I spent yesterday in Uppsala at Belgofesten, it’s a homebrew festival focused on belgian style beers. Me and my beer wielding sidekick Per took the train up to Uppsala from Stockholm and we met up with some other beer geeks at the train station: Fajanen from Fajanen och Jöns and Johan from 5,0 TV. My father picked us up in the brew mobile (Bryggarbilen) so we got a smooth ride to the festival.

It was quite calm when we got there and I was a bit disappointed to only see 29 beers. I heard that they got a couple of late cancellations. But even though the numbers where lower the previous years, there was no lack in quality. The quality was high and even, I made some quick ratings from small samples and they all ended up between 3 and 4 out of 5. It was actually quite hard to pick out the three to vote for since I had 7-8 candidates. It would be very interesting to see the final results from the peoples choice.

At the festival I ran into a couple more bloggers, Jonas from Pilsner.nu, Johan from Portersteken, Maarten from Saccharolicious, Johan from Gjölen and Jonas from Öl i Stockholm. I might have forgotten someone here, if I did feel free to contact me and I will add you in. Either way it was nice to see so many beer bloggers present at the festival.

When we got to the festival just a few minutes past opening the place was pretty empty, but just  an hour or so later the room was packed with eager beer lovers. It was actually hard to get some time to talk to some brewers. But then again the low amount of beer made it easy to try it all and I could usually squeeze in a couple of words here and there.

Even though there where only 29 beers present there was a wide range of beer styles: Belgian wit, Saison, Super Saision, Tripel, Pale Strong Belgian Ale, Brune, Double, Dark Strong Belgian Ale, Imperial Oud Bruin and Fruit Beer. The most common beer style was Dark Strong Belgian Ale.

Here is a bunch of pictures from the festival:

Lennart Köhler had a football team going on.

Chrille, Per and my father have just started trying beer.

Spillevink has been very successful over the years and I have to agree it’s a very nice beer.

Öl i Stockholm, Beer Drivel and Portersteken having a beer together.

The brewers where positioned on an island in the middle of the room.

Maarten is discussing his own brews.

This was one of my favorites, it’s called the enchanted beast in English. Nice sticker as well.

Above to the left is the brewers of the beast.

Gjölen is happy about something… I bet it’s all the awsome beer.

As you can see the place was starting to get packed after a while.

Erkki, Anders and my father (Åke) participated with two brews. Lenas Second Disaster (Dark Strong Belgian Ale) and 3 Little Devil Brewers (Trippel). They didn’t win anything but I have to say the Trippel was very nice, allot better since last time I tried it.

Chrille made the stickers and they looked great, specially the trippel on the right. I with they would have had a sticker competition.

Above is the winners of the peoples choice awards.

1) Nr 26 – Trequartista 10 – Lennart Köhler

2) Nr 15 – Robin Blond – Mats Hellman and Bo Eriksson

3) Nr 21 – La Bête enchantée – Henrik Ihre

All great beers. Unfortunately I didn’t get a good picture of the winners in the judges competition.

Sorry for the long break but now I’m back again. I’ve had to focus on other things then writing about beer for a while.

This weekend it’s time for the homebrew festival that focus on Belgian beerstyles. You can get more info in Swedish here. It is located in Uppsala and will take place on Saturday between 12:00 and 17:00. This is actually the first homebrew festival I visited. It was then located in an old building close to Economicum in Uppsala, which was a nice setting for a small festival. It has since then moved location to northern Uppsala to a much bigger locale. It lost some of it’s atmosphere but I think it was a good move since the old building was getting overly crowded.

I’ve always liked this festival. It might seem one-sided to only have belgian beer styles, but there are so many to choose from, that you don’t really think about it. Also the people that participate is also often very passionate about this type of beer and tend to put their heart into it. So the overall quality is usually very high.

Hopefully I will meet some of you there, but if you can’t make it I suggest you celebrate with a nice Belgian beer at home or at your favorite pub.

My father recently complained that I don’t keep him informed about upcoming festivals, so I figured it might be a good idea to post a list of upcoming (and already past events). I’ve added some other alcohol related festivals as well. Let me know if I have forgotten something.

30 jan. – Belgofesten, Uppsala (home brewed beer)
6 feb. – Linköping Whisky Expo
26-27 march – Sundsvall Beer & Whisky
9-10 april – Chateu Grand Cru, Örebro (Wine and cheese)
10 april – Linköpings Beer Expo
21-24 april – Vinordic, Stockholm (various alc. beverages, incl. beer)
22-24 april – Gothenburg Beer Festival
24 april – Swedish Championship in home brewed beer (Göteborg)
8 may (??) – Enköpings Open (home brewed beer)
30 sept. – 2 oct. and 7-9 oct. – Stockholm Beer & Whisky
29-30 oct. – Söderbärke Micro beer festival
19-20 nov. (??) – Örebro Beer & Whisky

Foreign beer festivals:
6-8 may – Copenhagen Beer Festival
3-7 aug. – Great British Beer Festival
16-18 sept- Great American Beer Festival

Tomorrow I jump on the train to Uppsala to visit the Belgofest. It’s a homebrew festival that focus on belgian beer and is usual helt this time of year. It’s one of my favorite festivals due to my love to belgian and homebrewed beer but also that it’s quite small.

I should have some pictures up on sunday, depending on how many beers I sample on saturday

Next weekend I’m going to Örebro to visit the Beer and Whisky Festival. I’ll be there on saturday together with Per, my father and some other people that usually show up on this blog. Ölkultur med David och Fredrik recently published the beer list and here it is again. Looks like allot of promising brewers and importers are coming. Chrille is officially releasing his Pannknektarnas Kaffeporter, even though it had a sneak premier at Bishops a while back. I also hope to meet some fellow beer bloggers.

Brill hasn’t released what beers they are bringing but if it’s anything like what they had at SBWF 2009 I will be very happy. I tried some fantastic beers at their booth and hope to try some more this time.

Närke has a fairly big selection of beers and I hope to try their Närke Kaggen 2008 Pure Swedish Oak. I have already tried their 2007 and 2008 versions twice and they where both great but 2008 was slightly better. I like their InternationAle so I also hope to try the New InternationAle.

Galatea is bringing a couple of belgian beers I haven’t tried before so might be able to fill in some holes. I’ve tried most of the beers from Hantverksbryggeriet and Nynäshamn, but I have a couple that I haven’t rated yet.

Great Brands is bringing a bunch of beers that I want to try, will probably stand at their booth for a while. The first four breweries on their list is very interesting and Harviestoun brews one of the best lagers I have ever tried, so hopefully I can try some more beers from that brewery.

There are also allot of other breweries and importers that I haven’t mentioned but something that seems worth mentioning are the producers displayed under “ÖVRIGA”. There are some cheese and chocolate companies and also Torslundskagge who makes wooden barrels, one beer that use them is Närke Kaggen Stormaktsporter.

As we started to finish up in the beer hall we made our way across to Folkets Hus where they had all the bottled beer (except for the ones in the singles bar). Here they had a wide range of swedish micro brewed beer but also a couple of foreign breweries like: Antares, Hoppin Frog, Holgate and a couple more. I wonder who brought them along? Was it Monks?

Fairly soon after we arrived they released a suprise beer. Apparently the organizer of the festival had met the brewer from De Molen and he had been impressed by the festival and decided to dedicate a beer to it. I couldn’t quite hear the whole story due to bad sound but it was something about a keg being left behind in his back yard.

Bloed, Zweet and Tranen (bottle) 8,1%
It poured a dark liquid with a small light brown foam. It had a smell of something burned and smoke, also some sourness and stingy on the noose. It had a smooth mouhfeel. It had a sweet taste of smoked ham, honey and vanilla. Decent beer but it felt a bit watered down.
Total: 3/5
Just as with last year we made our own Närke Stormaktsporter testing. I think it will be a returning edition to SMÖF for me. Me, my father and Nicklas shared a sample of each bottle: Kaggen Stormaktsporer 2008 and Närke Stormaktsporter 2007 and 2008. I have already rated Kaggen and gave it a 4,9/5, the highest score I have so far given to a beer. But I haven’t rated Stormaktsportern even though I have tested it several times. Looks like I didn’t take notes this time either so I will leave the proper rating for another day. Great beers though.

All in all a great festival. I tried 76 beers where I think 65 where new to me. I actually didn’t have anything interesting left to try at the end, which is a new feeling for me. But I got a chance to re-try some great beers such as Three Floyds Behemoth Barley Wine. The next festival is Örebro Beer and Whisky and I hear allot of interesting brewers and importers are coming.

There was a new edition to this festival, the singles bar. No, this wasn’t a place to meet single men and women. It was a place for beer geeks to meet single bottles of beer and I think allot of love was created this evening. They served one bottle at the time and as soon as the bottle was finished they opened a different one. I didn’t try them all but a couple of noticable beers where: Mikkeller Simcoe Single Hop IPA, Old Viscosity, Three Floyds Behemoth Barley Wine. I didn’t see the full list of beers but I know Chrille and his friend worked very hard to finish them off so that they could taste the next one.

Berith and H-G from Närke Kulturbryggeri together with my father and Erkki in front of the singles bar.

Another change was that they didn’t brew any beer outside this year. Which was a nice addition but I can imagine it wasn’t allot of fun for the person having to stand outside in the cold all evening.

Another addition to this years festival was a cheese stand. They sold nice cheeses at really affordable prices. I personally bought a pot of Stilton for 60 sek, and 100g of Gamle Ole for 20 sek. The cheese platters where great snacks with the beer. I really hope they got the cheese mobile next year as well.

My brother, grandfather, Toivo and myself tasting some tap beer.

After a while I finished off most of the tap beers. I had only left a couple of stouts and porters which I planned to go back and taste later in the evening. So I crossed over to Folkets Hus where they had all the bottled beer. But more about that tomorrow…

They had a competition for the best beer of the festival called Guldskum. I’m not sure how they choose the beer but there where seven beers from different breweries participating in the competition. I tried them all and below is the score with a short comment:

Irish Pub Sundsvall Guldkusten (tap) 4,3%

It poured a hazy brown-golden liquid with a dirty yellow foam. Strong smell of malt and yeast. Very smooth and easy to drink. Taste of malt and hops.

Total: 2,8/5

Eskilstuna Oktoberfestöl (tap) 6,2%

It poured a hazy golden liquid with a small white foam that left some lacing. Very weak smell. Some sourness, a bit stingy mouthfeel. Decent beer.

Total: 2,5/5

Tanngnjost och Tanngnisrir (tap) 7,5% (couldn’t find it at Ratebeer)

It poured a dark hazy golden liquid, with a small yellow foam that left some lacing. Smelled of smoked ham. Smooth mouthfeel and very smokey, like it had been poured through a large chunk of smoked ham.

Total: 3/5

Oppigårds Pale Ale (tap) 5,5%

It poured a slightly hazy golden liquid with a small white foam. It had a fresh smell and taste of grassy and flowery hops, citrus, grapefruit and hay. Nice!

Total: 3,2/5

Skebo Vinteröl (Stilla fNatt?) (tap) 5,4%

It poured a hazy brown liquid with a small white foam. It had a weak smell of caramell and malt. Some spices in the smell. Good christmas beer.

Total: 2,7/5

Slussvaktaren Strömsholm (tap) 4,5%

I rated this a couple of weeks ago.

Total: 3/5

Monks Kaffeporter (bottle)

It poured a dark liquid with a small light brown foam. It had a smell and taste of coffey, chocolate and something smoked. Also some sweetness. Fairly smooth mouthfeel.

Total: 3,1/5

The winner was Oppigårds Pale Ale, which was also the beer I voted for. Congratulations!

We all met at the train station to take a bus to Söderbärke. Only a few had dropped out due to sickness or work, but a large part of the Eriksson family was there. We even took a family picture:During the bustrip I shared a couple of bottles of DBH2. I think most of them enjoyed it even though it’s quite extreme. Besides that it was a calm trip, I didn’t have any beer to save myself for testing at the festival. But it was a very nice bustrip, the scenery as you get closer to Söderbärke is very nice, with big hills and lakes passing by the window.

We reached the festival at 13:00, one hour after opening and there had already formed a line. But it didn’t take long before we got inside and got a sample of this years festival beer brewed by Skebo.

Skebo Söderbärke Festöl (tap) 5,2%
It poured a clear golden liquid with no foam. Weak smell of malt and bread. Smooth mouthfeel and very easy to drink. Tasted of malt and grassy hops. Can imagine it working well on a hot summer day.
Total: 2,3/5

After finishing of the first beer we made our way to the hall where they had all the tap beer. There where already quite allot of people there but the sound level was suprisingly low and it stayed that way the whole day. The service behind the taps was great and it didn’t take long to get a sample.

I just noticed that they released the SMÖF booklet. I had problems with the link, if you have the same problem as me just Save Target and open the file from your computer.

I noticed a couple of changes to the beer list. Ex: Bridgeburner Special Reserve Ale from Lakefront (couldnt find the beer) seems to have been cancelled and instead I find La Trappe Isid’or in its position. A beer that will be released at Systembolaget next month. They had also added an India Pale Ale from St Peters.