I was at the World Beer Cup for the very first time as an official media endorser, a rather fancy title that meant I agreed to give coverage to the event in return for a mention in the gala programme and a ticket to the party. As the WBC is without doubt one of the most respected beer competitions on the global circuit it was a pretty easy deal to sign up to.

The crowds gather outside for the WBC table-dash.

After four hectic days of CBC it was finally time to mingle with over 2,000 representatives from the world beer scene. As the Swedish contingent of Jessica Heidrich from S:t Eriks, Patrick Holmqvist from Nils Oscar and myself gathered outside the hall we learnt it was always a free-for-all when the doors opened to grab the best tables.

******Click here for a 360 of the WBC gala dinner just minutes before the awards ceremony began.*****

Fortunately Jessica was on top of things and got a table just metres from the jumbo screen near the front of the impressively constructed stage. After being joined by Mr Mohawk Stefan Gustavsson and BrewDog James we listened as the Brewers Association’s president Charlie Papazian (of ‘relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew’ fame) kicked off proceedings.

The statistics behind the bi-annual World Beer Cup certainly make impressive reading.

It was the ninth time the WBC has been held and this year it boasted the strongest field of entrants on record, with 799 breweries from 54 countries and 45 U.S. states entering 3,921 beers in 95 beer style categories.

*****Click here to see the rousing introduction to this year’s ceremony. Note the cheers from our table as the Swedish flag appears and then the solitary cheer as the Union Jack is shown. That was me.*****

After a three-course meal matched with some stunning US beers we sat and listened as the medal winners in all 95 categories were announced. This took some time and after an hour my hands were so sore from applauding I was forced to switch to banging the table with my spoon.

All this time I was hoping to hear the name of a Swedish brewery being called up – all the Swedish brewers on my table had entered beers – but alas it was not to be.

One familiar name from Scandinavia did however scoop a silver and that was The Fundamental Blackhorn in the American style Imperial Stout category from the Danish Hornbeer brewery.

Click to expand. The first 62 of 140 beers served on draft, for free, during the CBC and WBC. Bingo!

What struck all of us sitting around the table was the lack of ‘big’ names being called up to the stage to receive prizes. Instead it was the smaller up and coming, grass-roots US craft breweries that appeared to have hit home with the judges this year.

I’d particularly like to highlight the Pelican Pub & Brewery, which won two golds as well as scooping a number of international accolades in the previous year. If there is one brewery’s beers I’d particularly love to see here in Sweden it would be this one, although given its small size and popularity at home I’m not going to hold my breath.

As the 95^th award was announced it was time for a round of hugging, back-slapping and business card shuffling before we headed off to the resort’s Tiki Pavilion to indulge in 140 US beers on draft. That’s right – 140 beers, all numbered so you simply shouted out a digit to get your beer.

It was the most exciting and elaborate game of beer bingo I’ve ever played and despite unknowingly heading towards a nightmare two-day journey back home I played as long and as hard as I could.

It was a fitting conclusion to an inspiring week in San Diego. Once again the CBC had surpassed my wildest expectations. Next year the show moves east to Washington DC and I’ll be flying there, only this time directly, avoiding connections like the plague.**

*some people had apparently changed their beer t-shirts.

** I would like to take this opportunity to thank the entire BA crew, with Bob, Erin, Mark and Andy getting special mentions, for their kindness, hospitality and professionalism over the days I was in the USA. You really do know how to put on a show!

But my personal celebrations were cut short when just five paragraphs into the newly appointed writer’s introductory interview she makes the comment:

Screen shot taken from DN.se Mat & Dryck website.

“Öl är inte alls lika komplicerat som vin. Det finns färre parametrar. Det handlar om alkohol, beska och lite sötma”.

(Translation: “Beer is not at all as complex as wine. There are fewer parameters. It’s about alcohol, bitterness and a little sweetness).

Those 20 words speak volumes to me. They tell me that this beer writer coverts wine above beer, that from a technical perspective she hasn’t done her research and from her demeaning summary of beer’s qualities she’d probably be far more suited to writing about Chardonnay.

Indeed one look at her photograph suggests this is the case, a personal photograph in which she is pictured happily clutching a bunch of grapes. Yes that’s right, grapes – the stuff wine is made out of and which beer is not (although as ‘uncomplicated’ as beer apparently is grapes can in fact be found in several exciting beers).

Already here DN is guilty of shooting itself in both feet. To post a picture of Sanna in a vineyard presumably taken while she studied for her sommelier education is laughably unprofessional and dismissive to beer as a drink and to us as beer drinkers. Would they have ever introduced a wine expert holding a pile of hops in their hands? I think we all know the answer to that.

It would have taken mere seconds for someone at DN to take a digital picture of Sanna holding a glass of beer but apparently an old school photo of grapes was more than sufficient. On pure journalistic terms this is very sloppy work indeed.

I don’t want this to turn into a personal attack on Sanna Blomquist, whom I have never met and who I’m sure is a very capable and professional person. However the fact is Sanna is now in a position of power to influence the way thousands of people think about beer. And with power comes responsibility – a responsibility to learn about the craft of beer, to understand its history and cultural context, to explore the complex ways in which is it produced and to tell the stories of the amazing people that brew it with passion and integrity.

I’m afraid for me at least that Sanna’s appointment has struck a very raw nerve. In December 2009 I wrote this open letter to the mainstream media urging them to wake up to the craft beer revolution that was seemingly passing them by.

And yet here we are, three and a half years later, and sadly very little appears to have changed.

Beer of course has been busy globally reinventing itself as an exciting drinking experience, with new styles, new brewing techniques and new food pairing possibilities coming along practically every week.

But the Swedish mainstream media remains blinded by the aura and advertising revenue of the wine industry and (with some notable exceptions) has epically failed to report one of the most significant shifts in the food and drinks industry in recent years.

So although I should be happy that a national newspaper has taken the initiative to appoint a beer writer I’m really anything but.

Call it sour grapes if you will, but I believe beer deserves to be treated better than this. 

Enough.

The line-up of beers was world-class

Enough amazing beer thank you very much. Enough limited edition, one-off never-to-be-repeated batches, enough sour ales so rare people will fly half way around the globe to try them and enough barrel-aged, fruit-infused, style-stretching beers already.

Enough.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I really don’t. After all the back-to-back experiences of Sour and Bitter and the Copenhagen Beer Celebration have included without question the best beers I have ever tried on European soil.

It started on Thursday evening at the Sour and Bitter event, an avant-garde beer experience held in a remote urban warehouse on the outskirts of the capital.

Only 250 tickets were sold for this exclusive event. Everyone turned up.

The place was already filling up with beer enthusiasts as I arrived, many of them slouched on beanbags littered around the floor. I’m deliberately avoiding the word geek here although personally I don’t have a problem with it. It would however be fair to say the people that paid 520DK for an entry ticket and then upwards of 40DK for a 10cl serving of beer were ‘highly motivated drinkers”.

Around one table sat a large group of Americans who had flown over especially to sample the beers from the ‘supremo of sour’ Armand Debelder and his iconic 3 Fonteinen brewery.

Gazing at the beer list was overwhelming. With names like Pizza Port, The Bruery. Lost Abbey and Port Brewing, as well as the aforementioned 3 Fonteinen my normal festival rule of starting out ‘light and simple’ wasn’t going to fly here.

So instead I started with the ‘bitter’ side of the list. And by bitter you should really read hoppy. For 100DK I got four 25cl samples of Pizza Port beer – a fantastic deal in my book, so I had them all – all 16 of them.*

Favourites? Kung Fu Elvis (for the beer as well as the the name) while Bagbys Last Stand Barrel Aged Blend was all vanilla fudge, sweet coffee and bourbon and utterly delicious. Notable mentions to Spitting Cobra for its aroma of intensely green freshly ground hop pellets and 547 Haight, a rasping red imperial IPA. To be honest, hot on the heels of the ‘other’ CBC the remaining beers were solid but not knee-wobblers.

Lambic and cheese. Worked.

Then came the food, a rather curious affair handed to me in a brown paper bag containing a bizarre collection of food bites and what looked like a small plastic bag of category A drugs.

As it turned out each item was designed to match a number of different food stations positioned around the floor. The problem was without any clear instruction I couldn’t really figure out what went with what. The lack of plates (coupled with the lack of anywhere to sit down) made eating messy and awkward.

The paper bag however came in rather useful at the end of the evening to breathe into and help fend off a panic attack when, after scooping the 3 bottles of 3 Fonteinen Framboos every ticket holder was entitled to for 200DK each I tried to mentally calculate how much money I’d spent that evening.

And so it was onto the sours, which many considered the stars of the show. Sours (a beer term that incorporates lambics, gueuzes and Flanders red ale) have attracted a cult following among craft beer drinkers in recent years.

Menno Olivier from De Molen and Alec Stefansky from Uncommon Brewers talking yeast.

I don’t think there’s another beer style that polarizes drinkers more than sours. For the majority a sip of sour is like drinking an unpalatable cocktail of balsamic vinegar and lime-juice. For the devotees however sours are nothing short of a high art form and they marvel at how sour producers somehow manage to bring order to the unpredictability of wild yeasts.

Highlights? Well nearly all of them to be honest. In a moment of clarity I really understood how truly gifted Armand Debelder is when I took a sip of The Bruery’s Mother Funker (best name of the night?) – a delicious sour blonde aged mainly in Chardonnay barrels – and followed it with a sip of Armand’s 4 – Winter.

It was like having scratched a winning lottery ticket, only to scratch the multiplier and reveal x10. There was such forceful grace and poise in Armand’s Winter that my notes read simply “flawless”.  The Millennium Geuze and Isabelle Proximus equally so.

Most memorably moment? Probably buying my three bottles of Framboos from ‘Evil Twin Jeppe’ out of the back of a van. It felt so wrong, yet somehow so right.

Was it worth the money? Well the ‘what-no-plates?’ food experience frankly left me feeling a little bitter but the beers left the sort of sour taste in my mouth I was after. So yes for me, as one of the devotees, I came, I drank, I geeked and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

Coming soon: I move on to the Copenhagen Beer Celebration where (yes, you’ve guessed it) there’s even more amazing beers to try!

*there was lots of sharing, just in case my doctor is reading this.

Stillwater, Three Floyds, De Struise, De Molen, Cigar City, Brodies, Kernel, Evil Twin, Dieu de Ciel and BrewDog are just some of the names the crowds are running to today.

I’ll be back later with an update but for now I’m diving back into the crowd to sniff out more top brews. Before I go here’s a few pictures of the first few minutes of the festival for you

But that’s exactly what we did at DFH’s Positive Contact Food, Beer and Music Mash-up at the stunning Belly Up Tavern after learning that we’d have to wait a long time for the live music to kick in. Of course we didn’t leave before we’d had several servings of DFH’s newest creation combined with a selection of exciting dishes designed to match it.

For the next three days the conference rolled into action. I won’t go into detail about the event itself, only to say it is a totally immersive experience for anyone who is in any way involved in the beer business (or wants to be), with a constant stream of seminars, workshops, tastings and networking opportunities.

Once again what struck me much more than the event’s content were the people that attended it. I touched on this theme at last year’s CBC and feel it’s important to revisit it again this year because for me the single most impressive thing about the US craft beer scene is the genuine sense of camaraderie among the people that represent it.

It sounds contrite to write but they really do come across as one huge family, all driven by a singular and simple common purpose – to brew great beer. I’ve never experienced such a collective will to push beer to its limits in Europe. I hope one day I will.

So back to the madness and I’ll stick to the highlights so as not to fill up the Internet too much.

Pulling up in front of the Hotel del Coronado the first thing I thought was that I wished I’d worn a shirt and proper shoes. The building reeks the sort of class and status only serious money can buy (two things me and my drinking partners were arguably lacking to differing degrees that evening) and a quick scan of the parking lot crammed full of performance sports cars and limos confirmed we were just about to enter the rarefied atmosphere of San Diego’s social elite.

Therefore it came as no small relief having rushed heads down through the hotel’s imposing wood-paneled lobby to find glasses of beer thrust into our hands. We were here to take part in a vertical tasting of eight vintages of North Coast Brewing’s iconic Old Stock Ale crafted between 2001 and 2012. The evening was hosted by the Fort Bragg brewery’s brewmaster Mark Ruedrich and North Coast’s founders Doug and Deborah Moody who were some of the most friendly and charming people I met this trip.

A 2006 vintage Old Stock Ale. Once again my stand-out favourite. View's quite nice too.

Each vintage was paired with a different cheese and I spent a glorious couple of hours in convivial company on the balcony overlooking the palm tree-lined beach watching the sun dip over the ocean while nibbling, sipping and chatting about how age had set its mark on this world-class beer.

The fresh, plum, raisin and caramel notes of the 2012 (paired with a nutty Parmigiano Reggiano) set the baseline. Moving through the years the beer’s youthful sweetness mellowed and leathery, cedar-like tones pushed through. But it was at 2006 that for me the magic happened. It was here the beer hit its zenith – still ripe with dark fruit flavours but now displaying the complexity of age, with hints of tobacco leaves and sherry. Paired with a Colston-Basset Stilton it was utterly magnificent and even in this most elegant of settings this beer felt perfectly in place. It was a true testament to beer’s ability to adapt to any social setting.

Fast forward three hours and we stepped in, hungry, to one of the very best craft beer bars I’ve ever been to.

Most of the people working and drinking at the Craft and Commerce bar looked like they’d spent the day auditioning for America’s Next Top Model.

This picture doesn't do Craft and Commerce justice. The attention to detail and finishes are top of the line. Beer and cocktail list rocks too!

Feeling a little ugly and out of place we ordered a round of Racer 5s anyway and gawped at the classy interior and the sheer number of young women strung around the bar. Whoever says craft beer is a man’s drink really needs to check this concept out.

Fast forward three more hours and we’re flagging now. I’m even thinking of calling it a night but the Ska boys clearly have other plans.

The Ska crew (headed by Dave, Bill, Thomas and Arlo) are the coolest, craziest bunch of brewers I’ll ever meet. It’s a pretty safe bet that if there’s a party going on somewhere around the CBC then the Ska crew are either crashing it or on their way.

“Dudes,” (the Ska crew always start every sentence this way) “there’s this awesome rock club we’re hitting that’s just five minutes away. We’ve got a bus and we’re leaving now so move it man!”

We had little choice (to be fair we didn’t exactly put up a fight) and within moments an unfeasibly large number of beer people bundled into Ska’s camper van. Of course five minutes became 20 as we weaved our way hopelessly lost through dodgy parts of San Diego. Eventually we made it to the rock club and spent a blurry few hours drinking Jack and cokes washed down with Bitburger. I think dancing was also involved…..

Next: In my final CBC post I describe the scene at the CBC’s Tiki Pavilion where 140 craft beers were served for two nights on draft and I’ll even show you the beer list! Plus I’ll upload some exclusive footage of the ‘Swedish table’ from inside the gala dinner at the World Beer Cup. Don’t miss it!

Different words perhaps, but the message is the same.

The Craft Brewers Conference is without question the most professionally executed and overwhelmingly intense annual gathering of brewers anywhere on the planet.

Organised by the Brewers Association it brings together all the players in the burgeoning American craft beer community to check on who’s done what, who’s won what and, perhaps most entertainingly of all, who’s doing what!?

I want to give you an idea of the scale of the event but to be honest I’m struggling to reduce it to words.

We all know everything in the USA seems larger somehow, from US cars and shopping malls to a sizeable proportion of the population itself.

Well the CBC is also super-sized – an obese triple-header that combines the Conference with BrewExpo America (where brewers go to buy shiny things) and last, but certainly not least, the World Beer Cup.

Checking into room 1907 of the San Diego Hotel Town and Country Resort Hotel and Conference Center (you see, even the names are large) I found two ‘cans’ of Chaka Belgium-style ale waiting for me on my bedside table, signalling the start of four days of beer tastings and drinking  (yes, there really is a difference) taking in some of the most celebrated US craft beers to be found.

First beer of the day and a stylish growler to go!

After a restless first night’s sleep I woke early to register, pick up my speakers badge (this year I gave a seminar on how US Craft breweries can connect online to European craft beer drinkers) and met Jörgen from OT for a day-long bus tour of four San Diego breweries.

First stop was the newly started Societe Brewing Company. When I say new I mean it as the beers we tried were the very first to come out of the brand new set-up. And just as the brewery looked new the beers tasted new (and a little unfinished) too. Still, drinking IPAs at work at 8.40am is always fun whenever you can swing it.

Next up was a brewery that needs no further presentation. Lost Abbey/Port Brewing Company is a legend in the US craft beer scene and stepping into it to see the man himself Tomme Arthur standing behind the bar with samples of beer at the ready was an ecclesiastical moment.

This is just one of the chalkboards at Lost Abbey/Port Brewing. There are two more like this.

I could write a entire post about our all too brief stop there but I won’t. Suffice to say that taking a peak into the brewery’s barrel-aging room, where racks of oak casks filled with sours and Belgium style strong ales lined the walls was like staring into the very soul of beer. It was a moment when the chatter of the bus crowd somehow disappeared, my senses heightened and the quietness of the room and the knowledge of what it contained rushed over me. As a beer lover it was a moment I will never forget.

And then there were the beers – oh the beers! A stop at LA/PBC is like ordering the mac ‘n’ cheese and then smothering it with a side order of mayo. Not only are LA/PBC rightfully considered the leaders in Belgiums and sours but they also knock out amazing IPAs like Mongo and an aggressive imperial red ale in the form of Shark Attack that is every bit as good as this one.

A glass of Lost Abbey's Framboise de Amorosa. Perfection!

I could have happily stayed perched on a bar stool at LA/PBC for the rest of the day but the bus was stubbornly waiting to take us to our next stop – Mother Earth Brew Co.

So that's two free Double IPAs, an Imperial Black IPA and a cask conditioned blonde. Anything else?

After the last brewery I felt something close to pity pulling up outside. How on earth was any brewery going to follow what we’d just experienced? As it turned out Mother Earth, in its own way, managed to do just fine.

Smaller that LA/PBC and a little less polished it may be but Mother Earth captures the spirit of craft beer perfectly. From its small bar we tried a delicious cask conditioned blonde ale (Ed note: cask being probably the one thing the Americans don’t always do right just yet) and an Imperial Black IPA that requires me to take back what I recently said about this beer because this is the best black IPA I have ever drunk in my life!

Rounding off the tour was a trip to Iron Fist Brewing Co, a cool brewery with great tap handles and a concussive Imperial Stout called Velvet Glove that almost floored me after 7 hours of being on tour.

As we poured back onto the bus I began to grasp how enormous the Craft Brewers Conference experience really was. After all, we’d already tasted over 20 massive beers and before the jet lag was going to get the better of us we still had the DogFish Head Food and Beer Mash-up Party to crash plus a trip to one of the most complete, and to borrow an Americanism I used rather too freely in San Diego, awesome craft beer bars I’ve ever had the pleasure of hanging out in.

But that’s another story. Coming soon.

But it somehow went horribly wrong when thunder clouds rolled in from the west over Chicago this afternoon and closed the city’s airport, causing my United Airlines plane which was already on route to the windy city to be diverted to Indianapolis, turning a routine sub-four hour flight into a plus 10 hour one.

I waited in a stage of ever-increasing anxiety as the air traffic chaos that followed the storms stalled the captain’s attempt at taking off four times. I watched with a growing sense of frustration and finally defeat as the hands of my watch ticked around to the time my connecting flight to Stockholm left. Rather ironically exactly on time.

If you gave away a free six-pack of Ingrid, an iPad 6, a ticket to The Avengers and a date with Scarlet Johansson you might just get a queue this long. Maybe.

As I trudged out of the gate at Chicago O’Hare’s Terminal one four hours too late I didn’t think things could get much worse. Until I saw the line to United Airline’s Customer Service Desk and realised it could.

For six and a half hours I stood in that line, without food, water or a single toilet break. Finally I was told by an assistant clearly tired of breaking bad news all night that there was only one seat to Stockholm left (via London) leaving at 3.50pm the next day. I was also informed that all the local hotels were now full and I faced the simple choice of driving over an hour away to find a proper bed or to try and make the best of things on one of the Terminal’s light blue plastic gate chairs. With little say in the matter I accepted the tickets and headed off to find some food to eat, only to discover the restaurants had shut a few hours before and would not open until 6am.

And so here I now sit at 2am as the day’s earlier storms have returned to light up the Chicago sky and shake the windows, eating a Hersey’s Chocolate bar and drinking a Minute Maid juice I liberated from a nearby vending machine, wondering how I am going to fill the 13 empty hours that lay ahead of me.

My company is my fellow displaced travelers, aimlessly wandering up and down the empty terminal halls, staring into the windows of shuttered shops to pass the time. And the nice chap with the thick Chicago drawl on the public address system repeatedly telling me that the City of Chicago is offering stranded passengers free pasta in terminal three and not to leave my bags unattended (this wouldn’t be a problem I’ve muttered to him under my breath as neither I nor my airline can find them anyway).

My bed for the night, complete with complementary blankets to complete that 'vagrant' look.

I’ve therefore decided given my predicament and lack of sleep that my stories from San Diego should be written another time.

For now I’ll try and line this plastic chair with the blankets handed out by airline staff and grab a few minutes of shut-eye and dream of home and the mountain of Bacon and Egg McMuffins I’m going to order in four hours……..

*Actually I can’t see Jean Dujardin sporting a goatie, tattoos and a T-shirt with the slogan ”You Look Like I Need A Drink” at the next Oscars ceremony. But relatively speaking it was an extremely well orchestrated event.

Chicago, Chicago, it's a hell of a town!

I’ve just spent 10 hours buried in a small wooden box in Rest and Fly at Arlanda reluctantly listening to other people making out, opening and shutting doors, talking on telephones and dragging suitcases recklessly down corridors.

I promised myself as I woke at 4.14am to once again check the clock on my iPhone that if this is really is what being dead is like then I’m going to do my absolute best to stay alive for as long as possible.

Newly released from my coffin and with a new lease of life I’m writing this post from the departure lounge on Terminal 5 as I wait to board my flight to Chicago and then onwards to San Diego, the city that this year hosts the US Craft Brewers Conference.

Simply put the CBC is the largest gathering of brewing talent in the world. Here the people behind the beers and breweries that are rapidly becoming familiar names in pubs and fridges across Sweden meet to talk, share, learn and party.

And judging by the upsurge in sales of US craft beers both at home and overseas it looks like delegates will have plenty to celebrate, which is good because I’ll be there to crash the party and report back to you with some of the goings-on at the USA’s largest beer trade festival.

In fact it’s not really one festival but three, because as well at the conference itself there’s BrewExpo America that runs alongside it, an orgy of stainless steel, clever gadgets and pungent ingredients that I plan to spend a lot of time at this year for obvious reasons.

And then there’s the small matter of the World Beer Cup that’s the cherry on the cake of my epic week ahead. This coming Saturday night (and I still have to pinch myself as I write this) BeerSweden is attending the glitzy awards ceremony as an official media endorser. I also happen to know some Swedish beers are in the mix for some awards. I wonder if I need to buy a tie?

After 12 hours of drinking local beers it's probably not just Dogfish Head's food, beer & music that's going to be mashed-up. Pacing yourself is vital if you're going to get the most out of the CBC!

But that seems a lifetime away right now. First I need to lose 9 hours, battle through the queues at US, navigate my way through Chicago’s sprawling O’Hare International Airport and finally check in to my hotel in San Diego, where no doubt all I’ll want to do is go to bed just as everyone else is going out.

It’s probably wise to resist the bars the first night because at 9.30am the nest morning my packed party work schedule begins with a 7-hour (!) guided bus tour around four local breweries, including a beery breakfast at Societe Brewing Company followed by stops at Lost Abbey / Port Brewing Company, Mother Earth Brew Company and Iron Fist Brewing Company.

As if that’s not enough then there’s the official welcome reception at San Diego Zoo where for the first time in my life I will be drinking beer in close proximity to man-eating animals and assume I survive that there’s a Dogfish Head beer and food mash-up kicking off until late.

And that’s just Tuesday. You get the general idea. The CBC is utterly over-the-top, utterly exhausting and utterly worth getting buried alive for.

See you on the other side!

*If anyone from Expressen is reading this I’m available for any headline writing gigs you’ve got open.