Google's roving camera shows us Koulukatu 11 in Tampere, Finland. The image is from 2011. In a recent installment of my 1985 travelogue, I explained how the brewery formerly functioning at this address drew me to a city I hadn't ever planned on visiting.
THE PC: Euro ’85, Part 28 … A Finnish detour to Tampere for beer and sausages.
... Tampere originally was settled at the narrowest point of land separating two lakes, astride rapids that provided power for mills. By the 19th-century, Tampere was an industrial city (textiles and metallurgy) often compared to Manchester, England, and as we know, factory workers drank lots of beer in those times. In turn, their consumption was good for both brewers and prohibitionists.
The brewery was called Pyynikki, and was owned for six decades by the family of my cousin's Finnish friends. They sold Pyynikki to Sinebrychoff in 1985, and brewing ceased in Tampere in 1992. The buildings have been adaptively reused as apartments.
Bizarrely, a specific label of just one of Pyynikki's line of Amiraali beers still is being brewed -- in Japan. A photo at Goodreads proves it, and below is an older view, when it was being brewed in Finland. To learn more about the connection between Finnish beer and a Japanese admiral, refer back to the above "Euro '85" link.
Information about the long-departed Pyynikki is scarce on-line, but there are some good views for the repurposed buildings here, along with some of the brewery's history: Pyynikki Brewery, by Berlioz-II (Deviant Art).
Click through to see the photos and read the text. I snipped one of the images to show the "ghost sign" that was painted to the upper right above the brewhouse windows.
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