If you couldn’t make it to the Slunce ve skle beer festival last Saturday in Plzeň, here’s a YouTube video from the day. In a word: Awesome.

Above all, the one-day fest in Plzeň bears witness to the new diversity of the Czech craft beer scene. Two years ago, if you’d told me that at a regional Czech beer festival I’d be tasting a Czech Alt beer — newly arrived from Hastrman — or be able to sample domestically brewed stouts, Tripels, and American-style pale ales (and not those from Varnsdorf!), I’d have said you were just plain crazy. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Moreover, though draft remains king, many brewers — even tiny producers not far beyond the hobby horse — had their beer also available for sale in plastic bottles. And I was glad to see several Czech brewers going beyond the glass to offer glassware and even T-shirts for sale.

Personal bests of the fest: Klášterní Pivovar Strahov’s 14° wheat beer, a Weizenbock-like (though pale) Hefeweizen with a strong kick of Saaz and smooth, well-incorporated alcohol, as well as Hastrman’s new Velkorybnický Alt. In terms of atmosphere, you couldn’t ask for a better crowd or a better day. But you could certainly ask for more than one. Next year, can Slunce ve skle go all weekend?

The phenomenon of the čtvrtá pípa — or fourth pipe — just keeps on growing: slowly but steadily, more and more pub owners in Prague are switching over from monopolistic suds to beers from independent brewers, often on a tap they own themselves, rather than the three taps installed and owned by a major brewing group. It’s an interesting concept: when I wrote about it earlier this year for Prague Monitor Magazine, the term earned a note at the Schott’s Vocab weblog (“a miscellany of modern words and phrases”) at the New York Times.

Max Bahnson just covered two new čtvrtá pípa pubs at his Pivní filosof weblog, with not such great results. But there’s another fourth pipe pub which is a total winner: the Klášterní pivnice near Letná in Prague 7.

Klášter fans, have no fear: they still have 11° Klášter dark and pale beers in good shape and well-tapped, at 19.50 Kč — just over a buck and a dime — per half-liter.

In addition, the pub runs a special event with a new 12° beer from a different brewery every weekend. It was Rychtář when I was there last; the time before that saw Slovakia’s Steiger appear on draft. Herold fliers around the room offer evidence that Březnice was an earlier choice.

That’s three taps. To fully embrace the fourth-tap concept, Klášterní pivnice pours a rotating special beer: Telčský Zachariáš on my last visit.

Not enough to get you to Letná? Try this: in addition to the taps, Klášterní pivnice now lists a nearly complete line of Primátor’s specialty brews in bottles, including Weizenbier and English Pale Ale.

But the reason to go to Klášterní pivnice really isn’t the rare beers. It isn’t the buck-the-system independent streak, and it isn’t the low prices. The reason to go to Klášterní pivnice is this: in an era of homogenization and plastic culture, it remains a very real Prague pub, with some of the best atmosphere anywhere. Neighbors stop by and greet each other in the afternoon. Dads sneak in for a quick cold one while the kids are at the park. It’s the kind of place where it’s not strange to order one beer and nurse it over the newspaper in the middle of the afternoon or late in the morning, because that’s what you do there.

Max Bahnson wrote a nice piece about the place before it got all indie. It’s the same as before, only better: just eight tables in the main room, banquettes all the way around, wood paneling, coat hooks and bottle-bottom windows. There’s only room for about 40 lucky people.

Much like comedians and the Aristocrats, travel writers have a question they often ask each other: if you found someplace wonderful that was still undiscovered, would you write about it and potentially ruin it? Or would you keep it for yourself? All I can say about Klášterní pivnice is this: don’t ruin it.

I’ll be off in Franconia for the next week, drinking Landbier and researching beer tourism among the 200 or so breweries there. Until I return, I’ll leave you with a shot from a perfect afternoon in Prague:

Klášterní pivnice
Ovenecká 15 (at Jirečkova)
Tram 25 or 26 to Letenské náměstí
Tel. +420 233 376 150

When my wife and I were preparing our research trips for Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic, we first had to make a map. We came up with a list of breweries based on information in the Pivovarský kalendář, a publication of the Czech Research Institute of Malting and Brewing, and cross-referenced it with the breweries’ own web sites. Once we had all the addresses, we bought a regular map of the Czech Republic and marked the breweries on it with little red dots. That homemade Czech beer map became an invaluable research tool, helping us to visit every brewpub in the Czech Republic at the time and most of the country’s industrial brewers.

Now a local publisher has put out a professional map of all the breweries in the Czech Republic.

Called “Pivovary České republiky,” or “Breweries of the Czech Republic,” the new map covers the entire country on one side, with detail maps of Prague, Pilsen and smaller regions on the reverse.

It is accompanied by a small booklet listing the various breweries, with a few words on their histories in Czech, English and German. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include much on the types of beers they make, or how to get there. And it won’t tell you how the beers taste.

Regardless, it’s a great addition to the Czech beer canon. Printed by Kartografie Praha in 2009, the new map includes 126 breweries, including new producers in Chotěboř, Varnsdorf, Pilsen and Moravskoslezský kraj. Both breweries and maltings are depicted, as well as brewing museums and the country’s three principal hop regions of Žatec, Ústěk and Tršice. It is currently available at most Czech bookstores for 149 Kč, or about €5.50.

Just as we did when we researched the original guidebook, we’re about to take off for some more research trips this summer. This time will be a bit different: we’ll be accompanied by our junior beer writer, for one thing, and we’re now stocked with a GPS navigation unit and constant access to Google Maps, as well as a bigger car and a better idea of how to do beer tourism in the Czech Republic. In the place of our old, homemade chart, we’ll probably plan our routes using this new map from Kartografie Praha.

And yet there’s still something charming about a homemade map. When I visited Beer Planet in Brussels for a story last summer, the guys there showed me the map they used to pick up beers from breweries around Belgium. I was instantly reminded of our old beer map of the Czech Republic. And I was suddenly very thirsty indeed.

Hungary is wine country, but it has a long tradition of brewing as well, with the legendary name of Dreher — as in Anton — the brand of one of the country’s best-known pale lagers. Unfortunately, finding good craft beer from the country’s small producers is tricky. Just about everywhere you go, you’ll come across Dreher (part of SABMiller) and Soproni (a Heineken brand). But great local beer? Microbrews? Not so easy to spot.

We spent most of the last two weeks in Hungary, first at Lake Balaton, then in Budapest, where we I finally found a couple of interesting beers. Or at least, what looked like interesting beers. My Hungarian is limited to the five words most commonly found on restaurant menus, but when I saw the sign above, I was pretty sure that “házi” might be something like “domácí” in Czech, the equivalent of “house-made,” and I knew that “sör” meant beer. So I picked up a bottle of each brew: a világos, or pale, called Gutberger, and a barna, or dark, called Braunger.

Both come from the Szögedi Sörfőzde, which says it was established in 1993. Both were bombshell-shaped plastic (PET) containers of 1 liter, or just about two pints. Each cost the equivalent of $1.50.

Unfortunately, the packaging and price turned out to be the high points of the bottles from Szögedi Sörfőzde. The dark Braunger had a decent appearance of clear amber with thick-set beige foam. There were some light cola flavors in the mouth, as well as a touch of gingery spice, and I detected some not-so-fun cardboard flavors in the finish. That was still better than the Gutberger, which poured a very light gold with an industrially white foamy head that immediately died. The Gutberger’s nose was only slightly grainy, and there was no discernible hop aroma or flavor. Or any other aromas or flavors of any kind.

It brought to mind Jean-Pierre Van Roy’s proclamation about industrial beers: like him, I would rather drink a good industrial beer than a bad artisanal beer, and in this case I’d rather have a glass of SABMiller’s Dreher (not a bad pale lager) or a dark Soproni Démon, which I quite liked, regardless of how much I want to support small producers.

And of course Hungary does have better craft beer producers: there’s the Gyertyános brewery at Miskolc, which has a great reputation among Hungarian foodies, and which was part of the V3 Rauchbier miracle produced in conjunction with Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf and Slovakia’s Kaltenecker. There is also Budapest’s “Only Good Beers!” store, Csak a jó sör!, which sells La Chouffe and other international specialities which are not found even in beer-loving countries like the Czech Republic.

When I return to Hungary, I’ll keep looking for good local brews. But I’ll probably settle for my favorite discovery from this last trip: a few bottles of cserszegi fűszeres, a lovely indigenous white wine, from an excellent local producer like Jásdi. “Only Good Beers” is a great name for a beer store. But sometimes good wines will have to do.

The following classic Beer Culture post is one of many which disappeared in the Wormhole Incident™. It is being reposted now because more people should think about beer with a sense of place.

The best thing I heard was when Jean-Pierre Van Roy said “Now we’re going to open the ‘75.”

We were talking about his life and work at Cantillon, the last remaining lambic brewer and geuze blender in the city of Brussels, and Jean-Pierre Van Roy decided that he wanted to open a beer he’d bottled 33 years earlier.

Someone asked “What?” in the way that means “Are you crazy?” Jean-Pierre just nodded and said “It’s time. It needs to be drunk.”

That was the second best thing I heard at Cantillon.

But there was a lot more to hear. Jean-Pierre seemed relieved when I told him he could speak French, and when he asked if I spoke French, too, I said that wasn’t really the point.

“You’re the one who’s talking,” I said. “Me, I write.” (Or rather, “C’est vous qui parlez, monsieur. Moi, j’écris.”)

So Jean-Pierre Van Roy poured a round of lambic and started talking, about beer in Belgium and Cantillon in particular, about how he had taken over the reins from his father-in-law in 1969 on the day after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, and I wrote down everything I could. And over the course of several hours, I heard a lot. A bit of it would go into my assignment, a piece on European beer travel for an airline magazine, but most of it was superfluous, a bounty of information and opinion that had no real destination.

For example, what do you do with a quote like this?

“It’s not because a beer is industrial that makes it bad. I’m not against industrial production. I would rather have a well-made industrial beer than an artisanal beer that tastes bad.”

(You embroider it into a sampler and hang it up on your wall, that’s what you do. You write it down and put it into the New Gospel of Beer. You ponder it and share it as often as you can with your beer-loving friends, hopefully over a glass of something good.)

I found him to be extremely contrarian, but charmingly so. When I said that I had come to Brussels to drink geuze and lambic, the original styles of the region, and said that I wanted to drink a local beer from a local place, not Belgian version of a pilsner, which comes from where I live now, he stopped me.

“Hang on,” he said. “Belgium made some very good pils once. Very good. Excellent beers.”

Take the ‘75. He opened it and said that it smelled right to him. He poured it, careful to keep the sediment in the bottle, then offered a glass. I thought it had a black tea nose and tastes of tannins, citrus blossoms and acacia honey. But before I could say anything, he waved the beer away.

“Myself, I prefer it younger than that,” he said. “It’s lost the freshness.”

Most Cantillon beers are in 75-centiliter wine bottles. He showed how the cork on this one seemed a bit damaged and noted that, over the last 33 years, the bottle had lost 10 centiliters of liquid to evaporation.

We talked about how breweries lose their way, about how things get worse when beers get more popular.

“A brewery is a building,” he said. “If you make a brewery, you start by making a building with a specific volume of production in mind. Let’s say that you make a brewery to produce 25,000 hectoliters per year. But then a beer becomes popular. In order to supply the demand, the owners need a new building, but they don’t want to make a new building. So what do they do? They cut the production time from three months down to a month and a half. And then they’re producing 40,000 hectoliters per year.”

Cantillon’s own survival has been tough sledding. Jean-Pierre said that in 1970, the brewery directly supplied 220 cafés and bars in Brussels alone. Now? Just eight or nine.

In part, he blamed a change in taste toward sweeter beverages. Several brewers mentioned Coca-Cola during my trip; Jean-Pierre recalled the date when he first tasted it. Sour beers like geuze and lambic have a hard time surviving in a candy-flavored world, and the vast demographic changes in Brussels itself have also had an impact. Located not far from the Gare de Midi, Cantillon is in a neighborhood awaiting gentrification, with many empty shopwindows and vacant lots but not many good places to get a beer. And yet Jean-Pierre said that when he took over the brewery, the neighborhood was thriving. Cantillon used to sell 2-3,000 bottles a month, he said, just to the cafés and bars within 800 meters of their door.

Today, he said, 68% percent of their production is exported.

“Without the United States and Japan…,” he started, raising his eyes to the ceiling.

I held the ‘75 up to the light, sniffed it and took another sip. Before I could write down my notes, Jean-Pierre stopped me.

“Beer is not made for judging, nor for looking at,” he said. “It’s made for drinking.”

ADDENDUM OF 5 MARCH 2009: Notice the “Sold Out” signs in the background behind Jean-Pierre? Those were for some of Cantillon’s special beers which were no longer available. Such a sign would be a rare sight in central Europe, as most brewers here make no special beers at all.

In hindsight, I find it incredibly ironic that one of the world’s greatest local beers is surviving on its exports. Ironic, perhaps, but necessary. As the man said, “A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.”

Despite Germany’s outstanding brewing traditions, the country’s capital is not widely thought of as a great place for beer. The city’s native beer style, the sour Berliner Weisse, is now almost extinct. And considering we’re talking about a city of 3.4 million people who seem to pride themselves on eating well, drinking well and going out a heck of a lot, finding good local beers can be surprisingly difficult.

That’s certainly the case for the Eschenbräu brewpub, which offers three regular beers with ten seasonal specials scheduled for 2009. It’s not impossible to reach, but it’s far enough off the tourist map that most casual visitors to Berlin aren’t going to bump into it.

Located in the gritty neighborhood of Wedding, north and west of Mitte, Eschenbräu has a sign on the street telling guests that its entrance is around the corner. It’s actually around several corners, through a courtyard and down some stairs, hiding behind what appears to be a student dormitory.

The atmosphere is part student Kneipe, part classic Berlin beer bar, with dark wood tables, dark banquettes against the walls and brewing paraphernalia — empty malt sacks from Weyermann and so forth — making up the décor. The mood last Thursday was quiet, festive and neighborly, the kind of night when the music they’re playing is rock ‘n’ roll but at low volume, a night when the waitress immediately calls you “Du.”

I managed to try both the Pils and Weizen, skipping the reddish Dunkles only because of time constraints. The Pils had a pronounced hop bitterness, but very little hop aroma, and a thin, yellowish body in line with many German Pils beers; the loose white head disappeared within a few seconds. Biased by Czech pale lagers, which are usually both more malty and more aromatic, I thought it was okay by comparison. However, when compared to a bottle of Berliner Pilsner, Eschenbräu’s version was nectar.

I got a lot more out of the Weizen, a refreshing clove-scented wheat in the Bavarian style, which seemed to have a better bitter-sweet balance.

My visit missed by a day Eschenbräu’s first seasonal special of the year, a Dunkler Bock released on 13.2; other scheduled specials are Rauchbier (13.3), Hopfenblume (3.4), Maibock (1.5), Bayrisch Hell (5.6), Roter Wedding (10.7, a “red” lager taking the traditionally leftist neighborhood’s nickname), Schwarze Molle (7.8), Märzen (25.9), Doppelhopf (30.10), and something called “Alter Schwede” (27.11).

It’s interesting to note that while Eschenbräu makes beers in the style of other cities — Munich, Bamberg and so on — it doesn’t seem to produce a beer in the traditional style of its own hometown. Sure, there will be Bamberger Rauchbier. But apparently there won’t be any Berliner Weisse here.

“Interesting” is one way of putting it. “Depressing” is another.

Eschenbräu
Triftstraße 67 (near U-Bahn Leopoldplatz)
13 353 Berlin-Wedding
Tel. +49 30 462 68 37
Open daily from 5 p.m.

]]> http://www.beerculture.org/2009/02/16/the-eschenbrau-brewpub-in-berlin/feed/ 3 http://www.beerculture.org/2008/12/01/christmas-beer-markets-2008/ http://www.beerculture.org/2008/12/01/christmas-beer-markets-2008/#comments Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:57:27 +0000 Evan Rail http://www.praguemonitor.com/beer/?p=299

Last year saw the inauguration of Prague’s Christmas Beer Markets (Vánoční pivní trhy), much like the Christmas markets that appear all around Europe at this time of year, only with a serious malt-and-hops theme. Taking place in a vast pavilion at Prague’s Výstaviště exhibition grounds, the first edition featured craft and specialty beers from around the Czech Republic, as well as brews from Slovakia’s Kaltenecker.

This year, the Christmas Beer Markets will return in a more refined locale: inside Prague’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which will host the 2008 Christmas Beer Markets on December 20, 21 and 22.

The final details are still being set, but the early outline for this year’s festival sounds terrific.

From the announcement at Pivnidenik.cz:

The 2008 Christmas Beer Markets will take place at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel (Nebovidská 1, Prague 1—Malá Strana; tram 12, 20 or 22 to Hellichova) on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, December 20–22.

There are two four-hour sessions on each day: from 13–17 and 18–22.

Entry will be limited to 300 participants at each session.

The entry fee for each session is 150 Kč and includes a commemorative .3-liter glass and a beer.

The entry fee for the whole day — two sessions — costs 250 Kč.

Entry to all sessions over all three days costs 500 Kč.

Tickets can be purchased at the hotel or at selected beer-friendly pubs in Prague: První pivní tramway, Zlý časy, Obžérství and Tlustá koala.

The final beer list is not yet set, but it will include specialty and Christmas brews from around the Czech Republic, as well as rarities from Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Slovakia.

To accompany the great beers, the Mandarin Oriental will also offer its outstanding classic Czech cuisine, Asian dishes, selections of cheeses and desserts.

In addition, the Christmas Beer Markets should include exhibits on homebrewing, beer festivals, and foreign breweries, as well as beer tastings and presentations on beer and gastronomy.

Beers at the Christmas Beer Markets will be both bottled and on tap. Guests will be able to buy bottled specialties to take home.

This is realy taking things up a notch from last year’s Christmas Beer Markets, not least in terms of the location: the Mandarin Oriental is a very special place, composed of Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance architecture and newer additions, with its luxurious day spa housed in a former 14th century monastery. The wine cellar where we have our regular beer tastings and seminars as part of the hotel’s Czech Beer Academy is one of the prettiest and most atmospheric such spots in Prague, and the hotel’s Essensia restaurant serves some of the best Asian cooking in the country.

For most of us, this will be a rare chance to step into a refined world.

More details to follow soon. Mark your calendars now.

It took a few months, but my feature story on craft beer in Italy finally appeared in the NYT travel section this weekend. Seeing it, I started thinking again about Italian beer culture and how different it is to the Czech Republic and other countries which are better known for beer and brewing.

The point I stressed in my first post from the Italian beer trail is part of it: in Italy, the enthusiasm for beer is very high. But beyond mere enthusiasm is something that seems to be missing from the beer culture in the Czech lands and in Germany: education.

Take a look at the photo above, and in particular the big sign on the right. This was taken in the fabulous Eataly grocery store in Turin — a sort of massive, Italian take on Whole Foods — and the sign stands at the entrance right when you walk in, quite far from the store’s extensive beer department in the cellar.

The sign asks if you know the difference between Belgian white beer and German Weizenbier, and then goes on to explain the differences between the two styles in terms of ingredients, tasting notes, and suggested dishes to pair with each. It then lists some examples from its stock.

Please tell me if you’ve ever seen a display in any other grocery store which explains the nuances of two  similar wheat beer styles.

I know that I’ve never found anything even remotely like that in the Czech Republic, though it sounds like a great idea: there isn’t much awareness that such things as beer styles even exist here, let alone beer styles beyond our borders. (And it’s not just the average consumer who remains in the dark. At a tasting last month in Prague, I heard a brewer mention to someone from the beer consumers’ movement that a particular Hefeweizen tasted like a Belgian wit, and the man from the consumer movement had to ask what that was.)

Of course, if you only sell one type of beer, there’s no need to educate consumers about what kind it is and the distinctions between it and another style. Considering the Czech Republic’s pale lager consumption rate of 95% and the country’s continuing mergers and brewery closures, I’m afraid most people would say there isn’t much point to beer education here.

But there are forces working against the tide. Last week I stopped by Tlustá Koala to try the new stout from Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf. Not only did I recognize the distinctive Kocour logo and colors on the tap, but when I took my seat I was surprised to find a brochure from the brewery explaining just what a stout is, how it is made and how it should taste. “Don’t be afraid,” it said.

No, I thought. Suddenly I wasn’t afraid at all.

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.

Getting there is easy: the park has its own tram station just a couple of minutes past the Dejvická metro station. (It’s currently served by the 8 and 36 trams or the 108, 119 and 218 buses.) Once you get off at Divoká Šarka, follow the trails — largely unmarked — to the Džbán koupaliště, or swimming pool, about 15 minutes northerly by foot. Continuing on the trail two minutes past Džbán, you’ll see Dívčí skok. They have blue and white umbrellas on the terrace that say Pivovar Herold on them.

But when I got there, a small blackboard announced that they were serving Svijany. I asked what happened to Herold.

“We had too many problems with it,” the barman said. “It kept going bad.”

He said they made the switch at the end of 2007. When I mentioned that some people thought that Herold was the best dark lager in the country, he replied that Svijany was also pretty good. I ordered a half-liter and took a seat on the terrace under one of the Herold umbrellas.

Nearby, a group of bronzed, middle-aged men in swimming suits were drinking beers and talking about the difference between malé pivovary and big breweries, and how with the beers from the big breweries there was žádná chuť.

The Kněžna from Svijany was good, but it didn’t have the depth I remembered from Herold’s dark lager. I had a slice of sekaná and thought I was missing something.

On my way back through the park, I saw a flash of silver on the trail ahead. A park crew had driven through on the way to clear some brush, and their tire tracks went straight over what looked like a tighty woven steel belt. When I got closer I saw it was a slow worm, or slepýš, a limbless reptile which is considered endangered in the Czech lands. It had been crushed by the weight, leaving behind the pattern of its scales and a slight gleam in the shadows from the trees.

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:

• Yes, Gambrinus is now produced through high-gravity brewing: there is just one original Gambrinus beer which is brewed at 13° and then diluted to make the two Gambrinus beers on the market.

• Gambrinus and Pilsner Urquell are produced in two different brewhouses using two different yeast strains: Gambrinus uses the company’s W strain, Pilsner Urquell the H strain.

• Every week a new batch of yeast is started from a single yeast cell.

• Each batch of yeast is used three or four times.

• Pilsner Urquell today has 40 IBUs. The hops, in the form of pellets, are 100% Saaz, added in three hoppings.

• Pilsner Urquell has about 35 days of lagering, which the brewery says is the same as in Josef Groll’s time.

• Pilsner Urquell recently switched to flash pasteurization, using a very moderate amount of 15 pasteurization units.

• The only unpasteurized beers from the Pilsner Urquell group are sold in tanks. There is tank Pilsner Urquell, tank Gambrinus, tank Kozel, tank Radegast, and even tank Birrell, the group’s non-alcoholic beer which did so well at the World Beer Cup.

• Nine coopers remain on staff to maintain the oak barrels shown in the brewery tour at Pilsner Urquell. This year the coopers made the brewery’s first new wooden fermentation vessels in 35 years.