Ohhh... My Head... - Beer festivals spring 2003

Starting with the Danish Beer Festival yours truly went there on his own, and met up with several other beer geeks from Denmark and Switzerland. The organizers had managed to get more or less every Danish brewer worth a penny to attend the festival, and most had new, interesting beers to offer. Also the selection of foreign beers were very good, with a very strong French section, and the two cask ales from the new Norwegian brewer Nøgne Ø as the highlights. My favourite of the festival was however clearly the 15 year old sample of Limfjords Porter offered to us by the friendly, pipe smoking brewmaster. Now, that's how a real Baltic porter should be like. Second place was a toss up between two French beers from Canardou and St Amand, and the new wheat beer from Refsvindinge. It was also nice to see the high quality and originality at the new small breweries Grauballe and Wintercoat.

At the Swedish draught beer festival and Swedish breweries that had a product to be proud of had at least one beer represented, which means that more or less only Carlsberg Sweden and Kopparberg was missing... Grebbestads Lunator 2003, a beer which just keeps improving for every year it's brewed scored the highest. Interestingly on second place the was a cross between a Baltic porter and an Imperial stout from the extremely obscure new brewery Närke Kulturbryggeri. This, along with their smokey Svensköl was pilot brews, and they are not about to start real production until perhaps the end of next year. Nynäshmans Ångbryggeri, the organizers, also managed to put two beers on the teh top 5. Also nice to se was the rare appearance of real microbrewed Svagdricka, and also the rare sight of beers from Bredaryd and Ödmans, Sweden two premier brewpubs.

When Akkurat opened their annual lambic festival they didn't disappoint anyone. The selection of lambics and other sour beers were enormous and included rarities such as two 14 year old draught beers from Eylenbosch, plenty of unblended lambics, up to four served draught att he same time, and much more. It was on this event we found the best beer of the spring, and I rate Girardin Lambic as one of the best beers I've ever had. The competition was however really stiff, with the rare Drie Fonteinen 50th Anniversary Geuze stealing second place, just ahead of Eylenbosch Cuvée Special Frambozen '89 and Cantillon St. Lamvinus.

Oliver Twist offered a range of good to decent rarely seen bottle conditioned ales, and Soldaten Svejk did, beside a couple of unusual Czechish brews also get the big guys at Staropramen and Starobrno to deliver unpasteurized beers, usually only sold at the brewery.