Wow… this place is full of old beer bottles.
And cobwebs!
Thus Beer Culture is back online, though the electricity isn’t hooked up and we still don’t have hot water. We also lost the last three months, which included some of our most popular posts and comments ever.
Did we just dream that whole thing about Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf?
More soon…
Herold beer has had a long and winding path over the past few years. Less than a decade ago it was found fairly often in expat hangouts like the Globe, though not always in the best condition, and sometimes in downright terrible condition. Although things had markedly improved by the time Michael Jackson came to Prague to promote Herold in late 2004, the brand’s image had been damaged by the occasional bad pints from before.
And yet Herold was making great beers, including one of the country’s first widely distributed wheat beers, the first Czech dark wheat most of us had ever seen, and a full line of quality lagers, including what must have been the country’s best bottled dark. They were always a bit hard to find in Prague, but then they became much harder to find, until only a couple of places carried the beer by the time I was finishing Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic.
One of them was the Dívčí skok restaurant in Prague’s Divoká Šárka park, a favorite setting for hiking and sunbathing. When the temperatures moved up earlier this summer, I went out there to have a pint.
How do you celebrate a new apartment? We spent last week moving exactly three and a half million boxes from our old place in Prague 8 to our new home in Prague 1, where we’re now just a few minutes’ walk from Pivovarský klub (danger, Will Robinson). After dumping our belongings in the hallway, I inaugurated the transition with a bottle of Nils Oscar Rökporter, courtesy of Per at Ohhh… My Head, who handed it over at the Ratebeer European Summer Gathering. (In exchange, I offered a bottle of Klostermann from Pivovar Strakonice).
First off, even though the name means “smoke porter,” this is no Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier — the smoke in the Nils Oscar beer is much more understated, closer to the version (or versions) from Brauerei Spezial. It’s deep ruby with a nice sandy head and a nose of malt, oats and honey. After a semi-sweet gulp on the tongue, there’s an aromatic, Montecristo-peppery smokiness. The finish is lasting but not overbearing. A great way to break in a new apartment — really good stuff.
I like Klostermann fine, but after tasting this I’m sure I did better than Per in our trade: Nils Oscar Rökporter is currently #41 of Ratebeer’s list of the 50 best beers in Sweden, and it was one of the bottles I was searching for while checking out Czech beers in Stockholm earlier this year. Though the original word was that this was a one-off brew, Per writes that it will now be brewed year round, and made available from October. Get one if you can.
The internet still isn’t hooked up at the new place, so I’m on a limited posting schedule. More once the tubes are connected.
When you spend all day at Pilsner Urquell, you learn lots of things.
Above is a shot of senior trade brewmaster Václav Berka in the maltings with the crew from the Discovery Channel. During a full day of shooting, I had time to ask a number of questions about the brewery and how it operates. The malt house is a case in point: it’s not on the standard tour at Pilsner Urquell, so few visitors get to see it. And yet it’s a rather special feature: Pilsner Urquell is the only major Czech brewery which still has its own maltings, buying raw barley from Czech and Moravian farmers and producing just one type of malt which constitutes 100% of the grist of Pilsner Urquell. Any extra malt is sold to Czech homebrewers and small producers, or used to make Kozel.
And while many people assume Pilsner Urquell and Gambrinus to be the same brewery, there are enough differences to consider them as separate entities. To start, the Pilsner Urquell brewhouse is only used for that beer; Gambrinus has its own, separate brewhouse.
More factoids gleaned during a day at Pilsner Urquell:
A quick post before heading out to Pilsner Urquell, whose distinctive water tower is pictured on every bottle of that brew, as well as in the snapshot above. (Not in the frame off to the left is the gigantic Pilsner Urquell chess set, whose toddler-size pawns look like Pilsner Urquell bottles.) I’ll be working with a crew shooting a Discovery Channel television special on beer, which, back home, will include brewing stars like Sam Calagione from the offensively good Dogfish Head and Professor Charlie Bamforth from my old alma mater, the University of California, Davis.
But that’s not why I’m writing. I’m writing to say that no matter what you do, you have to go to Pivovarský klub next week to taste the new saison beer from up-and-comer Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf, a brewery so new it doesn’t even have a website yet.
Last Sunday, 35 beer fans from around Europe met in Plzeň to sample what must have been one of the world’s best collections of unusual beers: the Grand Tasting of the 2008 Ratebeer European Summer Gathering.
How unusual? This year’s Grand Tasting list included brews from Ghana, Saudi Arabia and Argentina, as well as scores of other countries which are even better known for malt beverages. It included geographically obscure brands of average quality, like Bosnia’s Sarajevsko, as well as sought-after cult favorites like Bass No. 1 and P-2 Imperial Stout, all of which were imported into the Czech Republic in the backpacks, suitcases and automobiles of users of Ratebeer.com. All were readied for the hard work of tasting — and rating.
“It gets kind of weird once you get up past 100 beers in a tasting,” admitted one attendee.
The tradition of Czech brewing may go back more than a thousand years, but it’s also clearly moving forward. Beer lovers here have been thrilled by recent developments like the appearance of Pivovar Bašta and other new brewpubs, cutting-edge new regional breweries like Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf, and the reappearance of older styles such as Klostermann amber lager — all of which have arrived since the publication of Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic last May.
To that end, I’m doing another seminar, this time one titled “New Brews: Recent Developments in the Czech Brewing Scene,” which will take place Thursday, 3 July, 2008, in the wine cellar of Essensia restaurant (inside the Mandarin Oriental hotel). The combined dinner, talk and beer tasting will last about three hours.
In addition to a slew of new lagers and ales, many of which have never been seen in Prague, Essensia will serve its delicious Czech and Asian culinary specialties. Think of it as a luxurious meal in a five-star restaurant — only one which is accompanied by some truly great beers and a spirited discussion on the history, news, background and future of Czech brewing.
And then there is the beer list to consider.
Let’s say my father-in-law is not a beer guy — when it comes to drinking for pleasure, we’re talking wine. But like most people here, he regularly drinks beer with meals, the same way that people in other European countries down mineral water: at every lunch and every dinner, there is one bottle of medium- or low-strength pale lager from Platan, his local brewery, on the table. This makes his beer consumption just about average for a citizen of the Czech Republic: just about one half-liter a day, just about every day of the year. But if it’s a question of his preferred beverage, it’s vino, generally Moravian, generally white, and generally very good.
But that still doesn’t explain the Mussolini beer.
I spent much of Tuesday with el Pivero, first with a stop for lunch at Zlý časy out at náměstí Bratří Synků in Prague 4-Nusle. I used to live around the corner, so it was interesting to see how much the neighborhood has changed. First there’s the new brewpub, Bašta. Just a short stumble away is Zlý časy, an atmospheric cellar pub with two rotating taps of special beers in addition to regular brews from rarely seen Kácov.
On our visit, Zlý časy’s two special taps were dedicated to favorites from far-off brewpubs: the hoppy ležák from Moritz in Olomouc and the excellent (and fruity) wheat beer from U krále Ječmínka in Prostějov. I’d enjoyed both while researching Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic, but I’ve never seen either in Prague. The lunch wasn’t bad either, just like el Pivero said.
And then he mentioned something that made me want to get up and walk across town. Pivovarský dům, sister bar to Pivovarský klub and one of the centers of beer culture in Prague, had supposedly installed a handpump.
That is, a proper, CAMRA-approved, British handpump. Right here in Lagerland.
About half a year back, we had a tasting of beers from Pivovar Strakonice, a complete run-down of the brewery’s lineup in the cellar of Pivovarský klub.
Afterwards, a few of us — ah, who am I kidding? It was just me and Max Bahnson — started grousing about the event, especially regarding the company’s marketing. Later, we were told that our comments had been reported to the directors of the brewery.
Six months later, it almost looks like they listened.
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