Tampere is a nice place to be and we chose to stay another day to get a better feeling of the city. People in Tampere seems friendly and the city itself feels welcomming and open to new people. This is definitely a place I could spend time again. On this second day in Tampere we decided to go to a few places and settled on the world's highest gravel ridge, a TV-tower and a few beer bars. Gastropub Nordic and Plevna was our bar choices.

The first bar ve went to was Plevna. Plevna is a brewpub in the old cotton mills of the Finlayson company in the heart of Tampere, Finland. The Plevna brewery was established in 1994 long before any craft beer revolution had hit Finland. In some ways the interior actually looks like the restaurant and brewpub is way older than that. Not that it's worn down or anything like that. The style of the decorations is just very old fashioned. Don't be fooled by this - the beers are quite tasty! We went for a flight of three tasters. The first three tasters were:

1) Simcoe APA - a very tasty Simcoe forward APA. In my world this was a very classic American pale ale with an evident bitterness and a nice hop flavor. This well made beer was a very good beginning and brought hopes up for the next beers.

2) Mummon Mustaherukkasiideri - This was a thirst quenching blackcurrant cider that brought memories of my grandmas tasty lemonade. Again quality in my glass was nice.

3) Mörkö MM - a very soft and smooth feeling with a sort of rye bread feel to it hit my mouth with this dark lager - another tasty beer.

When drinking the first three beers we read about the other Plevna beers and found out that more than one of the beers have been awarded medals through the years. Great excuse to try some more of them. Second flight which contained two of the awarded beers was:

1) Pikku Musta - a nice Czech style dark lager. Pikku Musta was crisp with evident bready notes and a nice bitterness. This is much how I like my dark lagers.

2) Plevnan Weizenbock - huge banana flavors and great wheat notes in a not too sweet weizenbock. Weizenbock is usually not my style of beer but this one is tasty. What I liked about this beer was that it wasn't cloyingly sweet, which is what often makes me choose other beers than weizenbocks - actually all kinds of bock! This weizenbock had been awarded as beer of the year in Finland a year or three ago. I understand why. It's a weizenbock that you can actually drink a pint of without a sugary stickyness being too much.

3) Siperia - a kind of classic imperial stout - Awarded as Finlands best beer four years ago…I think I know why! A firm but not over-the-top bitterness, nice roasted malt flavors and chocolate and coffee notes. This is a tasty beer. It's very nice for once to have a well executed imperial stout that's not loaded with adjuncts or aged in all kinds of barrels. Not that I don't like those pastry stouts or barrel aged monsters, but this is what an imperial stout was before the age of adjucts hit us.

All of the beers at Panimoravintola Plevna(Pictures here) followed a long and hot day of walking to the top of the world's highest gravel ridge and back down again. The view from the top of the ridge was amazing. You were really able to see all the lakes north of Tampere surrounded by absolutely insane numbers of fir trees.

Well...back to the beers and Panimoravintola Plevna. Siperia - the old school imperial stout was my favorite beers of the six we had. If you want rustic charm and great locally brewed beer. Panimoravintola Plevna is definitely worth a visit.

This was not our last stop in Tampere. From Plevna we walked across the river and into a side street to Gastropub Nordic, where we had some more beers and something to eat.

Gastropub Nordic is a light and inviting bar with a cozy and relaxed atmosphere and a more than decent selection of beer on tap. The owner/bartender was in the mood for a chat and turned out to be a very nice guy. We talked about the beer scene in both Finland and Denmark and about some ofthe beers that were on tap at the time. Center of the chat was the Drew Curtis/Will Wheaton/Greg Koch Stone Farking Wheaton W00tstout 2018 by Stone Brewing. This amazing Russian imperial stout is loaded with great flavors of chocolate, bourbon, oak, coffee and possibly every great taste in a balanced barrel aged imperial stout. This stout is so much more than Siperia from Plevna that we had earlier on. Siperia was not bad, Drew Curtis/Will Wheaton/Greg Koch Stone Farking Wheaton W00tstout 2018 is just so much more and really shows what skilled brewers can do if they know how to do adjuncts without overdoing them. I would really love to have a bottle or five of this super tasty beer in my basement to experience how it develops in the years to come. I'm sure that time will make this an even better beer.

Drew Curtis/Will Wheaton/Greg Koch Stone Farking Wheaton W00tstout 2018 was not the only tasty beer we had in Gastropub Nordic. We also had beers from @cloudwaterbrew, @omnipollo and @amagerbryghus. To see what it was you can go to my instagram post about Gastropub Nordic. This place is definitely one that I would like to return to in the future - people, food and beers were all great.

This is all for now - when I'm back again, it's places to drink great beers in Helsinki, Finland - see you!