The story about Train Station Brewery started in an old empty train station in Knivsta outside of Stockholm, Sweden. The founders are Colin Nordstrom and Simon Vikström who both met working together in the wine industry in Sweden. Colin, an educated biochemist, is originally from Sonoma County in California and knows all the microscopic details in beer and winemaking. Simon has a bachelors degree in marketing and PR and runs a number of companies including a marketing agency producing advertisement and design for different beverage producers all over the world.
When working together in the wine industry we realized there was a gap to fill in the low alcohol segment in Sweden. We weren’t impressed with the so called folköl in the Swedish grocery stores. So we made the decision to focus on a high quality, micro brewed, unfiltered, low alcohol beer. We only had a small equipment at that time, and after a long process of creating recipes and importing rare ingredients from countries such as New Zealand and the US, the first product became a reality. The Hoppy One, a full flavoured India Pale Folk Ale (3,5%), was launched in the fall of 2012 in Swedish grocery stores. At that time, we were almost the only craft beer in low alc format. We set a target to start a folköl revolution, and we think we have succeeded in that. In the beginning, our plan was to scale up the brewery inside the train station, but we soon realized that the size was just too small for the large demand we had from the first group of stores to take in our product. Therefore, in order to be able to scale and focus on recipe design as well as logistics and business, we started to contract brew our commercial volumes. One year later and beyond expectations, The Hoppy One got wonderful reviews from beer connoisseur groups, leading food magazines and national TV.
Soon after the success with the low alc beer the demand for strong beer started. The stronger beers saw the shelves at the Swedish monopoly Systembolaget shortly thereafter. Flash forward to 2015 and we now have 5 beers with a 6th soon to hit the shelves and things are really starting to kick off with orders coming in from all over the world. We have just started exporting to Norway and Finland and there is strong interest from the UK and Ireland. See for example this video from Beer Judge Simon Martin who tries our IPA for the first time. You can skip to around 2:35 to see the tasting.
Today we are known as the company who recently won Gold for “Best Swedish Bottled Beer Regardless of Category” in possibly the largest competition amongst swedish beers there is (Stockholm Beer & Whisky Festival 2014). As well as the brewery whose unfiltered lager was named “Best Swedish Lager” two years in a row in possibly the most complete blind tests of Swedish lager beers (Umeåguiden 2014 and 2015).