Bruuveri (The Social Brewing Lab)

Located away from the touristy places in the basement of a mall downtown. The place is larger than one first imagined. There’s a long bar but only 3 bar stools.

Service is spotty but efficient when present. Pleasant but not friendly.

As a brewery, the bartender says they’re so small they only have 1, or at most 2, beers available at a time. I’m told they make 30 batches each year. Today’s offering was a Blueberry Sour.

There are 13 beers on tap and 1 cider. There are dozens of other offerings in cans/bottles. Easy to find something you’ve never tried before.

Vibe: I visited this place on an early Tuesday afternoon. It wasn't very crowded, and the only food options that they had at the time was a lunch buffet or small snacks for purchase at the bar.

Quality: Beers were served at the proper temperature in pint glasses.

Service: There wasn't any table service at the time I was there, so I ordered my beers from the bar and brought them back to a table. The bartender spoke English, which was helpful.

Selection: About a dozen beers were available on-tap, a few of which were from the brewery.

This brewpub is placed in the biggest bus and metro station in the center of Helsinki. I would not expect a brewery in this kind of place. The inside of the pub looks a bit like a decent English one.

The bar keeper helped me choose my first beer by answering my question of which beer was brewed the the pub, a beer called 'Talvi' (american pale ale). Then I had a little conversation about the beers brewed. He souned like he knows the beers of Bruuveri. And I think he was very passionate about them. I also tried the Sportteri and the Lentomestari and the beers all had a nice taste.

My brother and I did the booze cruise from Stockholm over to Helsinki and stumbled upon this place while wondering about.

It was early afternoon on a Friday when we were here so it was dead and rather depressing...really depressing. There were a number of loud 19-20 year old Finns getting hammered in the smoking area and that was about it.

This is in a mall so its not all that amazing of a locale to begin with but when its empty its even worse.

Beers were expensive but that is normal in Finland. We didn't get any food and the beer I had was not memorable.

The bartender was very sweet and she did her best to explain things in English to us.

I would not go back to this place but it was nice to visit a brewpub in Finland to see what it was like.

This place covers two stories in a shopping mall, and has a rather sterile, cookie-cutter atmosphere. It was, however, packed on a Friday evening at 6:00. It is very dark, with a dark wood floor, long dark wooden bar, dark unfinished ceiling and dark upholstered chairs around dark wooden tables. The waitstaff was attentive enough, but the bartender really didn't want to tell me much about the beers. As I didn't give up, he eventually introduced me to the resident brewer. Things got better from there!

They had five taps going when I was there: Pils, Helles, ESB, Porter and Sahti. Everything was served in the same unmarked pint glasses. The brews ranged from decent to excellent, with the ales brewed on premises clearly beating out the lagers brought in from out of town. The joint gets credit for having a sahti at all, and the ESB was superb. There are better places to drink in Helsinki, but this place is worth a try