In what must be possibly the coolest prize ever given away on a Swedish beer blog I’m delighted to announce the winner of BeerSweden’s Ultimate Burger and Beer Competition in partnership with those jolly nice people at The Bishops Arms in Linnégatan which has today opened its door to the public for the first time.

Let’s recap for a moment. The competition asked you to suggest your ultimate burger recipe and the perfect beer to go with it. The winner gets a dinner for two in the new pub (which is pretty huge considering these guys are helping to run the kitchen). But that’s not all. In fact we’re only just warming up! The winner also gets a special glass with his or her name engraved on it which will be given a special place behind the bar for whenever they pop in for a drink!

But that’s still not all! The winner will also get his or her name printed on the menu alongside the Bishops Arms own hamburger description as a recommendation for everyone to see.

So without further ado, here’s a picture of the winner’s special glass….

And here’s the winner’s named engraved on the glass.

A huge congratulations to David Hedenfalk for your winning burger recipe:

1 Snabbt grillat bröd
2 Lite dijon
3 Tunn skiva rödlök
4 Salladsblad
5 Burgaren gjord på kalvfärs kryddad med vitlök, Worchester Sauce, timjan
6 Cheese of choice
7 Chili sauce
8 Avocado tunna skivor

To this you paired a Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA, a powerful yet balanced US IPA packed with citrus hops and exotic fruit flavours.

The jury’s motivation is as follows:

”With a good bitter edge sharp enough to cut trough the fat flavours of the cheese and a malty sweetness to balance the pickles and the dressing – Snake Dog IPA from Flying Dog makes an outstanding companion to our burger. Describing the perfect beer and burger combo David Hedenfalk managed to persuade the jury”.

To complete your awesome prize David here’s you name printed on the new menus at the pub.

A huge thanks to everyone that entered. The standard of submissions was incredibly high and many of you had obviously put a lot of thought into your pairing. Thank you!

A new competition with cool beery prizes will be announced on BeerSweden very soon so remember to check back often!

There was a record number of entries for the first BeerSweden Tag-a-T competition run last month – over 160 of you threw your email addresses into the ring in the hope of winning a statement-making Punk IPA T-shirt from those nice chaps at BrewDog.

The April Tag-a-T competition was sponsored by Punk IPA. Who's it going to be this month? Stay tuned!

But of course there can only be one winner and the name of the person picked at random who’s taking home the swag this month is……….(drum roll)………Susanna Mathiesen! Congratulations Susanna: wearing this T-shirt may just change your life!

Because the Tag-a-T format was so popular I’m going to be putting another cool beery T-shirt up for grabs over the next few days and every month from now on so remember to check back often so you don’t miss out on your chance of bagging some free stuff.

Exclusively here at BeerSweden, where we’ve be making beery people look better and drink better since 2010!

ps: (Are you a brewery that sells your beers in Sweden? Do you have a trendy T-shirt you’d like to put up for this monthly competition? If you do then send an email to me at darren@beersweden.se).

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!

After a flood of entries (Ok so maybe it was more of a steady trickle) I can now reveal the first ever winner of the Great Beer T-shirt Giveaway competition!

As the nation holds its collective breath (drum roll please) I am pleased to announce that the winner and now proud owner of a Spitfire Premium Ale T-shirt is…………………

Neil Hunt!

Neil managed to make an 11^th hour correction to his earlier entry ensuring it was just about funny enough to scoop the first prize.

Thanks to everyone else that took the time to send captions in. Remember to check back often for the second instalment of the Great Beer T-shirt Giveaway, when you’ll get another chance to win a stunning item of beery high fashion.

And as for the winning caption – here it is!

Swelink pilot crashes after complaining of a hanger-over