Stockholm Beer Festival '97

Akkurat's beers included amongst many others two of both the groups and my personal all time favourites, Westvleeteren 12 and Westvleeteren 8. The beers from this Belgian Trappist-monastery are extremely rare, you can ususally only get it right at the monastery, and they are also extremely tasty. Both are tremendously complex, mature, and all the many flavours are perfectly balanced. Both beers scored 4.71 which is an incredible figure enough for a split second place, while the least alcoholic variety Westvleeteren 6 *only* scored 4.11.

The two other beers that reached our top-20 this Friday was brewpub Bredaryds Pubbryggeri's unpateurized and unfiltered lager. According to the man behind the bar the beer varies with the season, and I guess this robust, malty and complex lager was their autumn variety. This beer got the award for "Best Swedish beer, all categories". Another of my new all-time favourites is Jämtlands Porter, a delicious Porter IMO rather similar to the Californian Sierra Nevada Porter. Also two other new beers from this strange countryside micro, htre whetaen lager Jämtlands Weiss President and their festival strong ale Jämtlands Bärsärk scored exceptionally well.

Continuing down the list we'll find the Dutch Leeuw Dortmunder at the score 4.05, and further down, but still on an excellent score the best American of the night, Great Divide Hibernation Ale from Colorado. There's also Cheval Blanc Titanic Ale, the best scoring Canadian beer so far at 3.87.

Since almost all the beers we tried were of supernb quality the scores were extremely high, only the pretty lame Indian Cobra Beer fell out of the picture and scored a modest 2.02.

A big thanks to the knowledged, friendly and helpful people at the most bars, and a big laugh in the face at the unknowledged and unfriendly bully who tried to sell the Cuban/American Hatuey Beer...