EBG Rating: 9.1/10

Choice/Quality of Drinks:
❤️❤️
A long row of taps initially seems promising but there’s little here to get excited about save for some bottles of Porter and a wheat beer. The tap Falcon does the trick. Limited alternatives.

Style/Décor:
❤️❤️❤️❤️
A one room pub and beer hall set opposite a market hall. Small terrace out front with a large window with the sign in etched glass. Separate older awning by the front door. Inside, the bar is to the rear, with a spread of tables of different sizes to navigate to reach the front. Traditional in style, wood fit from the furniture to the wainscotting in dark, almost black brown. Metal fittings and marble table tops in places. Nautical oil paintings including a standout behind the bar. Gothenburg city scenes illustrated by a former regular, and city caricatures from the 50s and 60s decorate the walls. A large communal table runs along the centre of the room, a popular choice and the best place to make conversation with strangers. A shelf by the window with high tables for those who want to face away from the bar and people watch on the street.

Atmosphere/Character:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Today you can walk in to find its regulars seated at their favour spots to the left by the entrance, or the circular table by the bar. You can listen to the rhythms of the day as initial quiet and chatter becomes glacially overtaken by casual and more infrequent visitors, before then finding a harmony and hubbub unlike anywhere else you’ll find in the city. This reaches a crescendo at its peak, an atmosphere you simply have to be immersed in to enjoy, Sweden coming again to luxuriate in purely casual drink, chat, jokes and socialising; without formality, without pretence. On match days in particular, you could fill the pub 10 times over, such is the ritual of the place.

Amenities/Events:
❤️❤️❤️
Free platter of food on weekends, outdoor seating, merchandise

Value For Money:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Superb value when compared to the competition with a half litre of beer considerably cheaper than the competition. Beers are basic overall but scrupulously fairly priced to match. On weekends they provide a generous spread of cheese, meats, Frikadellen, bread and sandwiches for free.

Description:
Possibly Sweden’s most unique pub. The Beer Hall 7th Grade is a link to Sweden’s native pub culture that was irreparably altered by the temperance movement in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In 1900 there were 18 taverns set around Kungstorget square. Due to the influence of the temperance movement, restrictive legislation on beer consumption was introduced at the end of the 1800s, which became increasingly tighter. Pubs were subject to strict restrictions; a room with only dirt floors, benches and a bar counter was no longer sufficient. Space and orderly conditions were required, and in that spirit, among other things, the Beer Hall 7 was added. The Alcoholic Beverage Ordinance of 1917, known as the “Bratt System”, meant that drinks with an alcohol content exceeding 3.6 per cent by volume became ‘intoxicating beverages’, which could only be sold in special shops, liquor stores. Beer-hall type pubs were only allowed to sell pilsner – malt beverages with an alcohol content of less than 3.6% by volume – and non-alcoholic beverages. The consequences of this were that many of the old beer and wine taverns were forced to close. In the 1970s, only a dozen of the 300 that existed in the first decades of the century remained. Ölhallen 7:an and “Hartlepool” on Allmänna vägen were the only two remaining in the mid-1990s.

Today Ölhallen 7:an remains the only pub in the country able to serve alcohol without the legal obligation to serve hot food.

This came about through a complete quirk. Former governor Kjell A Mattson gave Ölhallen 7:an special permission.

Even today, you won’t find it, however on weekends they provide a generous spread of cheese, meats, Frikadellen, bread and sandwiches for free.

It is superb value when compared to the competition with a half litre of beer considerably cheaper than the competition. Beers are basic overall but scrupulously fairly priced to match.

Opposite the market hall Stora Saluhallen, Ölhallen 7:an occupies a prime position in Gothenburg city centre. Open 11am-midnight (1am on Saturdays) it is the Alpha and Omega pub when deciding on somewhere to hang out in the city.

On match days in particular, you could fill the pub 10 times over, such is the ritual of the place. There is however, as we continue to mourn, only one.

However, that could have been even worse – the pub was ravaged by a fire in 1996. The dark brown wall panel was destroyed but redone according to the old pattern. At that time, the serving cabinet and bar counter were also built with an old photograph as a model. The room, originally lit by gas lanterns, also retains its bentwood chairs, marble tables, red-and-white tiled floors, paintings and original ornaments.

The interior of the pub with its nautical oil paintings, framed caricatures, Gothenburg motifs from the 1930s (by Arvid Johansson, one of the beer hall’s regulars) plain wood fit interior and furnishings looks every inch a Swedish pub – nothing borrowed from other cultures as they do now.

What you are looking at is a complete exeception – a remnant of a past that used to be, and cannot be again, the Vasa of Swedish pubs.

Today you can walk in to find its regulars seated at their favour spots to the left by the entrance, or the circular table by the bar. You can listen to the rhythms of the day as initial quiet and chatter becomes glacially overtaken by casual and more infrequent visitors, before then finding a harmony and hubbub unlike anywhere else you’ll find in the city. This reaches a crescendo at its peak, an atmosphere you simply have to be immersed in to enjoy, Sweden coming again to luxuriate in purely casual drink, chat, jokes and socialising; without formality, without pretence.

Over the water, Denmark continues to preserve its native pub culture – in Sweden it is almost extinguished: apart from here.

(Added May 2026)