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About the blog

My name is Teemu Vass (teemu.vass@gmail.com) and I’m a Helsinki-based beer writer and blogger. I started this blog in 2015 and I mostly write in Finnish, with occasional posts in English. Since 2010, I have also sporadically written about beer for other channels. My main interests include beer history, Belgian beer, Baltic porter and various aspects of the current craft beer culture.

Finland’s Mr Real Ale is not worried about Brexit (04/09/2019)

With an extra week’s wait in Dover, and another week stuck in Finnish Customs, there would be no time left to sell the beer in my pub, says Thomas Aschan, who started serving British real ale in the Helsinki area in the mid-90s. Read more…

True to tradition…but which one? Designing a Baltic porter in Helsinki (11/03/2019)

On paper, it sounds like a no-brainer. You are a brewery in Helsinki, Finland, at a historic location surrounded by the waves of the Baltic Sea, so naturally you brew a Baltic porter. It is what breweries have done in this city for nearly 200 years. A type of beer that was especially popular with … Read more

Belgium: in search of the lost 1980s generation (03/10/2017)

We know their beers and tend to take them for granted – La Chouffe, Oerbier and a few others – but it’s easy to forget that the founders of contemporary Belgian artisan brewing also fought against prevailing trends and the dominance of big breweries. In recent years we have heard a lot about the pioneers … Read more