Then write this date down in your diary – Saturday, September 18^th – the day when I’ll attempt to change the way you think about the worlds two favourite alcoholic drinks forever.

Now I know it’s a big ask but having recently tried the five beers I’m going to be serving up at the first ever Beer Club at Duå Delikatessbutik in Umeå I honestly believe I can do it!

Some (but not all) of the beers we're tasting at the 'Beer for Wine Lovers' tasting might be in this photo. But to find out which ones you need to book your place fast!

I’m not going to give away too many details of the beers we’re going to try (I want you all to turn up with minds wide open!) but this much I can now reveal:

One of these beers is as shockingly pink as a fruity Rosé, another gives off delicate smells of lavender and honey reminiscent of a fine desert wine while another is aged for months in red wine Bourgogne barrels and is so wine-like to sniff I’d challenge anyone to pick it out as a beer with their eyes shut!

All the five exclusive beers we’ll be trying have some connection to wine, either in the way they are made or in their flavours and aromas.

I’ll also be taking the opportunity during the evening to bust a few common myths about beer and wine, particularly when it comes to pairing them with food.

Demand for this “Beer for Wine Lovers’ tasting has been so great we’re actually going to hold two tastings back-to-back so that as many people as possible can get the opportunity to try these hard-to-get beers.

The first tasting will start at 17:00 and the second one kicks off at 19:30. After that everyone is invited for a spot of ‘ölmingel’ where as an added bonus there will be a selection of great beers from Swedish beer importer Brill & Co available to try!

If you want to join me and the Duå boys for a night of beery revelations then here’s all the contact details you need:

090-7800303

www.duaumea.se

info@duaumea.se

duaumea.blogspot.com

I hope to see some of you at Umeå’s trendiest Beer Club (Ed note: actually it’s Umeå’s only beer club) soon!

Until then…..Cheers and Beers!

Darren

* Couldn’t resist getting my own back Bengt Frithiofsson.

Monks Porter House is the latest addition to the Monk ‘cloister cluster’ of pubs in the Swedish capital and is housed in an imposing 16th century listed building on (rather fittingly) Munkbron.

Walking up the narrow steps you are greeted by a knight in shining armour who guards the entrance to where it is hoped the pub’s keenly awaited 350L microbrewery will soon start producing a range of exclusive porters and stouts.

It was to be honest a little hard for me to orientate myself at first. I got the odd feeling I had stumbled into the entrance of a museum by mistake. It took a couple of wrong turns to discover that the pub itself is stashed away deep in the vaulted basement of this historic building.

With it’s worn stone steps, uneven whitewashed walls carved out of rock and dark brick vaulted ceilings Monks Porter House cannot fail to make a lasting impression on you. A number of small ‘alcoves’ offer drinkers and diners plenty of privacy should they need it, making this a great place to come with your ‘other half’. The bar itself is rather small, neat and modern, with trendy bronze-coloured tower fonts technically capable of dispensing 56 different types of draft beer.

I say technically as the actual selection is as yet far smaller than that, albeit an eclectic range of tasty Swedish and international beer brands and styles.

The only thing I couldn’t work out was why the designers decided to put up a wall of computer screens behind the bar which beamed out prices and special offers exactly like the ones you see at McDonalds.

I stood there fully expecting the barman to say “would you like a cheeseburger with your Hornbeer Cranberry Bastard sir?”

The food was excellent (I had a deliciously buttery cup of chanterelle soup to start with followed by a Porter Steak washed down with a malty sweet brown ale) and the service utterly professional.

I walked out of the new Monks happy and contended with the feeling it was more like a restaurant that served great beers than a place I would go just for a drink and to socialise. Having said that it’s early days for this Monk and speaking with one of the team working there a little later it’s clear they have plenty of ambitious plans in the pipeline.

If Monks was a ‘work in progress’ however then Pubologi is the finished article.

Just a short stroll down Stora Nygatan I was lucky enough to find myself sitting down in this ‘hybrid bar’ on its opening night.

Now there are plenty of places in Stockholm that try to be cool. The problem is that if you’re trying you very often aren’t. Pubologi is COOL, spelt out in big shiny metal letters like the ones that dangle from the bar’s front window.

It’s hard to describe a place that by its own admission isn’t a bar, isn’t a restaurant and isn’t a traditional pub. It’s one of those places you sit down in and spend most of your time gazing around with a smile on your face just checking things out. It’s a case study in attention to detail, managing to cram tonnes of finesse into a tiny space that seats just 25 people.

And therein lies the secret of its undoubted upcoming success. Pubologi brings everyone together for a unique dining experience in which you sit at something akin to a desk and pull out a drawer containing your spoon, knife, fork, menu and even a cute little wooden butter knife.

Rather than the somewhat private and ‘disconnected’ dining areas at Monks here you rub elbows with the stranger sitting next to you, although in such a laid back atmosphere they probably wont stay strangers for very long.

So what about the beer? Pubologi have done the opposite of Monks and kept the beer offering very lean, with ‘just’ 8 craft beers on draft, dispensed by fonts that spell out the pub’s name (just another of those lovely touches).

All the beers come in small, medium or large servings, poured into elegant oversized wine glass that give you plenty of room to swirl (and we all know how important that is don’t we!)

I went for the Punk IPA and a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Both were stunningly fresh and aromatic and (despite the fact I had only eaten less than an hour before) did some serious making out with a paper cone of mixed fritters served with two different types of mayonnaise.

Pubologi may have difficulty spelling out what it is but I don’t.

Pubologi is spelt C-O-O-L.

Until Saturday September 4th the team at one of the BA’s most beer friendly pubs will be giving you the chance to super-size your beer by infusing it with hops of your choice using a variation on a brewing method known as hopbacking.

Here’s how it works: you order a jug of beer (which beer is entirely up to you) and choose a style of hop from a list of international varieties. The team will then put both beer and hops into something resembling a coffee peculator and squeeze the beer through the hops, giving it a boost of extra aroma and flavour.

So if you’ve ever wondered what Falcon Export would taste like with loads of spicy lemon Saaz hops or if pint of Spitfire would really take off with some added American Cascade then this is your chance to have some fun and blend your very own beer!

The Bishops Arms is located at Folkungagatan 105 in Stockholm.

I’m currently in the UK brewing a very special beer along with the guys from one of Sweden’s best beer bars – Akkurat in Stockholm! That’s why it’s just a little bit quieter round here than normal but rest assured I’m collecting lots of film footage and stories of our time here in England and will be posting reports over the next few days.

Cheers and (lots of lovely session ale) Beers!

Darren

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!

This time I’m headed back to the UK (with the fuzzy memories of the Great British Beer Festival still fresh in my mind) to brew some very special beer with the owner and bar manager of arguably Sweden’s absolute best beer bar – Akkurat in Stockholm.

We’re heading to the Shepherd Neame brewery in Faversham early next week where we’re going to spend a day grinding barley, mashing in and adding hops on our way to brewing 16 40L casks of what we hope is going to be a very British beer indeed.

Exactly what type of beer we’re brewing I’m going to keep secret for a few more days yet but I can reveal it will contain six different types of British barley and six different types of British hops (and rather a lot of them to!)

That’s right. Not a single green leaf of Cascade, Amarillo or any other American hip-hop will be used in the making of this beer!

If everything goes according to plan we’ll all then head home (via a pub or two I know) while the beer is busy fermenting and conditioning and will meet up with it again when it goes on sale at Akkurat some time in October. More details on all that to follow.

Of course I’ll be taking the video camera so you can join me in following the birth of a new beer from the grain all the way to the glass.

This will of course mean I’ll miss the huge release of new beers at the Systembolaget on September 1^st but I’m sure it will be worth it. After all you’ll save me a few bottles won’t you?

Anyway enough talk, I’ve got bubble wrap to pack. Now if only I could remember where I left that bloody passport…………..

*Anyone who takes their beer seriously knows that bubble wrap is on the very top of the list of things to pack when travelling abroad, above clean underwear and just below a new packet of Alvedon. And no, it’s not used for some strange sexual fetish (that I know of anyway) but to wrap bottles of beer up in so they arrive home in one piece.

5.4% ABV. Systembolaget Article Number 11409-03. Price 19.90SEK (330ml bottle)

Look

A delicious looking dark dark brown porter with a thick, clingy cappuccino-coloured head. If you count the bottle too (which has been embellished and embossed) then this is one hell of a sexy looking beer!

Smell

Not surprisingly for a porter named after a type of vanilla the first thing to register with your olfactory system (also known as your nose) is creamy vanilla sauce, backed up by dark chocolate, juniper berries and burnt toast. After a while the vanilla subsides but the chocolate lingers on. I swear the smell of this beer was so rich I actually put on weight sniffing it. A 5 out of 5 aroma!

Taste

The intensity of the nose somehow didn’t all transfer over to the taste of this porter. There’s a creamy vanilla sauce front and then things suddenly change and the flavours turn dry, bitter and roasted. The mouthfeel also seems to transform from medium bodied to a shade thin, making me think of an odd combination of BrewDog’s Zeitgeist watered down with Guinness. Bags of piquant roasted malt, chocolate and ink before a dry coffee-like finish.

Food

With its distinctive vanilla and chocolate character this porter screams out to be paired with a rich chocolate cake and other chocolate-based dessert.

Nerd Note

Pompona Porter is the latest edition to the revitalised S:t Eriks family of beers created by Swedish brewer Jessica Heidrich and Galatea. The fact Jessica has experimented with vanilla with this popular Swedish beer brand demonstrates just how exciting and adventurous beer making in this country is right now. At 5.4% this has a lot of the coffee and chocolate flavours you’ll find in more rugged US porters but has a far higher degree of drinkability. If you like vanilla that is!

Score

With so many variables and fuzziness I’ve always been from the school of ”Don’t take My Word for It, Try it Yourself” and have treated rating systems with about the same amount of suspicion I feel whenever I see a pitbull terrier off a leash.

However I also understand that people generally like beer ratings as they bring a little order, tidy things up and potentially make the job of choosing which beers to buy a little more straight forward. That’s why I introduced a rating system to BeerSweden (after a few months of resistance) back in March of this year.

However I’ve discovered that this system, like my own ability to taste, isn’t perfect. I’ve increasingly found the scale of 1-5 with 0.5 increments is just too ‘clumsy’. There have been several beers I’ve rated, say, 4 because it was better than a 3.5 when it reality it wasn’t really a full 4 either.

Therefore from today I’m introducing a slightly more sophisticated scale of rating, using all the  .somethings from 0.0 to 4.9. I’ve also shamelessly stolen the idea of displaying these ratings on a bottle cap from the excellent Swedish beer blog Pilsner.nu which I recommend you all check out (and not just to make me feel better either. It’s a well written blog from a guy, Jonas, who is one of the original founders of Slottskällans Bryggeri and has 25 years in the beer business so really knows what he is talking about).

Remember though that rating a beer is like trying to describe toothache to someone else – sometimes it’s very hard to put into words. Therefore I still urge you all to go out and buy and try as many beers as possible (while drinking in moderation and responsibly of course) in order to make up your own minds.