From the Road: Doug and Alesong go to Sweden

Hello everyone!  Doug here…. Checking in after a whirlwind weekend in Alesong’s newest market - Sweden!  

Earlier this year, we won a tender offer to send a full batch of Rhino Suit (in cans!) over to Sweden for their state-owned liquor stores. For a small producer like Alesong, it’s awesome because you get into the system by submitting samples for blind tasting, so it’s really about what’s in the bottle, rather than all of the other stuff that goes into getting on a major retailer’s shelf in the US. The official launch of those beers is finally here and happened to coincide with one of the bigger beer festivals in Scandinavia - the Stockholm Beer and Whiskey Festival. I was lucky enough to travel over here to represent Alesong at that festival—and with help from the Brewers Association—partner with other awesome US breweries to represent American craft beer in Sweden. Here’s a quick rundown and a bunch of pictures.

We started off the weekend rolling right into an incredible pairing luncheon for Swedish media representatives at a super cool Stockholm restaurant called The Portal. I cannot say enough about how delicious the food was, but also an incredible old building with a super fun and intimate basement kitchen for our first few courses and then back up to the dining room for the main events. I have to say the seared fallow deer was incredible and the grilled langostinos with a classic Allagash White was an awesome pairing. Alesong’s Double Barrel Oak & Ember finished off our meal in style and we were off to another event at a classic Stockholm beer bar - Oliver Twist.  

As it turned out, Oliver Twist actually became an unofficial meeting point every day of the weekend after the festival, so it would be an understatement to say I recommend it for anyone traveling to Stockholm!  Cask ales, local Swedish craft beer, and then of course an awesome assortment of American beers as well. Closely allied with our new importer, Great Brands, we couldn’t have found a better gathering place for the weekend!  Darren from Great Brands was even kind enough to walk us around for a little city tour before the festival on Friday, including a trip to the Systembolaget headquarters and flagship store, where we got to see how everything runs in this Swedish liquor system. There’s some pretty funny laws designed to prevent excess drinking (single serve only and all beer is sold at room temp so you can’t drink it immediately), but generally it seems like a very well organized system that provides the Swedes with a nicely curated variety of beer wine and liquor.

The rest of Friday and Saturday were busy running around to the Stockholm Beer and Whiskey Festival. As you might imagine, it’s very well organized and quite a bit less chaotic than some of the major American festivals. And really interesting that it included booths for major whiskey producers as well as all the breweries. We were at a shared booth with the Brewers Association of all the American craft breweries and then did some moonlighting at the Great Brands / Oliver Twist booth. Mixed in with that, I recorded two podcasts and we had three VIP tastings where each brewery walked through a beer and a little about their brewery with a group of about 50 discerning consumers. That’s an element organized by the Brewers Association, and one I’d love to see at more festivals as it’s so rare that people actually get to sit down and hear someone like Sierra Nevada Brewing’s Steve Grossman spend 5 minutes to walk them through a tasting of one of his beers without the chaos of a festival floor. 

The Swedes are really into beer and were stoked on the Alesong offerings, so I’m hoping we have only just begun a long relationship with the country.  Barrel-aged beer is not too common over here, so there was a really nice reception for our beer. Sweden is an incredibly beautiful place and we had some great experiences.  I’ll definitely be back to repeat most of them if I can… just maybe not the classic late night street food that is a wrap filled with mashed potatoes, shrimp salad, and a hot dog… Whoever came up with that combo is nuts!

A big thank you to Adam, Steve, and Lotte from the Brewers Association, Darren and Jorgen from Great Brands, Klas from Portal, and all of the amazing staff at all the events that took care of us all weekend!

Skål!

Doug