Today is Øllets Day in Denmark. It means “Day of Beer”, and it takes place every year on the first Saturday of September. It’s not an event I was aware existed until just a few days ago. We read that there was something like a beer festival at the English pub in Kolding, which is a couple of hours away on the train. We’d made plans to go there, but just yesterday we discovered that a similar event would be held at a local wine and beer shop near where we live. So we went there instead.

We had not expected much. Probably just a few samples by the shot, with a push to sell bottles. However, it was very different. Half a dozen members from the local branch of the Danish Beer Enthusiasts (De Danske Ølentusiaster) were lined up along a row of tables, with 43 bottles of beer from Denmark, Belgium, England, Norway and USA. They were all very welcoming, and it was made clear that you could try as many of the beer as you liked, even all of them. And at no point was a sale pushed, even though there were order forms available to fill out if there were any of the beers you liked.