Time for a white weekend

This is the first weekend this year that I won't drink any beer. Feels like it's time to be a bit more healthy. I've had a very hectic 2010 so far and visited several festivals, also tried lots of nice beers of course :) But now I need a short rest.

I got some interesting plans in the near future. First up is the Enköping Homebrew Festival and on the 15th of May it's time to brew some beer again. Will tell you more about it in a later post.

Even though I won't try any beers this weekend I won't sit with my thumbs up my ass. I plan to start on my new blog using wordpress. I've gotten quite tired of blogspot with all it's bugs and issues and I have been recommended to try out wordpress. I'll play around with it when I get time to see what I think of it.

Gouden Carolus Cuvee Van De Keizer Blauw/Blue

Gouden Carolus Cuvee Van De Keizer Blauw/Blue 2009 (75 cl bottle) 11%
This beer was part of a news release at Systembolaget last year. I also have a bottle of their red beer that I will rate soon.

Style: Belgian Strong Ale

Cost: ? SEK

Bitterness------Sweetness-----Sourness-----Intensity-------Body

■□□□□□□□----□□■□□□□□-----□■□□□□□□---□□□□■□□□----□□□■□□□□

Appearance: 3/5

Dark hazy amber liquid with a small dirty white foam.

Smell: 8/10

Dried fruit, raisin, plums.

Taste: 8/10

Dried fruit, yeast, plums and wine.

Mouthfeel: 4/5

Medium smooth and medium carbonation. Puckering mouthfeel.

Comment:

A fruity and nice belgian ale. Lots of flavour and none of them bad. Despite the high alcohol this was fairly easy to drink and it didn't feel very boozy. This beer is probably best on it's own but probably works great with some cheeses.

Total: 3,9/5

Results from the SC

I completely forgot to post the results in my previous post. But I just saw this morning that they are updated at www.shbf.se

Judges Competition

Peoples Choice Competition + extra awards

Detailed Peoples Choice Competition

Program sheet from the SC

Nice to see that Gullefjun got a 6th place in Peoples Choice. I honestly didn't expect it to perform that well. Since it was only 3,4% and with a very mild flavour that easily got drowned in all the high flavour beers in that class.

I'm also suprised to see we got 4th place with our Nalle Puh Porter. That means the four of us managed to get 1st, 4th and 6th place which feels like it's way over expectations. How are we going to top that? We better start planning for next years competition right away. At the moment we have two beers in the works, I will write about them later on.

The Swedish Championship in Homemade Beer 2010 - Part 2

This years festival broke several records. 370 beers participated in the Judges Competition and 103 beers participated in the Peoples Choice Competition. The festival wasn't just packed with beers it also got packed with people. More then 700 people visited the festival and you can see from the picture above what it looked like when it peaked.


The Peoples Choice Competition was divided into 3 categories, bottom fermented, top fermented and special beers. We had DBH3 and Nalle Puh Porter in the special beers class and Gullefjun in the top fermented class.

Even though I didn't go shit crazy tasting beer this festival (like I usually do) I have to say it was the most fun I've had at a beer festival so far. I loved standing in the booth giving out samples. Everybody where really friendly and we got allot of great comments on DBH3. Nalle Puh Porter and Gullefjun also got their share of course, but the majority went for the Death.

DBH3 actually got so popular we managed to get a gold medal in the Peoples Choice Awards, under the category Special Beers. I didn't quite understand it at first and it wasn't until I saw Chrille standing there with the medal around his neck that it sunk in. Felt weird to stand on stage like that, but allot of fun as well.

Unfortunately we "only" brought 38 litres of DBH3 so we ran out fast after the win was announced. I think Benny from Stockeboda and my friend Per was the ones who was the most upset about the lack of DBH3.

A few minutes later it was time for the big announcement, the winner of the Swedish Championship in Homemade Beer. Drakens Dubbel-IPA took home the first place, brewed by Rick Gordon Lindqvist, Tomas Lundqvist and Magnus Alström. Big congratulations to them.

They didn't participate in the Peoples Choice Awards with the beer which probably was lucky for us. It would have been fun to try it on the spot, but I traded a bottle with Rick just before the festival so I'm going to try it out later. I actually traded quite allot of bottles and I will write about them here later on. They are in Frövi with my father so I will get them at a later date.

To summarize the experience it feels like yet another great SC. I've been to several and this felt just as good as the others. The people involved in arranging it should have a huge pat on the back.

The Swedish Championship in Homemade Beer 2010 - Part 1

Despite staying up late on friday I woke up early feeling very energetic. I had a good feeling about the day and wanted to get to the SC right away. But I knew it wouldn't be open until 10:00 so I settled down and tried to relax. Which didn't work so well so I headed of to the festival.

On the way there I did some "touristing" with the trams, taking in the beautiful scenery.... ok I admit it I managed to jump on the correct line but going the wrong way. I eventually ended up showing up 15 minutes late. So much for my plan to be there early. Well my father was worse and showed up just before it started. Someone remind me to pull his ear for that one ;)
When I got there Chrille and Erika where already hard at work setting up the cooler and taps. I brought the kegs out and started working on the decorations. Yes, you heard it right, I got put on the decorating job. But I'm actually quite satisfied with what I could accomplish (which was basically just putting stuff out on the table). Below is a picture of the non-finished booth.
Me and Erika started off in the booth and where prepared to take on the happy beer drinkers.

Since I was waiting for my father I took the time to walk around and check all the other booths out. I fairly quickly ran into the gang from Hembryggarbloggen, a bunch of happy and friendly guys and gals. I got some high quality homebrews and I have to complement them on their nice logo.

I also walked by the sticker competition. The quality of the stickers keep getting better and better each year. Most of them are much nicer then the commercial stickers. Below you can see the three stickers that Chrille made, number 7-9.

I spent most of the festival in my own both so I sadly didn't try that many beers. However people kept showing up and giving me samples of beer so I was quite satisfied with that. Christer (from Överjäst) even showed up with a couple of beers that I tried. Specially Fett Brett was really nice.

I realised this post got quite long so I turned into two parts as I usually do. Part 2 will include the winners of this years SC and some other things.

Friday night in Gothenburg

After an unusually long drive to Gothenbourg we finally reached out destination after 8,5 hours of driving. The reason it took so long was that we switched cars in Uppsala, picked up a friend at Arlanda and got the kegs of beer in Örebro. But trust me, it was worth the long trip.

As soon as we got into Olles (friend of Per's that let us stay in his apartment for the weekend) the other guys where very quick to open the first beer of the evening. I however had to wait until I could go to the SC and deliver the kegs of beer.


When I got back from the slightly scary and confusing drive through central Gothenburg I was immediately served a glass of Death By Hops 3 (DBH). But I surprised the others by pulling out a bottle of DBH2. After drinking our beer we headed of to meet a bunch of friends that had come to Gothenburg to visit the SC and basically have a good time. We found them at Victoria which just didn't feel like a very interesting place to be. So I managed to chase them out of there and we headed of to Tre Små Rum.

I've heard allot of good things about this pub and Reza Ganon recently got a golden pin from the Beer Consumers Association. That is as good a sign for quality as you can get.

It took a few seconds after entering to realise that we had come to the right place (well most of us at least). I started out with a Närke Örebro Bitter Peated Viking. Which is a smoked version of their Örebro Bitter. I liked it, but I think I prefer their normal version.

Another beer that stood out was Duggest Bitter Sweet Dream. Great beer that I hope to try again so I can give it a proper rating.

I think Reza got a bit tired of my friends that had drank quite allot during the day, but thankfully for him some of them headed of to a club fairly soon. Me and some other beer lovers stuck around until the pub closed.

Jonny in the background (turned 30 on the day of the SC). Dave "the Bushman" and Mark "the Reverend" came over from England to drink some beer.

My brother, Per and Olle.

When we where about to leave we ran into a couple of beer blogers that had been sitting in the other room the whole time. First up a picture of me and the guys from Schnille och Schmak, Daniel och Ralph.

But also Christer from Överjäst and Weine from Casa Beer Blog. I hope I run into all of these guys again in the near future.

We decided to head of to Bishops Arms Avenyn together to grab another beer. They didn't have allot of interesting beer and the things that seemed interesting where fairly expensive. I did find Angel's Share #5 Korre Ale, which I went for. Decent beer that didn't quite stand out. But to be fair it was 02:00 and I didn't really give it a serious thought.

Christer shared a very nice beer, Mikkeller 10, with the rest of us before we decided to call it a night. Thanks for that one Christer.


I will post about the SC tomorrow. It was a good day :)

Preparing for the SC

It's been a hectic week but we are finally done with the preparations for the Swedish Championship in Homemade beers. The last thing I did was bake a bunch of bread from the malt we used while brewing the two beers we participate with. It resulted in 3 kinds of bread. First a couple of loafs of DBH3 malt made with regular (wheat) flour. I also made some heavier bread with the Nalle Puh malt, using rough rye flour and graham flour. Here are some pictures:

As stated before we (me, my father and Chrille) will participate with 2 beers. A DIPA named Death By Hops 3 and a honey porter called Nalle Puh Porter. Chrille and Erika will also participate with a Mild called Gullefjun. I haven't had a chance to try that one yet so really looking forward to it. We will also share some chocolate-honey-trufels (thanks Lina!), malt bread and honey (used in the Nalle Puh Porter) at our table.

For those interested I will bring a couple of bottles of DBH3 in case you want to trade a bottle.

My father is already in Göteborg and I plan on leaving tomorrow morning. Me, Per (my beer drinking sidekick) and his brother will drive by car early tomorrow morning. Chrille will drive from Örebro early Saturday morning. I also have allot of friends coming to Göteborg. We usually go on a cruise at this time of year to celebrate Andy and Johnny's birthdays. But this year we are trying something new.

I can't wait for the festival this is going to be great. :)

Want to trade?

The Swedish Championship in Homebrews is this weekend and our preparations are under way. I will bring a couple of bottles of Death By Hops 3 to the SC in case anybody wants to trade.

You can either contact me on stefan@beerdrivel.se or just simply approach me at the festival.

Fräcka Halvpannan

Yesterday me and Karin went to Fräcka Halvpannan, a small pub/restaurant in southern Stockholm. I'm not sure how to translate the name but here is an attempt: Insolent Half-pan. I found out about this place through the Swedish Beer Consumers Association. After reading through their menu online I decided to pay them a visit. It was mostly the wide and cheap beer list that got my interest.

The first thing I did was to order a beer, but as it turned out they where all out of my first choice. But the waiter had brought a bottle of Dieu Du Ciel Corne du Diable, which just happened to be my second choice. Quite impressive to nail what my second choice would be. Corne du Diable was a hopped up IPA with lots of grapefruit and a high bitterness. Very nice and I gave it a 4/5.

The olives we got with the beer was very juicy and salty. Marinating in lots of oil and herbs. Before dinner arrived I went ahead and ordered a can of Oskar Blues Gordon Ale. Which is a mix between a Double IPA and an Imperial Amber Ale. Not surprisingly lots of hops but also a fairly high sweetness. I prefer my DIPAs a little bit less sweet but this was a nice beer. Definitely the best DIPA/IAA I've had from a can, but then again this is the only one I've tried. I would give it a 3,9/5.

Both me and Karin went for the beef tenderloin with potato cake and mushroom sauce. Both of us got just the right degree on the meat. I went for medium-rare and it was perfect, just they way I like it.


To finish off I ordered a bottle of Founders Curmudgeon Old Ale. It poured a very thick and hazy dark dirty amber liquid with lots of stuff floating around in it. A very strong (9,8%) ale with a heavy sweetness and intense flavour of caramel, malt, leather, dried fruit, yeast and hops. I'm giving it a 3,8/5. I had to drink this fairly slowly and about halfway through my desert arrived.

I went for the white chocolate mousse, which looked very small at first. But it was rich and creamy with lots of flavour. Felt like just the right amount at the time.

Karin decided to try their chocolate cake which was a bit dry but very rich. I prefer my chocolate cakes allot more sticky and juicy.

All in all this was a great visit, great service, great beer, great food and all at a very reasonable price. Compared to similar pubs they are on the low end of the price scale. Something worth noting is that the beer and food menu is out of date on their site. But if you read them you will get the general idea of what they have on offer.

Birthday dinner

When I got home last night I was greeted with a birthday dinner. A pork tenderloin stew with chantarelles and mushrooms served with potatoes and fresh salad.

To drink I treated myself to a bottle of Hopslam. A fantastic DIPA that is ranked as 4th in the style. I had it for the first time last year and awarded it: "Beer of the year". I traded the beer with Baggen from Beerwell. He got two bottles of Death By Hops 3 and I got a bottle of Hopslam. I think we where both very happy with the trade. I hope he enjoys DBH3 :)


Tonight we are going to Fräcka Halvpannan, a restaurant on the south side of Stockholm that has a nice selection of beers at a very reasonable price. For example you can get a Stone Ruination for 69 SEK per bottle. Which is an amazing deal, I think OT charges 120 SEK. I haven't been there before but will post something tomorrow.

BrewDog coming to Bishops Arms

I've been slacking with the blog lately. Well I haven't actually slacked with the blog in general as I have been working on different projects concerning the blog. Also have some other beer related project that is stealing time.

But back to what's important and that is beer. James Watt from BrewDog will visit Bishops Arms at Folkungagatan tomorrow. The visit is connected to the release of Abstrakt -01, a vanilla bean infused quadrupel. Sounds jummy if you ask me. There will be more beers on tap and I wouldn't mind trying their Hardcore IPA on tap. I plan to visit Fräcka Halvpannan tomorrow and I hope I get some time to run over to Bishops and meet James Watt. Also heard Darren from Beer Sweden will be there, would be fun to meet him as well. But we will see what happens tomorrow.

Chateu Grand Cru 2010 - Part 2

I visited this festival in 2008 as well. Compared to 2008 it there where more cheese oriented booths this year. It felt like there where allot more food in general. I was also under the impression that there was a higher number of expensive wines in 2008. But we might just not have been offered them. Who would serve nice wine to a bunch of trashy beer geeks anyway?
This years festival was more cramped than last time and eventually me and Per got tired of both the crowd and the wine and decided to go for a beer. So we walked across the bridge to Bishops Arms. It didn't take us long to have 5-6 bottles of beer lined up in front of us. We focused mainly on hopped up IPAs and DIPAs, but a couple of other beers managed to mix in with the crowd.
BrewDog Hardcore IPA was the one that stood out the most. Would love to try it again when I don't have countless of wine samples in my belly. We also had Avery IPA and BrewDog 5am Saint. Tractor-Kalle decided to try a bottle of De Molen Hel & Verdoemenis and I wasn't late to sneak a small sample out of the bottle. I finished the set with a bottle of Mikkeller Black. Which definitely was the biggest mistake of the evening. Even though it was expensive I probably should have left the 17,5% beer in it's glass as I had to rush off to the bus.

Chateu Grand Cru 2010 - Part 1

I'm finally starting to feel human again. It was a fun but rough weekend with lots of nice beer and wine. Despite the name the first thing I encountered at the wine and cheese festival was actually a beer. It was a hotel in Dalarna that had brewed their own beer through Grebbestads. A decent lager with some fruity notes, actually got some cloud berry feeling from it. Might just be my expectations playing tricks on me.

I then went for a walk and checked the festival out. The scenery is perfect and brings a fantastic atmosphere, but it almost gets hidden behind all the commercial from the booths. I walked around a bit with my beer and took in the sights. Rumor has it the festival will move to Conventum in the future, I really hope they keep it at the castle as it is a defining part of the festival. It's cramped and probably not very economical, but it makes the festival stand out amongst the rest.

After finishing off my beer I went to a random booth and got offered a small sample of sparkled wine. I asked if they had anything fun and special and ended up with almost a full glass of some limited edition wine. To be honest I prefer small samples at these things and the wine didn't feel that "limited" in my newbie wine mouth.

It didn't take long before I ran into my parents and their friends. They where doing an Italian red wine tasting and I tagged along. We also did a tasting at Torres before Per showed up an hour after we entered the festival. Me and Per then teamed up to try some more wine. We tried to combine some wine and cheese and did small tastings at every booth we visited. Mostly strong and rough red wines, but we also tried white, rosé, sparkled, beer and cider. The supply of the last two where far from great but it was nice to mix it up a bit. Specially having a dry cider after all that red wine was great.

I will continue part 2 with some expressions from the festival and what happened afterwards.

Death by hops can be lethal...

Just woke up after an evening of trying Belgian beers and then finishing it up with a couple Death By Hops 3. That beer is fucking lethal, I'm still a bit drunk and I'm due at the wine festival in an hour. This is going to be a rough weekend....

Im off to Chateu Grand Cru

I plan to visit the Chateu Grand Cru this weekend. It's a wine and cheese festival in Örebro, located inside the castle. I've been there before and it's usually pretty good. Very nice setting inside the castle and the people in the booths are always knowledgable and friendly.

The only thing I can complain about is that it get quite cramped and the ticket system seems a bit overcomplicated. This year you buy tickets that give you right to enter at different times during the day. I personally have the earliest tickets so I won't be affected but it feels like a drop in value for those that show up late, but my beer-loving sidekick Per had some problems getting tickets and will have to show up at a later time. However I guess it will be a fix to the overcrowd problem.

I should have a report up some time after the weekend.

New adress

As you might have noticed you get redirected to www.beerdrivel.se when you visit this blog. I recently bought the domain which is a step towards some changes on the blog. I plan to change blog motor some time in the future and also working on a new logo. The reason is I hope to make a better looking site and add some stuff that I can't do on blogspot, also a bit fed up with all the problems and bugs with blogspot.

Belgian Blizzard

Belgian Blizzard (33 cl bottle) 9,4%
This is a Rochefort 10 clone that my father, Peter the chef and Erkki brewed at Källarknut during a raging blizzard.

Style: Belgian Quadrupel
Cost: Homebrewed not sure what they paid for the ingredients.

Bitterness------Sweetness-----Sourness-----Intensity-------Body

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Appearance: 3/5
It poured a very dark and very hazy amber liquid with a small dirty white foam.

Smell: 8/10
Fruity, berries, yeast and sweetness.

Taste: 8/10
Fruity, berries and yeast.

Mouthfeel: 5/5
Smooth and puckering mouthfeel. Thick body and medium carbonation.

Comment:
I should start by saying that Rochefort 10 is one of my favourite Belgian beers. This clone is very good but doesn't taste exactly like the original. I will have to test this at a later date, I actually have a bottle of Rocherfort 10 but didn't think of opening it.

That being said lets take a look at what we got. It's a very nice belgian quadrupel and extremely easy to drink. I didn't feel the high alcohol at all. The only thing I might complaint about is that I would have love some more complexity. It felt a bit one-sided but I got a feeling this might change over time. The beer is quite young and should probably sit for a while to mature.

Total: 4/5

TT normal vs TT ecological

Carlsberg recently released an ecological version of their normal Three Towns beer called TT Green Lager. Since doing a normal review of the beer would feel a bit boring I figured I should try their normal against their new ecological version.


Appearance
They had the same watery yellow colour and big white foam. Only difference was that the normal looked to have a higher carbonation with more bubbles.

Smell
Both had the usual lager smell of sweet bread and metal, but the ecological had a slightly stronger smell.

Taste
Same here, very similar taste, just like a regular pale lager. Only difference is that the normal version had a bit more flavour and was a bit "rounder".

Mouthfeel
Both had a semi-smooth mouthfeel with a light body and medium carbonation. Normal was just slightly smoother.

Total
As expected the two where very similar to each other. There are just marginal differences that are hard to distinguish if you aren't actively looking for them. I didn't exactly like any of them, but I think the normal version has a slight edge on the ecological. It had a slightly better taste and mouthfeel.

Normal TT wins over Eco TT.

Nynäshamn Bötet Barley Wine

Nynäshamn Bötet Barley Wine (25 cl bottle) 9,1%
This beer was released as a temporary addition at Systembolaget in the beginning of Marsch. There are still plenty of bottles left for those that want to buy a couple of bottles.

Style: Barley Wine

Cost: 33,50 SEK

Bitterness------Sweetness-----Sourness-----Intensity-------Body

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Appearance: 4/5

Dark, slightly hazy, amber liquid with a small dirty white foam.

Smell: 8/10

Strong smell of wood, malt, caramell and also wineous almost like porter. Some alcohol as well.

Taste: 8/10

Sweet with allot of malt, sugar, hops, fruits and wine.

Mouthfeel: 5/5

Puckering mouthfeel, thick body and medium smooth puckering mouthfeel. It put a smile on my face.

Comment:

A very nice Barley Wine that reminds me a bit of Bigfoot Barley wine although with less hops and lighter body. It might have been a bit to sweet though, but it might improve over time. I'm going to buy another bottle and store for at least a year to see what I think.

Something worth mentioning is the 25 cl bottle that just feels perfect for this kind of beer. I wouldn't mind similar bottles in the future.

Last time I rated this I gave it a 3,6/5, but that was on tap and a couple of years back. So this time I gave it a slightly higher score:

Total: 4,1/5

Van Diest Früli Strawberry Beer

Van Diest Früli Strawberry Beer (33 cl bottle) 4,1%
This beer was released at Systembolaget on the 24th of March and is now part of the permanent supply. It's a belgian wheat beer with strawberry juice. According to the pamphlet I got with the bottle it's real fruit juice and no essences where used while making this beer.

Style: Fruit Beer
Cost: 14,90 SEK

Bitterness------Sweetness-----Sourness-----Intensity-------Body

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Appearance: 3/5
Hazy red-orange liquid with a small pink foam that left no lacing.

Smell: 5/10
Very sweet smell of strawberries and fruit candy.
Taste: 5/10
Strawberries, rasberries. Very sweet and thirst quenching.

Mouthfeel: 4/5
Smooth mouthfeel with a medium body and low carbonation.

Comment:
I'm not sure how to rate this beer or if I should even call it a beer. I know that is a comment allot of people have with lambics and similar beers. Then I just smile at them but this time I'm the one asking the question: Is this beer? Well it is, it's just the fruit juice that is throwing me off. It basically smells and taste like a very good soft drink. Very fruity and sweet, but it has a thicker body and a deeper more complex flavour compared to a soft drink.

Even though I don't give the highest score to this, I actually believe I will buy more bottles in the future. It's extremely easy to drink and very thirst quenching. Would consider it with a dessert or even just sitting on the porch on a hot summer day.

Concerning suitable food companions it's obvious this is a dessert beer. The pamphlet suggests vanilla ice cream or using it as an ingredient in a sorbet. Both sounds very nice and I'm actually willing to try them out. I also have a feeling this would work very well with chocolate. Possibly not the fantastic combo that kriek and chocolate is, but it should be close enough.

Total: 2,7/5