Evan Rail – Page 11 – Beer Culture

Japanese Rats Prefer Czech Beer

On April 17, 2008

Back to Czech topics, as the Prague Daily Monitor has an interesting-slash-weird story today, translated from the local newspaper Hospodářské noviny, on “drinkability” and Czech beer (subscription required). You have to puzzle your way through a confused plot before you get to the punch line:

“Japanese researchers once presented laboratory rats with a bowl containing water and another with Czech beer. ‘First of all, the rats went for the beer. But when the scientists replaced the Czech beer with a foreign brand, the rats preferred water,'” said a scientist at the Czech Research Institute of Malting and Brewing.

That’s right. According to Czech scientists, Japanese rats prefer Czech beer to water, though they prefer water to foreign beers. (Many thanks to OptaDesign for the illustration.)

Italian Craft Beer as a Gourmet Product

By Evan Rail

On April 16, 2008

In Beer Travel

I’ve just about recovered from the eight-day, 2,400-kilometer (1,500-mile) drive through Piedmont and Lombardy, though the impact of seeing northern Italy’s wonderful beer culture firsthand is going to be harder to get over. A case in point: I can’t quite forget the outstanding beer selection at the Eataly supermarket in Turin, pictured above.

Eataly is surely a special case: most supermarkets in Italy don’t carry legends like Thomas Hardy’s Ale, as well as vast selections of local craft brews like Baladin, Grado Plato, Troll and Montegioco. Nonetheless, the fact that a high-end food store like Eataly has a entire craft beer department — as well as an on-site beer restaurant — testifies to how successfully Italian craft brewers have pushed for their products to be seen as an integral part of fine food and drink.

Italian Beers for Home

By Evan Rail

On April 14, 2008

In Beer Travel

What beers do you bring home from a five-day tasting trip in Italy?

Unlike many more-established beer-loving countries, Italian beer culture is based in large part on bottles, rather than draft. (The Czech Republic is the opposite, with even some local experts arguing that tap beer is always, invariably, 100% better than bottled, the concept of bottle conditioning still somewhat unknown here in Lagerland.) This means that before you return, you can easily load your car up with beers and beer-related items. And when you zip down the Passo del Brennero into Austrian Tyrol, you’ll only go that much faster.

Here’s what we brought back with us.

Italian Beer Culture

By Evan Rail

On April 8, 2008

In Beer Travel

A quick post from the road: we’re in Italy after a night at the remarkable Nuovo Birrificio Italiano, part of a week in Piedmont and Lombardy researching Italian beer culture. (And in an attempt to build a few bridges, we have filled our car with some great Czech lagers, which, much like Johnny Appleseed, we are handing out in our wake.)

The most striking element of Italy’s brewing scene so far: unbound enthusiasm, from the brewers to the pubs to the serving staff and the customers. Czechs may drink more — far more, in fact, besting the Italians’ annual per capita consumption by some 130 liters — but the Italian beer fans we’ve met in the past few days are way more enthusiastic about their choice of beverage. Hearing people here talk about craft beer is like listening to a bunch of converts to a new religion or meeting a group of political revolutionaries (as opposed to culinary ones). Everywhere you look is the wide-eyed expression of the true believer.

A few observations from a few days on the road:

More on Vitamin C in Beer

By Evan Rail

On April 3, 2008

In News and Rumors

A post here on the use of E300, sometimes called vitamin C, as a preservative in Czech beer got a bit of attention and a few comments, also bringing up an interesting question or two. Specifically: would vitamin C continue to exist unaffected in the presence of alcohol? And is this E300 the selfsame ascorbic acid many of us take as a nutritional supplement? If not, does it have similar health benefits?

The answers, apparently, are: Yes, No, and Probably not.

To find out, I contacted Dr. Victoria Drake at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University. In an email interview, Dr. Drake emphasized repeatedly that we should not recommend that people drink beer for the vitamin C. (Everyone clear on that?) In addition, she offered a few clarifications on the use of ascorbic acid as a food preservative.

Get Ready for the Czech Beer Festival 23.5–1.6

By Evan Rail

On April 1, 2008

In Beer Travel, News and Rumors

Around the Czech Republic, pivní slavnosti — beer festivals — regularly bring big crowds to brewery grounds, city halls and convention centers. And yet they often have a few problems: the ones in Prague usually only serve one kind of beer. The ones on brewery grounds usually serve their brews only, and only in cheap plastic cups. And the festivals with a variety of beers usually take place in remote locations.

Enter the Czech Beer Festival, set for its maiden voyage this spring. Taking place May 23 through June 1, the Czech Beer Festival will bring in beer from a variety of producers to vast tents set up at Prague’s Výstaviště exhibition grounds, the same place that held Prague’s Christmas Beer Markets, only in a slightly different area and on a much, much larger scale. As in: employing more than 200 servers. Some 100,000 custom-designed beer tokens, produced expressly for the festival by the Czech mint and together weighing over 1,000 kilos — more than a long ton — will be put into circulation. There will be seating for at least 10,000 guests, as well as plenty of standing room under the trees. At any given time, two large bulls will be roasting on spits. And there will even be a beer for dogs.

“We want to create something like Oktoberfest,” said Jan Hübner, the festival’s organizer. “Only with Czech beer.”

Why Foreign Ownership of Local Breweries Matters

By Evan Rail

On March 27, 2008

In News and Rumors

Following up on yesterday’s news about Heineken’s purchase of the Drinks Union brewery group, I did some back-of-the-beermat math to try to explain why it matters if local breweries aren’t locally owned. Here’s what I came up with:

128 million dollars.

That’s a quick estimate for the amount of money that is leaving the Czech Republic every year, simply due to foreign ownership of local breweries. That is to say that the Czech Republic — a transitional economy just 18 years removed from communism — is sending countries like Holland — one of the wealthiest nations in the world — an amount akin to $128 million every year.

Here’s how I came up with that figure.

Heineken Drives On Deep Into the Czech Market

By Evan Rail

On March 26, 2008

In News and Rumors

Heineken announced yesterday that it is taking over the four great brands of the Czech Republic’s Drinks Union brewery group (Zlatopramen, Velké Březno, Louny and Kutná Hora), which have an overall market share of 4%. The takeover will make Heineken the third-largest player in the Czech market after SAB-Miller and InBev, bumping Budvar to fourth place.

It’s not exactly a surprise — news of the proposed sale was floated last autumn — but it still caused ripples across the small pond of the beer world: within a few hours I was contacted by friends at CAMRA about the purchase, and EBCU members apparently all got the message via email. Back here at home, Pivní deník reported the story, posing some interesting questions.

To paraphrase: If Heineken decides to close some of its newly acquired breweries in the name of streamlining and efficiency, who will be the first? Louny, which is closest to Krušovice, which already has plenty of unused brewing capacity? Or Kutná Hora, which Drinks Union doesn’t actually own but only rents from the town? Or one of the twinned breweries of Zlatopramen and Velké Březno? Would two breweries in the same town really survive a takeover by such a major international brewing group?

Traditional Czech Beer Vessels and Thoughts on Beer Culture

By Evan Rail

On March 25, 2008

In Beer Tastings, News and Rumors

In the Czech lands, the typical serving unit for beer is a půllitr, a half-liter glass just a nudge beyond an American pint in volume and weighing in around .88 imperial pints. That is the normal beer for grown-ups, while our most common small portion is .3 liters, or just a hair over a British half. Occasionally you might see a one-liter vessel called a tuplák, much like the Maß served in Munich at Starkbierzeit. Some brewpubs serve their beer in meager .25- and .4-liter portions, and some, like Brno’s Pegas, offer a standard portion of .6 liters (over 20 U.S. ounces).

But regardless of size, Czech beer is generally served in just one material: glass. Of course it wasn’t always this way. In historical terms the traditional Czech vessel was not the see-through půllitr, but rather the korbel (above), usually made out of clay.

E300 in Czech Beer

By Evan Rail

On March 20, 2008

In News and Rumors

There have been a couple of comments about the widespread use of E300 in Czech beer, both here (in a comment from Max Bahnson on the post about Czech beer as a protected name) and from David over at Beer Oh Beer (where Max again casts his vote against it). Nothing more than ascorbic acid, also known as vitamin C, E300 is added as a preservative as well as to prevent the development of haze in beer.

I can understand people might want their favorite beverage to include no food additives whatsoever, but I also appreciate the use of vitamin C in my beer instead of, say, E211, also known as sodium benzoate, a preservative believed to potentially damage mitochondrial DNA, cause premature aging and possibly even cause Parkinson’s disease. (E300 it is!)

In fact, quite a few Czech beer labels show E300 on the back, including some of the very best — the one above is from Herold’s absolutely outstanding Bohemian Black Lager. But how much E300 are brewers allowed to put in your favorite bottle? The answer might surprise you.

Beer Culture

Stories about great beer from the countries that invented it.

Author: Evan Rail (Page 11 of 15)

Japanese Rats Prefer Czech Beer

Italian Craft Beer as a Gourmet Product

Italian Beers for Home

Italian Beer Culture

More on Vitamin C in Beer

Get Ready for the Czech Beer Festival 23.5–1.6

Why Foreign Ownership of Local Breweries Matters

Heineken Drives On Deep Into the Czech Market

Traditional Czech Beer Vessels and Thoughts on Beer Culture

E300 in Czech Beer

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