Brian Lindberg Hansen got to know and love the Belgian beer world as a teenager. Since then, his journey has taken him to all the beer regions of the world. He became a member of the Danish beer consumers‘ association Danske Ølentusiaster and trained as a beer sommelier. For his employer Meny, he manages an extensive beer store in the middle of a supermarket in Købe. In addition to many hundreds of beers from Denmark, the best beers in the world can also be found here – a truly unique selection. In the podcast, we talk about Brian’s personal story, developments in the Danish beer market, and the best festivals that beer lovers should definitely visit…

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Link für Apple/iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/biertalk/id1505720750

Link für Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7FWgPXstFr1zR9Fm2G0UJS

 

Zusammenfassung auf Deutsch:

Brian Lindberg Hansen entwickelte bereits als Teenager eine Leidenschaft für belgisches Bier und ist Mitglied des dänischen Bierkonsumentenverbands Danske Ølentusiaster. Sein Geschäft bietet eine außergewöhnliche Auswahl an Hunderten von Bieren, darunter viele dänische sowie traditionelle Bierstile aus der ganzen Welt.

Brian begann im Alter von etwa 15 Jahren, sich für Bier zu interessieren, und unterschied sich von seinen Altersgenossen durch seine Vorliebe für außergewöhnliche Biere, insbesondere belgische und britische. In den 90er Jahren war die Bierlandschaft in Dänemark noch sehr begrenzt. Brian betonte die Bedeutung lokaler Brauereien und unterstützt aktiv kleinere unabhängige Brauereien, um Vielfalt und Innovation im Biermarkt zu fördern. Er hat in den letzten zehn Jahren maßgeblich dazu beigetragen, das Biersortiment seines Geschäfts zu erweitern und zu verbessern.

Die Craft-Bier-Szene in Dänemark entwickelt sich stetig weiter, und die Konsumenten werden zunehmend qualitätsbewusster. Brian sieht eine deutliche Verbindung zwischen der schnellen Verbreitung von Informationen über soziale Medien und der wachsenden Nachfrage nach hochwertigen Bieren. Er hob Mikkel Bjergsø von Mikkeller als eine Schlüsselfigur in der dänischen Craft-Bier-Bewegung hervor, die einen großen Einfluss auf die Qualität und Vielfalt der Biere in Dänemark hat.

Brian empfiehlt, die dänische Bierkultur durch den Besuch von Bierfestivals und spezialisierten Bars in Kopenhagen zu erkunden. Zu seinen Favoriten gehören die Bar Fermentoren im Stadtteil Vesterbro und die Bar Skøl in der Nähe eines der größten Plätze in Kopenhagen. Er erwähnt auch zwei wichtige Bierfestivals in Dänemark: das von den Danske Ølentusiasten organisierte Festival und das Køge Day Festival, das eine breite Palette dänischer Mikrobrauereien präsentiert.

Abschließend nannte Brian zwei seiner Lieblingsbiere aus seinem Geschäft: Ein Sour- und Old Ale namens Anica von der Mikrobrauerei Penyllan auf Bornholm und ein frisches IPA von Hill Farm​​.

 

Interviewtext:

Markus Raupach: Hello, and welcome to our listeners of the podcast BierTalk. Today we have another English episode. We are not in Great Britain and not in the States, but we are in Denmark and a good friend of mine, Brian Limberg, he has a huge beer store and a huge selection there. He’s also a member of the Danske Ølentusiaster which we will be talking about. So Brian, it’s wonderful that you are here. Maybe you introduce yourself a little bit to us.

Brian Lindberg: Hi everybody. My name is Brian Lindberg and I am the bottle shop manager here at the bottle shop, here in Køge here in Denmark where we are at the moment, one of the biggest beer stores in Denmark. We have around 900 to 1000 different types of beer on our shelves. Around half of them are actually Danish beers, local beers, beers from all around Denmark, actually. But we’re also very loyal to the traditional beer styles of the world. So we have huge sections with both English, German, especially Belgium, beer styles that we feel that people need to taste in order to continue their beer journey. So we like to think of ourselves as a beer store where you can come in as a complete new beginner and get beer that you can start your beer journey with. But we also like to be a beer store where you can continue your beer journey. So obviously, we have a lot of beers for the more geeky audience as well. So we do have a large span of, in our selection, but we like that and like to change our selection every once in a while. We do like to have a sort of … we like to be a part of the beer scene in Denmark and we like to talk to everybody. We like to hear from everybody who comes along with something new and yeah, we embrace new beer styles and we embrace new breweries who want to try something different. For us, local breweries are hugely important. We see ourselves, even though we’re a big supermarket and big beer store, we feel as if we have a responsibility to promote local beer. I think that local beer should be something that everybody should take seriously. If you don’t have smaller local breweries, small microbreweries, small nano breweries in selections in beer stores or the taprooms all around, then I think the big beer businesses of the world will take over slowly. Which I actually think we’re seeing some extent for samples of now. I think that the smaller independent breweries, they deserve a chance to be themselves without any interruption from big breweries. Having said that, we obviously still have beers from a lot of big breweries of the world. But we still strive to promote the smaller ones. I think that, and for us as a bigger store to be doing that, it just makes sense. Because most of the time, we’re able to get a hold of beers that are quite rare and maybe we can get a hold of very limited productions. So it’s an advantage for us to have something special in our store. But it’s also very, very good advantage for a smaller brewery to be able to say, well, we’ve got a beer in that store. So hopefully that will change the minds of other beer stores to think, Well, maybe we should have that brewery as well, because they’re at the biggest store downtown. Maybe we should do that as well.”

Markus Raupach: It’s really … and as I said, it’s maybe the most impressive selection I’ve ever seen and I really get around a lot. So that’s great. It’s also not only a single beer store, it’s located in a supermarket. So that’s also a great thing so that you have some vegetables and fruits and all the other stuff you have in the supermarket and then you have this really huge beer selection. So and maybe also for the listeners we are in the city of Køge. That’s about maybe a half an hour drive south of Copenhagen. But it’s a traditional beer city. So we will talk about that a little bit later. It’s also interesting that there is a lot of interesting beer cities, a lot of beer tradition in Denmark and also a lot of beer people all around Denmark. That’s maybe also the reason why this shop is working so well. But maybe we first look at you and your personal situation. So how did you come into beer? Did you love beer when you were young?

Brian Lindberg: I mean, I’m 40 years old and I think I started drinking beer when I was about 15. But I was the geeky guy who, when everybody was drinking traditional consumer lagers, I was drinking more of the more interesting stuff that was around back then. But in the 90s, the beer scene in Denmark was a desert. You weren’t able to just get a hold of beers anywhere. You had the normal stuff, you had the more traditional stuff. The normal supermarket in Denmark back then would have around ten different beers and it would be beers like Budweiser and Corona, which was actually back then considered like a sort of like a craft beer. Imagine that. But I was really interested in beer and I even liked to taste different beer styles from, every time I would go to France, and for instance, and Sweden, they had the … and Sweden still have this system they call sustainable lager which has a monopoly on selling beer. That means they have like everything. So quite early, I was finding out that coming to Sweden was a great place to buy beer. Then there was a few places here in my own city where you were able to get a hold of different beers, especially Belgian ones. I think when I was about 16 or 17, I actually I was maybe, we were a bit below the legal drinking age in Denmark back then, but me and some of my friends were at a beer bar called Hugo’s here in the city and we were drinking a traditional Danish strong lager called the Gold Tuborg. We had like eight or ten of those and then the bartender says to me, “Well, I’m pretty fed up with serving you guys Gold Tuborg. How about this Belgian selection? Look at all these beers we have.” They had like 40 beers or something like that, and most of them were Belgian and British. We were in a very good mood and laughing a bit about it, and then we looked at it and then I saw the iconic Delirium Tremens bottle and I said, “Well, okay, I’ll give it a go. Give me one of the Pink Elephants.” That was actually the first time I tasted something completely different and it was like my whole perception of beer just changed that day. Then I started drinking only Belgian beer and I had a long period where I only tasted Belgian beer. Then along with that, I tasted a lot of British beers. Cains Brewery from Liverpool were actually present in Denmark at that time. So you were able to get a hold of the British ales, which I think is amazing still. So my beer journey started there and then I had a couple of years where I was really added in the Danish Beer Enthusiast Association, attending a lot of meetings, but also trying to learn a bit more about beer. But having said that, I wasn’t a full-blown beer nerd yet. I was finding it interesting, but it didn’t feel that much with me. It was more like okay, this is interesting and if I want to buy beer I’m going to buy this. I guess it was a bit stubbornness because all my mates were buying all consumer lagers anyway. So I’ll find more special beers. But then ten years ago, I had the opportunity to, on top of my normal job here at the supermarket, which were, I’m actually the manager of the fruit and vegetables department, on top of that we had a really big, not as huge, but we had a really big beer selection. We were doing some changes in the store and people were giving new departments they had to run and my boss knew I was a beer geek and he asked me, “Well, Brian wouldn’t it be better if you took care of all this imported beer and special beer from Denmark and all that?” I said, “Well, yeah, I’ll do it. But I’ll do it my way.” So you knock yourself out.” I don’t think he really … I think he thought “Well, this will just be something that whenever Brian has a couple of hours left, he’ll go and stock some beer on the shelf and stuff like that.”
But I thought about how could you change the beer store we had to be more widespread in terms of which beers do you have on the shelves and which beers do you want to show people. So that’s actually where this all started and yeah, time flies and it’s been ten years. Throughout that period, I’ve been a … we’ve won a lot of awards, people. For a supermarket like us to receive awards is quite special. People don’t come along and give you awards for selling microwave pizzas and stuff like that. When they give you awards, you actually, you listen to these people and you also listen to which direction they want you to go in the future. We’ve always had a huge respect for the Danish beer bloggers and the Danish Beer Enthusiasts and whenever they come around and have a buy for us, we listen. On top of that we have our own opinion as well. I think that balance has worked out quite good for us. So now we’re I think, at ten years later, looking back, I mean, we’ve got a lot of awards, we’ve got a huge selection and I can feel that, myself personally, I’ve evolved a lot as well in terms of the knowledge. I’ve taken the Danish Beer Sommelier education recently, maybe it was also about time I did it because I think I have learned a lot of this knowledge with beer from reading books myself and tasting beer myself and all sorts of beer journeys throughout the world. So it made sense to finally get that education and now I have it and that is great. So yeah, and I think the future is looking bright in Denmark in terms of craft beer. The consumers in Denmark have become much more quality oriented in the last couple of years. You’re able to see a certain connection with the fact that social media has taken over to the point where people have really easy access to information about beer and are able to follow different breweries on social media and it’s all becoming very fast. So if a brewery launches a new beer, two hours later, you might have the first customer saying, “Well, how about that beer?” So it’s not like the old days. It’s it’s a very fast paced game nowadays and it just makes it a bit more challenging, but also very fun to be a part of that scene. So I think for me, I think that the craft beer scene in Denmark continues to evolve and I think that quality-wise the Danes are becoming much better at determining is this beer I’m drinking, is it a good beer or is it just a normal beer. The range of beer Denmark right now is obviously huge and I think we have about 200 or 300 different small microbreweries along with the bigger ones. I think that just makes for a very good, healthy beer business where people can come along with whatever ideas they have about brewing and better present that to the customers. There’s plenty of stores who are willing to sell a better beer.
So I think, I know, I might be wrong, but I think that in Denmark it’s been like this for a couple of years where you had this pronunciation of craft beer. We don’t actually call it craft beer in Denmark, we call it special beer or foreign beer. Then the last couple of years, the term craft beer has become something that Danes use. I think that in eight or ten years, I think it will blend together and I don’t think people will be calling it that anymore. I think you’ll get to the point where people will come into a beer store and say, “Well where’s your German pilsner? Or where’s your box? Or where’s your British strong ales?” I think that will be terms that people use and I think that’s great, because in terms of beer styles, that it will be much easier for people to determine what am I actually drinking.

Markus Raupach: So we leave our meeting here for doing actually a beer tasting for a nice project of the Danske Ølentusiaster .You mentioned that at the beginning, when you came into the beer, it was more of the Belgian beers, or maybe British beers or other foreign beers and now we have 200, 300 breweries here in Denmark. So would you say also the Danish beer scene or beer market developed in the last maybe 20 years or 15 years? How did that come and what are the players in the Danish beer market?

Brian Lindberg: The Danish beer market, the Danish beer selection 20 years ago for us was obviously it didn’t have that quick, that big of a selection. But I think that in early 2000s, we had a thing called the Danish Beer Revolution where the Danish Beer Enthusiasts started their organisation and they did so in a small, in a very good beer bar in Odense, called Carlsen’s Kvarter where they actually agreed on it should have a consumer organisation that would educate people in terms of the great beer. Had that actually started off, that was like actually one of the sparks of what ignited this beer revolution and then all of a sudden, you had a lot of new microbreweries popping up in Denmark. To be honest, I don’t think the beer that they did back then was that good. I just think it was different and I think that we experienced a lot of, especially local-based breweries that started to see life and eventually started brewing really good beer, but especially different types of beer. When you look at the Danish beer scene, for instance, like in 2004, or five, there was a lot of good breweries that actually started their journey back then and a lot of them are luckily still around. But especially during the financial crisis 2007 or eight, some also closed. So we have seen a lot of start-ups in terms of new microbrews in Denmark. But we’ve also seen a lot of them shutting down again. Some of them made really good beer, but weren’t that good at making a business work. So that was kind of like, how do you find the balance? In recent years, I think that’s been like the switch in the Danish beer scene where you have a lot of the bigger breweries like Carlsberg and Royal Unibrew who would create sub brands to try to fit into this emerging craft beer market and they, you know, tried to be … I think some people will tell you that they’re doing beers that try to copy what the smaller craft beer breweries are doing. Others will tell you that they’re actually creating beers that are more accessible for the beginner and I think that last part might be mostly true. So you’re seeing a switch now where you have the bigger, older, traditional microbreweries and then you’re seeing a lot of new Danish craft beer breweries coming along, who are more internationally orientated. Have very strong influences from America and from England, in terms of especially IPAs. We will have a lot of foreign breweries coming in and sharing that knowledge in Denmark and I think there’s room for both of them. It just goes to show that the whole market of Danish beer has exploded and it’s become so widespread now that you have this huge selection available to customers and I think you’re going to see the craft beer scene evolving even more. But then I think you will have the older, traditional microbreweries. I think they’ll continue to be a bit more classical in their approach to beer. But I think there’s room enough on the Danish beer scene for both. The quality has become something that has become more work. In the past most Danes wouldn’t notice. But I think that today most Danish beer customers, a lot of Danish beer customers are actually able to taste now if an IPA is oxidised or whatever. So you have the demands for like, for us, this raises us as a sort of retailer, are more intense now than they were couple of years ago. So for instance, an example, in terms of fresh IPAs, whenever we get fresh IPAs delivered from a brewery, what we do is we store them cold, because when we store them cold, we know that the hops maintain their freshness. So once we get the delivery to the store, we stack them in a cooling room and then once we put them into the store, we stack them into a fridge. So we have like this cold chain that we don’t want to break because then we’re able to deliver the best quality for the customers. If I said that to someone ten years ago that we would have that today, they would say, “You’re out of your mind.” A good example of that is like one of the first fresh IPAs we had in the store. The price back then was around 50 Danish Kroner, which was a lot. People were like, “Wow, are you going to charge 50 Danish Kroner for canned beer? Are you absolutely crazy? That’s impossible. It won’t work.” But we sold out quite quickly and that was like the beginning of when we started to sell and a lot of Danish stores started to sell craft IPAs.

Markus Raupach: Just a short question. If you say 50 Danish Kroner, what was the normal beer?

Brian Lindberg: Normal beer back then would be like you had a half a litre selling at around 30. So and also back then cans were, and for some people it still, cans was a bit of an issue because wow you can sell beer in can because it doesn’t look as pretty as a bottle. But we’ve seen the emergence of cans in Denmark and as soon as all the big breweries are doing it, we know all the small breweries will follow. But on the craft beer scene has been completely opposite. It’s actually been the smaller craft beer breweries that started off with cans. We have breweries in isolation who started off doing only cans and they don’t have room, but they don’t even have any ability to tap their beer on bottles anymore because they’ve just chosen cans and that’s the way they want to go. So I think in terms of quality, we’ve seen sort of a revolution as well in the last couple of years and it’s becoming more and more intense. I think that as retail you really have to think about what types of beer you’re bringing to the store and how many view by the time. A couple years ago it wouldn’t be uncommon for us to buy pallets of beer and then you would just, you know, if they’re sold, they’re sold. We don’t do that anymore. We take great care in making sure that we bring in beer that is as fresh as possible. We’re looking at tap dates. We didn’t use to do that. We’re doing that now so if the beer is already one month and a half old when it reaches the store, then we can sometimes just send it back to the supplier saying, “Well, it’s not fresh enough,” if it’s an IPA. So because we know we’re going to get the question from the customer anyway. So freshness has become an issue and I think that’s a good thing, because it just shows that the customers are becoming more and more enlightened in terms of how beer should actually taste, and also how you should keep beer. I think in the menu chain, which our supermarket is a part of, we’ve had a great focus on that in the menu chain of taking it upon themselves to spearhead this part of the Danish beer revolution in the Danish supermarket sector. So you’re going to see the supermarket chain in Denmark who are going to have fridges especially for craft IPAs and pilsners. That wasn’t something that you would see in the cars like five years ago. But we’re doing it now, it’s reality and we’re going to push forward and we’re going to try to continue this part of the journey where we are actually showing the Danish beer consumers how we think that you should keep beer in the supermarket. So it’s not for us, it’s not only just a beer, it’s just as important for us that we keep the beer just the same as we keep cheese and meat and milk, fresh, cold. So a beer is elevated to the same status of those items.

Markus Raupach: So it’s also just a change of a mindset you could say and maybe one question. When we are looking to Denmark for beer, we have a name, which is quite a lot connected, Mikkel Bjergso from Mikkeller. Do you also inside Denmark, we also think he was one who really had a huge impact on the scene? How do you recognise his development?

Brian Lindberg: I think Mikkel Bjergso has been one of the guys who spearheaded this revolution. But I also think he really early on changed the revolution a bit. I think that Mikkel changed the revolution of beer in his own direction, and kind of made his own approach to it. So even though you still have the traditional Danish microbreweries and the beer reviews as doing, for instance, their beer festival, Mikkel changed it a bit and made his own version of that where he had divided a lot of foreign microbreweries at a higher level. So I think you can say that I think Mikkel is probably one of the guys that you could thank for the high level of quality that you’re seeing in Denmark these days. I think without him, we wouldn’t be where we are now, especially in terms of IPAs, but especially in terms of promoting some of the more tougher beer styles we have in Denmark. I mean, sours is slowly becoming a thing and I think that Mikkel and a couple of others and obtained beeresses are really responsible for that. I think that’s a great thing. I don’t think, I was at a beer tasting once at one of his beer marts in Denmark called coolship which is only this building that’s by beer barns, lots of sours and all of that. The guy from Mikkeller doing the tasting said, “Well, if we look at our profits from the Mikkeller organisation, well, this is not a place that creates a massive profit for us. But it’s one of the last places we’ll be able to whip as you close if things turn out bad for us.” I think that’s for me. Well, this is what we want. We want to promote sour beer in Denmark,” and I think that he’s had a huge impact. I think because he’s had a huge impact on that, I think that we care about him.
This is brilliant because it’s really, really high quality. But it’s also accessible as we have a lot of customers starting their sour beer journey with Mikkeller and I think that’s amazing. As I said earlier, we want to be the store that can promote everything in terms of beer. Not only the beer of the new beginner, but also beer for the experienced beer drinker. But looking back, it’s been, a lot of the beer styles that day that Mikkeller took under their wings really early on, I mean, I think they did it with the IPAs. I think they did a great job with the sours as well. I think now they’re … I mean, I’ve seen a lot of Facebook posts where he’s saying all this is the style of the year of the lager and I’m not sure we have actually experienced the year of lager yet in Denmark. But I think that we’ve experienced a lot of customers trying both traditional lagers and on top of that, I think Mikkel has done a great job in collaborating with the German beer microbreweries. They did the mart, they did a callout for their beer festival last year with the mass bräu, Bamberg. Amazing pilsner. People were at the beer festival. I mean, you’ve got all sorts of crazy stuff in there at the festival and people are drinking pastry sours with marshmallows and all that. Then outside you had like a traditional German beer tent and people were drinking large jugs of mass bräu. That was amazing. I mean, you’re actually able to have both the traditional stuff and then the more special stuff. I think that takes a bit of know-how to be able to create that balance at a beer festival and I think Mikkel has achieved that in a good way.

Markus Raupach: Very interesting and I think if we talk about beer styles in Denmark, so most people will say, “Okay, I know Carlsberg, and so it’s more or less the father or mother of modern pilsner with all the history of the lager yeast and all this.” Also, you always think of maybe the big cans with Faxe or something like that. So, but on the other hand, is there or are there traditional Danish beer styles, which are really Danish?

Brian Lindberg: Well there is and I think the Danish beer judges are coming along with a couple of so like old Danish beer styles that they want to promote and drag some attention to it, actually. I think we have the traditional Danish beer style called, we have weider which is a very sweet type of beer, low ABV beer, which is mostly used at the … for most things, it’s something that we drink with our riselgrod which is sort of like a rice porridge we eat at Christmas and then we drink beer with it. We also have a sussel which is sort of like a hop beer, but also very low in abv. But there are forgotten beer styles and I think one of the things with Denmark is a lot of the inspiration for beer styles have been brought from Germany. Carlsberg, the Carlsberg founder had a huge attention to Germany in terms of beer styles. So even though Carlsberg were the first brewery in Denmark to brew an IPA back in the 1800s as traditional English IPA, and most of the beers that the Danes actually fell in love with was German-inspired beers. So it was pilsners and Bavarian lagers and stuff like that, that people like and they still like today. I think especially some of the like the older beer crowd in Denmark absolutely love a Bavaria large beer or a dock lager or something like that. I think that nothing that the pilsner, the crowd if you want to call that in Denmark, who are used to drinking like the consumers lager type, Carlsberg type lager styles, well some will only go for that beer because it’s affordable. But others want to try something a bit different. But still you can’t be too different from the normal Carlsberg style. So I think even though we have a lot of beer styles in Denmark that have been produced and brewed for years, then I don’t think, I think a lot of the traditional Danish drinkers, the beer drinkers that only bring, for instance, consumer lagers, I’m not sure that they actually have any interest in knowing what type of beer style is this actually. It all blends together and I think the Danish beer judges are doing a really good job of promoting the traditional beer styles. But I want it bigger and it’s useful.

Markus Raupach: It sounds very interesting.

Brian Lindberg: Then it would be one. We don’t even have any of them. I mean, we have a couple of wide varieties of beer that we don’t sell. We don’t have any Skibsøl at the moment. It’s not a big thing in Denmark unfortunately.

Markus Raupach: But it sounds great and I’m looking forward to discover also the historic Danish beer styles. Maybe we are now getting to the end of our episode, but maybe one more question. If people want to come to Denmark and want to experience the Danish beer scene, maybe beer festivals would be a good idea to go. So maybe you could recommend one or two festivals where people could go to and experience the beer variety.

Brian Lindberg: There’s a lot of, yeah, I mean when you come to Denmark, I mean, obviously if you start your journey in Copenhagen, the Copenhagen beer scene has evolved immensely throughout the years. There’s a lot of really good stuff to try in Denmark, not only beer festivals, but also I mean, there’s a lot of great breweries, especially in Copenhagen, around Copenhagen. A lot of great beer bars. I mean, I think there’s a lot of, you could go, I think if you visit the different Danish beer bloggers and look at their advice, then you could get an overview of what is nice to see. I mean, I would recommend a couple of bars in Copenhagen, which I think you should visit when you go there. I think there’s a bar called Fermentoren, the fermenter, which is located in the district of Vesterbro. That’s my favourite beer bar. They always have a brilliant selection and I can never decide when I get there what I want to drink, and that’s me, that’s a good sign of a good beer bar. On top of that, I think that they have bartenders who know what they’re selling. So I would say that would be one and you have a beer bar called Skøl, which is Danish for cheers or Prost. It’s situated right next, it’s more or less in the centre of Copenhagen near one of the biggest squares in Copenhagen. The guy there who runs the bar is a guy called Jens Hensbrug and yeah, he’s one of the Danes I know that has like the most beer knowledge. I think he’s tasted around like 47,000 beers. He really knows his beer and you can tell when you visit the place that the beer selection there is just immense. So that would be like two of them. Then on top of that, Mikkeller has a lot of great bars, as I said, if you’re into sour beers then there’s Westerburg. If you’re into trying out all sorts of Mikkeller beers you visit Warpigs in the meatpacking district in Vesterbro. That should give you a really good insight into like how the Danish beer scene is.

Markus Raupach: Then you have a beer festival in Copenhagen?

Brian Lindberg: We have a couple actually. You have the Beer Enthusiasts do their own festival. I don’t remember the date this year, but it’s in May, I think, which is in the … it actually also near Vesterbro and it’s a huge festival for the Danish size, I think it’s 10 or 12,000 visitors every year and it’s two days, and it gives you really good insights to the Danish beer scene, because everybody’s there. So it’s very, very widespread and there’s a lot of smaller breweries there that will have huge focus on smaller breweries. So we’re actually able to taste beer there that’s actually just hand brewed. You’re not able to get it commercially. I think that’s quite funny. Some of them are actually quite good. So you’re like, “Wow, I’m tasting that, but I won’t be able to buy it.” I think that’s an amazing festival. I always get a huge … it’s mind blowing, because of the selection and you meet a lot of breweries that are making amazing beer and you meet maybe also famous head brewers that solicit there as well. So I think that makes sense. Then also I have to promote our, obviously we have a local beer festival here in Køge, where I live and work. We have the Køge Day, which is obviously the biggest outdoor beer festival in Denmark and the second largest one, it’s epic for a largest beer festival and it must be behind the two others. But it’s really, really close and it’s situated in one of the back alleys of the medieval town of Køge and you’ll be able to meet 14 or 15 of the best microbreweries in Denmark and we have a place there as well for a store where we promote our beers and it’s just a really, really nice pleasant beer festival. You’re able to walk around the city afterwards and maybe visit some really good beer bars we have here in the city as well.

Markus Raupach: Sounds very interesting. So I will of course, visit these festivals already on the list. Maybe very last question, if you could only get two beers out of your shop for a good party, which two beers you would take?

Brian Lindberg: That’s a hard question. I think that, well one of them, I think I feel pretty sure that I would choose the … I have a huge admiration for the microbrewery Penyllan which is situated on Bornholm and is Jessica Anderson. I think she’s really skilled and really, really talented, and Jessica only makes perfect beers. I think her, she does crew bay of sours and old ales called Anica. I think it’s the best beer I’ve ever had. I had it out and she was actually at MBCC, she had it on tap there. I had it there again. I think amazing beer, amazing. So that would be one. Then for number two, I mean, I am an avid IPA drinker and I like … I mean that’s one of the biggest assets we give. I think I would go for a fresh IPA from Hill Farm which is also sort of like a local brewery for us. So I think that would be it. That would be two. But that’s not much for a party.

Markus Raupach: But it’s a good start.

Brian Lindberg: It’s a good start, yeah.

Markus Raupach: So thank you very much, that was really interesting and I think now I go to the shop and buy these two beers and we’ll enjoy them and yeah, hope to see you again soon. Thanks for participating in our podcast.

Brian Lindberg: Thanks for listening.

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