and this isn’t just a home-run for Jessica and the team – they’ve gone and knocked it out of the park!

Other beer brand owners and importers take note. This is the kind of way we want to see our beers look online. This is more like how we want to be informed, educated and (this is important) entertained about our favourite drink.

Congratulations to Jessica and everyone else behind putting this great-looking website together. Today you’ve just raised the beer bar a little bit higher.

Earlier today the Systembolaget went live with its new-look website that developers promise will give us a more educational and inspirational look at the world of alcoholic drinks.

The website upgrade focuses on four main areas:

• The ‘search drink’ function has been improved to allow free text searches in various categories (for example taste, “goes with” and price). All products in the regular assortment now have a bottle picture as standard
• The online ordering function (E-beställning) has been integrated into the main search function.
• A new food and drink search function has been introduced where users can get advice on which drinks match certain foods. At least one alcohol-free alternative is suggested with each search.
• An interactive wine guide allows users to travel the globe with the help of Google maps and learn about the most prominent wine-growing regions.

Damn it! I forget the : between the S and the T.

Have spent a while now surfing around the new-look site my initial impression is that it is a step in the right direction (particularly if you’re a wine lover) but still falls it down in a few keys areas.

I was disappointed to see that the upgraded ‘search drink’ function doesn’t tolerate bad grammar. So if, for example, you type in Fullers instead of Fuller’s you get taken to the product page for Midsummer Cellars Fowlers Vineyard and not any type of beer from the London brewery.

So to make sure you find the drinks you’re after you might want to check this out.

I also found a number of factual mistakes in some of the beer style guides and felt the section on Porters and Stouts was extremely biased towards a small number of breweries (not good coming from a monopoly) and told us little about the actual beers.

So what do you think of the new-look site? Does it inspire or irritate you? Are there things they could have improved or functions they missed out altogether?

Once upon a time when you wanted to learn about a beer or a brewery you’d go down to your local pub and ask the landlord. Now you can just go online.

The virtual bar these days is always open, with plenty of global beer brands to choose from served to you from countless websites.

Beer review sites such as Ratebeer and BeerAdvocate are your modern-day landlords, happy to provide you with some words of wisdom about which beers to try and blogs such as this one are places people can now come to for a bit of virtual bar-room chit-chat.

There are lots of breweries that understand that the Internet is where its customers now hang out. They’ve understood the importance of exciting, informative, engaging and stylishly designed websites. They’re already tweeters and enthusiastic social networkers, constantly mingling and exchanging email addresses over at community sites like Facebook and MySpace.

I’ve just come back from a virtual pub-crawl of some of the most popular Swedish breweries to see what they’re doing right now to attract their ‘virtual share of throat’ . What I discovered is giving me something of a real-life hangover.

With a few exceptions Swedish breweries seem to be stuck in the dark ages (that’s the 90s in ‘Internet time’) when it comes to their websites and online activity. You only have to compare them with craft brewers from the US – who discovered the power and reach of Twitter and other online communities years ago – to see what I mean.

Although the US leads the way in terms of Internet marketing of beer brands they are by no means alone. BrewDog, a whacky microbrewery from Scotland realised the importance of winning supporters for its extreme beers from the get-go and is a text-book example of how to harness the power of the Net. The brewery’s edgey website/blog/viral activity/online stunts have unquestionably been a major factor behind its explosive growth since it was founded just two years ago.

Clever craft breweries can punch well above their weight if they know how to leverage the internet. It’s never been more important to put your beer online and as bloggers and beer fans we need to do our part to encourage our favourite brewers to go cyber. Therefore here’s my list of the best Swedish brewery websites and most active online beer marketers of 2009:

BEST OVERALL WEBSITE

My current personal nomination is Åbro, which not only looks great but is packed with useful information about brewing and beer facts).

MOST ACTIVE ONLINE BREWERY

My current personal nomination is Sigtuna, whose Head Brewer keeps Facebook fans up-to-date with his choice of hard rock music while he’s mashing in. (They MUST do something about their website though!)

BEST USE OF NEW MEDIA

(this category recognises the use of the internet and other ‘new’ mediums such as mobile phone applications to reach the beer drinking public)

My current nomination is www.norrlandsguld.nu. This brand site is bulging with cool apps and clever ways to interact with the brand and other NG drinkers.

It would be great to get your feedback and personal nominations so we can recognise the efforts of the category winners and more importantly encourage the other breweries who may be virtually lagging behind to update to beer drinking version 2.009.