We at Your Living City are always searching for the best and most original events in Stockholm and this year’s first edition of Stockholm Brewers Festival, a local USA style craft beer and music festival celebrating the local community’s microbreweries and of course their beers, couldn’t go unnoticed. So we went ahead and found out who was behind this unique festival.
Two very friendly guys – Mark Stein, a Canadian-American from Seattle and Austin Davis from Arizona – saw the need for having a festival in which they could mix their passion for craft beers and music. But they wanted to do it in a very casual way, so that it would have that West Coast USA community feeling they missed from back home.
“We both come from the craft beer culture, you know? Community driven, laid back… We want to bring the local people together and hope that the festival will become something recurrent and that it inspires more brewers”, says Mark Stein.
The festival will be taking place on June 2 and 3 at Orionteatern, Katarina bangata 77, with a maximum capacity of 1500 people divided into 3 different sessions. It was an idea that was born only a year ago, even though Mark and Austin didn’t officially start marketing or telling people about it until the beginning of March. Since they’re not a big company, they needed support from local sponsors and they’ve been fortunate at finding them. http://stockholmbrewersfestival.com/
So far they’ve gathered 12 Stockholm breweries, who will be participating at the festival. The whole idea had a good reception from the brewers, they really want to be involved. Plus there will also be 4 international breweries on board, 1 from the UK ran by Led Zeppelin‘s Robert Plant‘s son called Beavertown, Basqueland Brewing Project from San Sebastian, Spain and Brouwerij De Molen and Dry Bitter from Holland and Copenhagen respectively.
Apart from beer in a variety of tastes and colours, the Stockholm Brewers Festival is also expected to bring us a beer inspired mini golf course, delicious food brought to you by Katarina Ölkafé, the best indian food in Stockholm from Indian Street Food, delicious meat from Low and Slow and for the sweet tooth, ice cream from Stikki Nikki, who have by the way partnered with Stockholm Brewing Co. and developed a beer flavoured ice-cream especially for the festival – now that’s something we definitely want to try! And this is also one of the goals of this festival: to connect people and small companies in a fun way.
Music will be a key part of the festival, with a bunch of local indie bands such as Stilla Havet, Brödet, Barbarism, Star Horse, Kenny Black and the very talented American vocalist, Julie Rhodes, coming especially for the festival. For the occasion, they have made a limited edition vinyl record that will be on sale at the festival and all the money from the sales will go to the artists who are playing for free.
After Stockholm Brewers Festival, they expect to do a smaller version in October in central Stockholm and perhaps have other smaller themed beer festivals. That would be the next thing for the pair who do have their daytime jobs as well – Mark works in advertising/film and Austin runs Katarina Ölkafé.
“We just want the guests to have the best experience. Our aim is not to make money, but actually to celebrate small micro breweries. They might be only 2 or 4 people working in them and they may have no place to showcase themselves”, says Mark Stein.
Austin and Mark, who say that the hardest and best part will be getting to drink so much beer, will be around at the festival. So if you spot them go ahead and say hi!
