Christmas Ratings '97

Of course we took the opportunity to rate a couple of other beers while we still were gathered. Out of those we were the most impressed by two American beers on sale in Sweden: The complex Minnesotan Brewer's Cave Golden Caramel Lager and the dark wheat beer Wit Black Ale from Spring Street Brewing Co. My personal favourite of the entire evening was however the great Czechis pils Ferdinand Svetlé 12%.

Later on we added some other beers, amongst others three homebrews kindly given to us by Lars Stjernestam. Two of them were Czechis pilsners, and the third a Dortmunder. All three were remarkably fresh, hoppy and outright delicious, with his Uddala Diös Pils ending up as the rounds overall winner at the excellent score 4.32. Two great Swedish Christmas brews were also rated: The weirdly spiced Tomtefar with it's well balanced cinnamon flavours, and the dark and rich Gamlestadens Julöl 1997. And we must not forget Jämtlands Mellan a nicely hoppy lager from the awesome Jämtlands Bryggeri.

Over to the beers I would not recommend: The thin and sour Norrlands Jul from Spendrup's is one of the worst Julöl I ever tried, and Grolsch Amber Ale I could barely stomach. The American style watered down lager Rembrandt Masterpiece was another of the many examples of bad Dutch lager they export. Very paranoid beer country, so much great beer, but also so many awful ones. The worst beer according to us this time was a Svagdricka, which is some traditional style very low alcoholic dark and sweet beer-like drink, that some of us wasn't all that delighted to try...