Sockerbruket Sour Brewery and some footage from our canning line – Weekly Update

To understand how we ended up with two breweries, maybe it’s time to go back to the start and tell our story a little bit, just for those that might not know.

Beerbliotek was the brain child of two friends, Adam and Richard, who’s from Australia and New Zealand respectively. They used to own a coffee shop, called Doppio, together in Gothenburg. Both of them had a passion for beer and decided to try their hand at brewing it at home, or in their case a small room rented at the Gothenburg Wine Cellar.

A couple of months into this adventure they asked another friend of theirs, Darryl, a South African if he’d like to join. Which of course was an easy decision, as he loves adventures as much as the next person.

After three and a bit years, Adam and Richard decided to open a real brewery, and asked Darryl and another friend Anders, who’s a Swede, if they’d like to join. And so Beerbliotek was born at the end of 2012.

Since the start, the idea was always to keep on brewing as we did as home-brewers, new batches, new beers, trying to improve all whole time. After seven months as Beerbliotek, and running our own companies at the same time, it was time to expand, as we realised we just never had enough beer to sell. So we did, and the Sockerbruket brewery double its production.

Just short of two years after that, we were approached by two other friends Gary, an Englishman and Niklas, another Swede, to see how we can expand for a second time. They became part of the family and we opened our second brewery, just a short walk away from the first one. The production capacity is a lot bigger than when we started, and in addition to the expansion, we also installed a bottling line, and a canning line.

We have now since the start brewed 159 different beers, as we try and build our beer library, and at the same time try and supply new beers to a very thirsty beer market.

We have a standard assortment of around 10-15 beers that are always available. We export to eight countries, and have 10 beers at Systembolaget, the one and only bottle shop in Sweden.

Running two breweries does not come without its own set of challenges. And after we brainstormed it a bit we realised we had the ideal opportunity to brew sour beers.

Sour beer is beer which has an intentionally acidic, tart or sour taste. The most common sour beer styles are Belgian: Lambics, Gueuze and Flanders red ale. At one time, all beers were sour to some degree. As pure yeast cultures were not available, the starter used from one batch to another usually contained some wild yeast and bacteria.

Unlike modern brewing, which is done in a sterile environment to guard against the intrusion of wild yeast, sour beers are made by intentionally allowing wild yeast strains or bacteria into the brew.

Our first sour beer from the Sockerbruket Sour Brewery was called “Sour Berry Quite Contrary”, and has a healthy addition of Raspberries.

There’s two more batches currently in fermentation, which we’re very excited about, so keep your eyes open for when they hit a bar close to you.

With that we hope you have a great weekend.

Until next weekend. Cheers