It is always nice, when independent breweries "go wild" and put some odd, often local/native ingredient in beer, and make that their "special one". This is one of those, I think. I have liked Prykmestar-beers a lot and raise my hat to Vakka-Suomen Panimo, which has made its own brand of Prykmestar, with they touch of olf-fashioned typography and tough-looking bottles. Most I have propably liked their Pale Ale, which I must review one time. Pils was also quite good, Schwarz just ok. However, I didn't like their "Savu" (=smoke) and this beer is about lot of smoke. It's "hook" is in kataja (=juniper), which is a small tree, that lives in Northern hemisphere, so it is common in Finland. There is a saying, that we Finns are a "katajainen kansa" (=people like junipers), mainly emphasizing that we don't brake under pressure, which kataja/juniper does not do either, at least not very easily. Kataja is a tree, so it has no berries, but it's cones are called "berries" and used as a spice - in this beer too. Sauna is also a Finnish tradition and its extreme, historical form, is savu-sauna, which is a "steam room full of smoke". I have never been in savu-sauna, which is a shame, actually, but maybe I correct my mistake someday. I once visited a sauna that was smoked in a way to simulate savu-sauna, so maybe I got the picture.
So, there we are. A Finnish spices and truly a Finnish beer? Well, actually we already have Sahti, our traditional beer of some kind, but we are nowadays mainly lager-drinking people. This one is an oddity, that could be described as "holiday season beer", for the christmas meals and so on. Nothing extraordinary here, just heavy dose of alcohol (9% vol) and odd taste, but actually quite low on aromas (other than smoke), aftertaste (smoke...) or head, which vanished quite soon. So just ok for me. Have to have that Prykmestar Pale Ale soon.
*** OK
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