IT’S nearly a year since I visited Dugges brewery, in Gothenburg, with the team from Siren and Omnipollo, to brew Gracchus and now we finally have their flagship beer on our shelves.

Founded in 2005, Dugges set out to brew a wide range of high-quality beers for the domestic market, and as they did so, Swedish beer culture took a radical turn and eagerly embraced their wares.

A great deal of their success came about as a result of the popularity of today’s beer, Avenyn pale ale, allowing the brewery to expand their operations greatly in 2010.

It pours with a dense layer of brilliant white foam atop a crystal clear, glowing brass beer. The aroma is refined and clean, with peach and apricot top notes playing across more subdued hawthorn, elderflower and white bread.

The body is light and crisp with firm carbonation, a quality that typifies the beer as a whole. Clean and even, peaches lead the way once more, with grapefruit sorbet progressing into a lemon fresh finish. A nudge of rosemary and mango rise with the hops in the finale, before a drying orange pith bitterness courses across the palate. Refined, clean, and thirst-quenching – Avenyn can only get more satisfying as spring approaches.

Recommended by Michael Bates, Trembling Madness, Stonegate, York