At Salama Brewing, Lightning Does Strike Twice

“If you want, I can pick you up from the airport and we can visit our new brewery, about 25 mins from the Airport, not far away.” That’s the response I received from Salama Brewing Co-Founder Christian Holmlund when I reached out to let him know I’d be traveling to Finland in late May.

Which is why I found myself, on a Tuesday morning at the Helsinki airport, waiting for the co-owner of one of the highest-rated breweries in Finland to pick me up in the brewery’s van.

True to his word, the gregarious Holmlund met me at arrivals. I stuffed my small navy Monos suitcase in the cargo hold next to Salama’s kegs and cases, and a short ride later, we pulled up to the brewery’s newest production facility, an old Nokian tire factory that also doubled as a site for filming Gladiaattorit (a Finnish version of American Gladiators).

Walking into the large warehouse, tanks gleamed back at me, and the canning machine whirred steadily in full swing.

After being in Finland—a country entirely new to me—for less than an hour, Holmlund handed me my first drink, a can of Tropical Skull, which he grabbed fresh off the canning line.

With the hum of machines clanging and clacking around us, Holmlund poured a hearty slug of the New England-style IPA into a Teku, choosing to drink from the can himself.

My first taste from one of our “17 Best Breweries to Watch in 2025” felt like a lightning strike, its Citra, Motueka, Vic Secret, and Enigma hailstorm lighting up all the pleasure centers in my brain.
It was the perfect introduction to a brewery that has built a reputation on the unexpected—where bold graphics, wild ingredients, and irreverent humor collide with serious brewing chops.
Because at Salama, making beer is about more than just what’s in the glass. It’s about creating a spark—and letting it strike twice.

A Spark, A Pint Too Many, A Plan

Photography courtesy of Salama Brewing

When it comes to his love of beer, Holmlund tips his hat to the #500 DIPA from the Norwegian brewery Nøgne Ø and ESBs from Fullers. “They were probably the first wave of this kind of new craft beer thing,” says Holmlund, who studied in the U.K. and later worked as a management consultant.

On Fridays and Saturdays, the Arsenal fan (since the age of seven) would hang out in a local British pub and watch the Premier League. The pub became an escape, a place where Holmlund could complain about work to his friend, Jaakko Ailio, whom he’d known since the first grade.

One particular day, Holmlund was moaning, as usual, about how only one in ten customers ever listened to what he told them. He turned to Ailio and said, “Wouldn’t it be cool to start something ourselves?”

Ailio responded, “Should we start a craft brewery?”

“It’s a cool idea, but who’s going to brew?” Holmlund asked.

Unbeknownst to Holmlund, Ailio had already been homebrewing for the last few years.

“Why haven’t you said anything to me!?” Holmlund queried. “Because you’re going to hate my beers,” the international politics doctorate responded diplomatically.

Turns out. Holmlund loved Ailio’s homebrews.

After a few too many pints of Thornbridge’s Jaipur and Fullers ESB, the pair decided to “stop talking and start doing something,” Holmlund remembers (barely).

“What was the weirdest, funniest coincidence,” laughs Holmlund, “was that two weeks later, Ville [Saarikoski], who’s our graphic designer [and other co-founder], called us and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to start a brewery?’”

In February 2019, Salama began brewing beer in Espoo, Finland, with Holmlund and Ailio working full-time as the CEO and brewmaster, respectively, and Saarikoski as the part-time art director. Johannes Järvinen (“who’s the least advertised but one of the most important [co-founders],” according to Salama Vice President Jussi Honkonen) served as COO, handling all of the paperwork and legal duties.

Together, the quartet built one of the most electrifying breweries in Finland.

From Liquid to Lightning

Photography courtesy of Grace Lee-Weitz | Hop Culture

In the last six years, Salama Brewing has rocketed up the Untappd charts.

Now the second highest-rated brewery in Finland (with 10k+ check-ins), Salama has continued its ascent by producing some of the most exciting beers in Europe.

While this Finnish brewery launched its first two beers as hazy IPAs, Salama consistently creates outstanding quality beers of varying styles and currently has a whopping 272 beers listed on Untappd.

Salama specializes in modern, extravagant beers, such as aromatic hop-forward IPAs, silky imperial stouts, and innovative mixed-fermentation ales.

“We want to turn strangers into friends, friends into lovers, and lovers into a family that cherishes megalomaniac visions, strange stories, and bad jokes that always seem to cross at least our minds after a few great brewskies,” Salama shared with Hop Culture last year after we named them one of our “17 Best Breweries to Watch in 2025.”

Six months later, sitting in Salama’s new production facility, Holmlund tells me that Salama really boils down to three words: inclusion, emancipation, and stimulation.

The brewery makes beer for everyone, not just the average consumer—what Holmlund describes as “the thirty-five-year-old man who watches ice hockey and just drinks basic lager.”

That’s not who Salama wants to attract. Instead, they’re looking for the colorful, the creative, the slightly off-kilter.

Holmlund himself seems to embody Salama.

The world traveler spent his youth flying all around courtesy of his mom, who worked as a flight attendant for Finnair.

Holmlund’s dad owned restaurants, so “I basically grew up in kitchens,” he tells me during our ride in the company van. When he first started Salama, Holmlund says his dad offered one piece of advice. “As long as you don’t open an actual restaurant with food, I’m happy.”

As we walk around the stark concrete floors of Salama’s new Kerava facility, Holmlund’s slip-ons stand out, a pair of white Italian sneakers with a swoosh of a stained-glass-like mosaic that he found on the internet.

That’s Salama—a blank canvas with a splash of color.

You only have to look at the most recent Untappd Community Awards, where Salama stacked up twenty-seven medals with thirteen golds—ranging from wild ales to pilsners to IPA—to see the breadth of the brewery’s portfolio.

It’s an approach that has allowed Salama to brew freely, an emancipation (if you will) from the typical or expected. “We don’t want to do things in a normal, boring way,” says Holmlund. “We want to embrace the future.”

Which is where stimulation comes in. “We want to surprise people by doing stupid and crazy stuff,” says Holmlund, who describes the brewery’s beer lineup as two-thirds core beers and one-third crazy s**t. “We’ll make a licorice NEIPA or a marmalade sour.”

Right from the start, every new batch of beer Salama put out sold out.

It’s these liquid lightning strikes that truly set Salama apart.

Whoever said lightning doesn’t strike in the same spot twice didn’t see the Salama storm coming.

Prepare for a Brewing Storm: The Shock and Awe of Salama’s Beers

Salama’s Passion Rzzie and Neo-Elektro beers | Photography courtesy of Salama Brewing

In Finnish, Salama means lightning. “We came up with the phrase to prepare for a brewing storm,” says Holmlund, noting that they wanted a name in Finnish that anybody could pronounce.

Holmlund, who studied in the U.K. and earned his MBA at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, came up with the brewery name by reaching out to friends on WhatsApp. “I’m going to call you in five minutes, and you need to pronounce this word for me,” he laughs.

But the illustration is apt.

Many of Salama’s beers strike down like an electrifying bolt, shocking and awing immediately.

Photography courtesy of Grace Lee-Weitz | Hop Culture

So it makes sense that Salama’s first two beers were called Elektro (today known as Neo-Elektro) and Electrocution, whose label Holmlund says might be a mashup of his, Ailio, and Järvinen’s faces with a beard (Saarikoski once told him this, but six years later, Holmlund still isn’t sure if he’s telling the truth).

The former was one of Ailio’s homebrew recipes with fifteen malts and three different yeasts.

“It was really good, but totally crazy,” says Holmlund, noting they now call the beer Neo-Elektro because of all the changes they had to make to the recipe to streamline it for a commercial operation. Today, the beer starts with Viking pilsner and wheat malt, Simpsons Golden Promise, Fazer flaked oats, and Weyermann acidulated malts. Hops include Citra, Mosaic, and Centennial in the whirlpool.

Both nod to the OG hazies from Trillium and Tree House, illustrating a larger goal for the four co-founders, who all grew up in the 1980s and 1990s.

“We want to take over the world,” Holmlund jokes, mimicking the Brain’s iconic line from Warner Bros. Television Animation’s nineties cartoon Pinky and the Brain.

You’ll find those nostalgic, almost nerdy Millennial moments everywhere at Salama (including if you drop in three nights a week when Holmlund and Honkonen play a J.R.R. Tolkien card game. Holmlund himself has read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy three times).

They named their intensely hopped core triple IPA with Citra, Chinook, H. Blanc, and Galaxy, Get Rich or Drunk Trying, after a famed 50 Cent song, hoping to stir up some controversy.

Razzie Passion, an imperial Berliner weisse with raspberry, cherry, passion fruit, and vanilla, earned the nickname “the butthole beer” thanks to Saarikoski’s illustration—a pair of puckered red lips that to some look like a different body part.

Photography courtesy of Grace Lee-Weitz | Hop Culture

Salama’s helles, Brainzilla, features a nod to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, while the fist-pumping Dozer series’ graphics mimic what one tends to do at a techno party.

Even though they aim to jolt and jar, Salama’s beers should, at the end of the day, have one thing in common.

“Drinkability,” chimes in Honkonen. “That is our fourth core value.”

Pop Culture, Pink Doors, and Punk Beer

Photography courtesy of Grace Lee-Weitz | Hop Culture

If you walk upstairs into Salama’s office, you’ll stumble upon an impromptu art piece—a magenta door that leads nowhere. It used to be the entrance to an upper balcony, where crews would film the Finnish gladiators.

Now, it opens up onto a dangerous drop.

“We jokingly say that if someone screws up…” laughs Salama’s Vice President Honkonen, pointing to the door and letting our imagination fill the empty space.

Plastered across the non-functional entry, row after row of coasters from Salama’s different beers—pieces Honkonen found stashed away in old boxes.

Honkonen calls this part of the brewery “his baby,” showing it proudly to me.

The ex-football (that’s American football) player, who spent seventeen years in the European League of Football and served as an officer in the Finnish military, joined Salama full-time five months ago.

But the Philadelphia Eagles fan has been a fan of Salama, too, since the very beginning. And although his football career ended at forty-one years old (when the doctor told him he’d had so many surgeries that “there were no more spare parts”), Honkonen now spends his days tackling beer sales and operations as opposed to people.

For the bulky boss, that magenta door (which he painted over six times to get the color right) is a gateway to Salama, a peek inside the beating heart of the brewery.

Choosing the brash pink hue was a very conscious decision. You’ll find this vibrant, bold magenta popping up everywhere.

“It had to be in your face,” says Honkonen, “but in a polite way.”

Which is how you could describe Salama’s approach to its quirky, humorous graphics.

“When we started, we wanted to build a brand,” explains Holmlund. “We wanted to go around the world selling our beers and have people recognize our cans straight away.”

Co-founder Saarikoski does most of Salama’s designs. The full-time architect draws at night when he has free time between raising two daughters.

“He does all the labels when his daughters are sleeping,” laughs Holmlund, explaining that means Salama can only brew one new beer a week.

Holmlund describes Salama’s style as a sort of Miami Vice meets Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles meets Brett Easton Ellis’ Rule of Attraction—that ‘80s LA life with sparkling swimming pools meets Miami Art Deco vibes and pale pink lawn flamingos.

Which is why, at the brewery’s taproom, SalamaNation in Helsinki’s city center, all twenty beers are listed with neon markers on flamingo cutouts.

“People complain it’s not the easiest to read,” laughs Holmlund, “but they love it.”

Forecast for the Future: The Storm Rages On

Photography courtesy of Grace Lee-Weitz | Hop Culture

As much as Salama loves to have fun, they’re technically very practical.

Salama’s brand-spanking-new facility (which had come online just six weeks before my visit) was born out of necessity.

“It’s not enough anymore to just make really good beer,” shares Holmlund, who sees the Kerava warehouse as an investment. Bringing in top-notch equipment has helped Salama make more efficient choices, ultimately aiming to lower the average beer cost for their customers.

For instance, Holmlund says they installed a new fully automated German system that has helped cut their lautering time down from five hours to sixty minutes.

Designed by Salama’s Project Manager, Paolo Custodio, the Portuguese beer wizard who previously worked for Frontaal, the brewhouse currently features four 2,000-liter, four 4,000-liter, and two 6,000-liter tanks.

According to Holmlund, the goal is for Salama to produce two and a half million liters of beer in the next five years. “That would mean we would be one of the biggest craft breweries in Finland,” Holmlund says proudly.

Albeit, he admits that the true goal is to distribute most of Salama’s beer outside of Finland. With their beers already available in twenty-one countries, including Japan and Singapore, Holmlund hopes to have South Korea and China online later this year.

He estimates that Salama currently exports thirty percent of its product, but aims to increase that number to ninety percent over the next five years.

The brewery that once started with the goal to brew up a storm has shown that lightning isn’t a rare, once-in-a-lifetime flash—it’s the forecast.

Salama isn’t afraid to get their feet wet and kick up a little fuss. Loud, weird, pink, and wildly passionate, Salama’s four co-founders have created a place where triple IPAs named after 50 Cent songs coexist with Berliners nicknamed for body parts, and where a cartoon door to nowhere becomes a shrine to everything they’ve built.

But for all the absurdity and art, Salama’s ambitions are dead serious. They’re scaling up not just to make more beer—but to make better beer more efficiently, more creatively, and more globally.

They’re not just one of the most exciting breweries in Finland—they’re aiming to be one of the most exciting breweries in the world.

Because for Salama, lightning doesn’t just strike twice. It strikes again. And again. And again.

And that storm? At Salama, it’s only just getting started.