I can't imagine where you might have lived in the US where a beer in public would have even raised an eyebrow, let alone be frowned upon.
Aside from highly religious towns with strict licensing like, say, Salt Lake City, and aside from lunch during the work day, alcohol consumption is pretty well accepted.
Ohhhh, in public-public. Like, on the street. Yeah, that's only legal in a handful of places in the US.
I misunderstood and thought they were talking about drinking at a restaurant or something. I figured the likely cultural miscommunication was over the European position on having a beer with lunch.
While it's possible to get beer in Sweden at the company cafeteria, it's "lättöl", max 2.25% by volume. By comparison, Budweiser is 5%. There's actually no age limit for lättöl, but many stores require 18+.
It's not the same as Germany. There was a strong sobriety movement here for decades to reduce the amount of drinking. Back in the 50s there was a maximum limit of the amount of liquor you could by. You were allotted a maximum of 3L of vodka per month (1 liter if you were an unmarried woman), and the government store didn't sell wine. You had a book, which was stamped with your alcohol purchases so they could keep track.
It's been effective. The drinking level is now about average for the rest of Europe, but there's still the international impression of hard-drinking Swedes.
Aside from highly religious towns with strict licensing like, say, Salt Lake City, and aside from lunch during the work day, alcohol consumption is pretty well accepted.