“Hej” (that’s “hi”) from Sweden, where I’ve been since last Friday, revisiting a country I first saw eight years ago. I’ve spent the past week touring the bars and breweries of the self-proclaimed Beer Capital of Sweden, Gothenburg, and I’ve wandered around Stockholm for the first time in eight years, this time opting for more beer tourism than actual tourism.
In choosing to visit Gothenburg, I accumulated a few recommendations from Swedes I’ve met over the years, but one recommendation — Ivan’s Pilsnerbar — stood out among the rest. I walked into this spot and basked in its uniqueness. It’s a beer bar tucked into a mostly industrial area that specializes in its namesake style, pouring a mostly-Pilsner tap list through Czech side-pull faucets into generous mugs in a room with a DJ booth, a whole bunch of video displays, and an Italian kitchen. I really can’t explain why it struck me as such an enjoyable place to drink, but it just worked.
There are plenty of great bars to drink beer around the world (like Akkurat, which I visited twice while in Stockholm), but many of them have their equivalents back home in New York (Akkurat reminds me a bit of if Tørst and Blind Tiger spawned an offspring bar). But every now and then, there’s a real gem — a place so unique that you don’t want to leave, because you know there’s truly no place like it anywhere else.
Action Item for New Jersey readers
To readers in New Jersey, or those with friends or family in New Jersey, I have an action item for you. Last week, with virtually no notice, the New Jersey Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control implemented their own arbitrary rules with regards to breweries and brewery taprooms. Among them: breweries can only host 52 private events and 25 scheduled events a year (including amplified music or showing live sporting events), can only attend 12 off-site events a year, cannot coordinate with food trucks, cannot sell food or coffee, and cannot offer free drinks or happy hour specials. Additionally, the requirement of a physical tour led by staff in order to purchase beer will now be required. These guidelines were communicated in 2019 but were put on the back-burner as a result of Covid, until the NJABC decided arbitrarily to start enforcing them within hours of issuing a memo late last Thursday.
If you want to hear some vulgarities tossed about as some New Jersey brewers explain this whole mess, the latest episode of Steal This Beer is worth a listen.
Conveniently, the New Jersey legislature, which could pass new laws to overturn the ABC’s actions, ended their session last week, leaving the state’s brewers with no recourse for at least the summer, barring a special session. The irony isn’t lost on New Jersey’s brewers, many of whom participated in a promotion led by Governor Phil Murphy’s office last year where the state covered the cost of a free beer at New Jersey breweries for those who received the Covid-19 vaccine. The ABC seems detached from reality and took this action at a time when they knew they couldn’t be reined in immediately by elected officials, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s at play here.
You see, New Jersey liquor license holders have an undue influence on the state’s regulators, as the state caps the number of licenses issued and allows licensees to resell their license at market value, which can amount to upwards of a million dollars. As a result, bar owners feel they’re being undercut when a brewery can open with its own manufacturing permit and sell beer to the general public at a much lower license cost (never mind the fact that a brewery has to spend significant funds on the space, equipment, ingredients, and staff to operate a beer manufacturing operation). The real tell is that the ABC claims these new rules “foster realistic competition,” according to the agency’s director, James Graziano.
In a more logical world, a government regulatory body wouldn’t be responsible for creating rules that pit the businesses it regulates against each other, but the powerful restaurant and tavern lobby feels they’re entitled to special privileges that breweries shouldn’t have because of a broken system that allows bars and restaurants to resell their licenses for an inflated value, rather than surrender them back to the state, as happens in more logically-regulated places like New York.
So, what to do? If you live in New Jersey, write to your State Legislators and ask them to pass legislation to put craft brewers in the state on an even playing field with other neighboring states with sensible regulation. If you have friends or family who live in New Jersey, ask them to do the same. It’s wild that legislation is needed to rein in a state agency that appears to operate at the behest of the restaurant and tavern lobby, but that’s New Jersey for you.
Long Read of the Week
I appeared on a recording of the Beer Bubbles podcast while here in Sweden (I’ll share the episode when it goes live), and while I won’t spoil precisely why, the subject of Narragansett Lager came up. Little did I know that a profile of its distant history and recent success had been written by Matt Osgood in Good Beer Hunting last week. It’s a fun read and as someone who grew up practically in the shadow of the original Narragansett Brewery, I always enjoy when ‘Gansett gets some national attention.
One Last Thing
There is so much to be said for having friends in beer all over the world, but it’s especially helpful when you’re traveling alone in a foreign land where you might otherwise feel quite isolated. So a huge thanks, if they’re reading this, to the people in Sweden who offered me recommendations, showed me around town, and offered me beers across the country this week. You’re all wonderful people and I owe you a beer when you come to New York!
Cheers,
Chris
Cheers and enjoy!
Always a pleasure to see you!
Next time I'll make sure Me and Rasmus have some time off so we can hang properly.
Beer Bubbles with the one and only Chris O'Leary part 1, is published on Friday 2PM GMT (e.i. 9AM in New York).
Take care AND, whatever you do.
Drink.....Better.....Beer!
/CC