The early details:

Some 75 Belgian beers will be available.

As at last year’s Christmas Beer Markets, this event is organized in multi-hour sessions: Friday 3–5 p.m. and 6–9 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.–1 p.m., 2–5 p.m. and 6–9 p.m.; Sunday 2–5 p.m. and 6–9 p.m.

Each session is limited to only 250 visitors.

Tickets for each session cost 150 Kč (roughly $9, or €6).

There will be excellent food, as well as special beer-and-food pairings.

The event takes place at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel (Nebovidská 1, Prague 1—Malá Strana; tram 12, 20 or 22 to Hellichova).

In terms of exactly which beers you’ll be able to try, the early announcement only says “lager, Trappist beers, spontaneously fermented beers, Belgian wits and experimental beers.” I’ll post more information as soon as I get it.

This one sounds like a winner. Earlier events have proven to be great fun as well as nice opportunities to fill up the cellar, or wherever you keep your stash. (With otherwise-not-to-be-found-in-Prague bottles available at what I find to be very reasonable prices, I usually show up with a good-sized backpack.) Mark your calendars…

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?

Tasting it at the Krušovická pivnice on Národní in Prague, I found it to be quite pretty, pouring a cloudy, very pale gold with a loose white head. The aromas briefly touched on clove with none of the conspicuous banana notes of some other Weizens; I thought I got a whiff of Band-Aid, though certainly not too much. The mouthfeel was slightly thin with more wheat than barley notes. Though it was served too cold at a pale-lager temperature, it came through pretty well, easily picking up 3 or more points on a basic 5-point scale, and definitely worth trying more than once.

It seems to fall more on the light/acidic side of Hefeweizen, rather than towards the heavy/sweet versions: in Czech terms, closer to Primátor Weizenbier than Herold Bohemian Wheat. In many ways, it’s just a classic take on the style: originally brewed at a gravity of 12.3°, resulting in 5.2% alcohol by volume, using both hop pellets and hop extract, though finishing with minimal hop presence.

You’re walking down the street in Prague, completely minding your own, when your eye hangs on a sign announcing a new beer. What stops you is an apparent error in the picture: instead of barley, the poster is adorned with what seems to be wheat.

Called Dožínkové pivo, the Czech Republic’s newest wheat beer started to show up at pubs around the country this week. There are two surprising things about the appearance of a new wheat beer in Bohemia, not the least of which is the brewery making it. (Drumroll, please…)

First, the early word is that this beer is made by Heineken-owned Krušovice. Unless Dožínkové pivo is a total disaster, this move is going to earn them love from local craft beer fans even beyond the repair they seem to have done to the now-drinkable Krušovice Černé.

Second, Dožínkové pivo is only the second new Czech wheat I’ve heard about in the past 20-odd hours. Fans of Černá Hora might like to know that the makers of 1530 and Black Hill are coming out with their own wheat beer, Velen.

That’s a doubling of Czech wheat beers (beyond brewpub offerings), from two to four, just this summer. Actually, before the return of Pivovar Herold’s wheat beer this spring, only the well-loved wheat beer from Primátor was widely available in this country, meaning we’ve gone from one to four in just six months.

I saw Dožínkové pivo at the Krušovická pivnice on Národní 7 in Prague; it’s apparently available at a few other Starobrno and Krušovice pubs around. The big question, of course, is how does it taste?

Quitting time’s in about an hour and 20 minutes. I’ll let you know after that.

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

In this part of the world, three of the most important words in contemporary beer culture are draft, draft and draft, with bottled beers making up a smaller (though growing) percentage of sales. For a long time, one of the only bottled beers from Prague’s Pivovarský dům brewpub was their Champagne-like Šamp, made off-site at a local producer with excess capacity. But now, the Czech capital’s revered brewpub is offering its classic dark lager in swing-tops.

But there’s a catch.

As I understand it, the only place you can get these bottles is the city’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel, where dark Štěpán is now the house brew. (I’d be surprised if Pivovarský dům didn’t offer them too, but that’s what I was told.)

This marks at least the third hotel in town with its own beer: there’s Hotel Beránek, which offers a specially labeled version of Chodovar as “Hotel Beránek Beer.” And the Augustine, Prague’s newest luxury hotel, offers a specially brewed version of the original Svatý Tomáš dark lager served in this location when it was still the old Pivovar U svatého Tomáše, an ancient monastery brewery in Prague which rivaled U Fleků until 1951, when it was closed by the Communists:

Considering the great potential (and, full disclosure, my own interest) in Czech beer tourism, it’s great to see hotels in Prague taking beer seriously. In addition to serving dark Štěpán in bottles, Mandarin Oriental has done much for beer here, offering a quality beer list in its hotel bar, holding regular beer tastings (some of which I’ve led), and hosting a couple of great beer festivals so far.

On that note, it’s not too early to get the word out about another event taking place at the Mandarin Oriental in October: a festival of Belgian beers beyond the Trappist brews we can now get at our local supermarkets. More info on the Belgian Beer Festival as it becomes available…

Although I believe in the importance of local ownership for breweries, I’m not totally convinced that that local owners are always better owners. Sometimes local owners can screw things up. Sometimes foreign owners can improve things. Look at what happened with Krušovice Černé, the legendary black lager from the brewery once owned by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II.

Pivovar Krušovice passed through many hands over the centuries, including foreigners like the Habsburg Emperor himself. Probably founded in 1517 when the local lords were granted brewing rights, it is first mentioned in print in 1581 as the property of Jiří Bírka z Násile, who had moved his brewery from Rakovník to a farm in nearby Krušovice, according to the history at Pivovary.info. In 1583 it was purchased from Jiří Bírka z Násile by Rudolph for 11,500 Meissner kopa, thus becoming the property of the Czech Crown, later falling into the hands of Bohemia’s Valdštejn and Fürstenberk noble families until after the war. It was nationalized by the Communists in 1948.

I’ve been told by brewers that, under Communism, Pivovar Krušovice produced pale lagers of such quality that they could — and probably did — pass for Pilsner Urquell on the export market. Krušovice Černé was certainly revered by people who know good beer. But something happened after the Velvet Revolution, while the brewery was under the ownership of Binding Brauerei group, part of the Dr. Oetker frozen-pizza and processed-food empire. As I put it in Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic, the beers sucked.

Part of that suck was the use of artificial ingredients, which, if I remember correctly, included both E150a, or caramel coloring, and E954, saccharine, in Krušovice Černé, which resulted in a medicinal, sickly sweet finish. So it was to my surprise when I tasted one recently for the first time in a while and found that I liked it plenty. The finish didn’t seem too sweet anymore. On draft at the Krušovická pivnice at Národní 7 in Prague, the beer had enough cola, coffee, spice and licorice notes that I stopped to pick up a bottle on the way home that night.

And then I read the ingredients. “Water, barley malt, hops, hop extract, yeast.” No E150a. No E954. Not even any E300, or ascorbic acid, another common additive in Czech beers.

So Krušovice Černé is once again made without artificial colorings and sweeteners and seems better off for it. The big difference between now and then is yet another change of ownership: Pivovar Krušovice was purchased by Heineken in June of 2007. The Dutch giant might not be everyone’s favorite international brewing conglomerate (and really, which one is?), but to judge by just one dark lager and how it tastes, it’s a step up from the frozen-pizza guys.

Run out and buy it? If you like dark lagers, definitely. The beer’s 3.8% alcohol — this is a desítka, or 10° Plato brew — makes it a very manageable lunch beer. Ratebeer also lists a version with just 3.5% alcohol in Sweden. In fact, both the domestic and the Scandinavian brews are much weaker than Krušovice Černé once was: the beer is descended from a celebratory brew called Grand, originally brewed at 14° and with around 6% alcohol, first made sometime around 1900. (That’s not a lunch beer by any means, at least not for me.)

I think this shows that not all foreign owners are equal, or at least not equally bad. Nor are all local owners universally good for breweries and beer lovers. One Czech brewmaster I spoke with recently noted that his beers improved remarkably once his brewery was bought by foreigners, who then provided enough capital to invest in better ingredients. Now it’s all Žatecký poloraný červeňák and Haná barley, all the time. But in the bad old days when his brewery was still Czech-owned, he said, they used Chinese hops and malt from Slovakia.

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.

Czech brewers have a tradition of making special beers to celebrate special anniversaries. A common way to commemorate the date is to work the founding year into the recipe of the beer itself.

For example, to celebrate the 325th anniversary of Moravia’s Pivovar Vyškov, brewmaster Dušan Táborský created an excellent strong and hoppy pale lager, Jubiler, brewed at an original gravity of 16.80° Plato, to reflect the brewery’s founding year of 1680.

Other Czech beers have taken a similar path.

To mark its founding in 1530, Pivovar Černá Hora released a beer, simply called 1530, brewed at 15.30° Plato. And then there’s U Medvídků’s newish pale lager, 1466, whose original gravity should by now be pretty easy to guess. (Hint: it’s 14.66°).

But to mark this year’s 175th anniversary of its founding back in 1834, Měšťanský pivovar Havlíčkův Brod — better known as Rebel — zigged where everyone else zagged. Instead of brewing its celebratory beer at an original gravity of 18.34° Plato, Rebel took the “175″ from the anniversary and gave it a starting gravity of 17.5° Plato. (Rebel? Maverick!)

And instead of simply calling the brew “1834,” Rebel went the scenic route, by which I meaning the long, loquacious road that leads over the Prolix Pass of the Circumlocutory Mountains, through the Valley of Verbosity and on deep into the Voluble Hills. As far as I can tell, this beer is called “Rebel 175let Extra Strong 17.5 Limitovaná série silného piva,” meaning “Rebel 175-Year Extra Strong 17.5 Limited Series Strong Beer.” At least that’s what’s on the front label, along with the dates “1834–2009.”

Because we’re friends, I’m just going to call it Rebel 17.5°.

The back of the bottle reads, in Czech, “By the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the founding of the Havlíčkův Brod brewery we have prepared a true specialty. This is the strongest beer that was ever brewed in Havlíčkův Brod. 1834–2009 Limited series of strong beer. Special pale beer.”

So what’s it like?

Interesting, but not something I’d run out and buy a case of. A bit of diacetyl is generally not considered a serious fault in Czech pale lagers, but in this case, it goes too far for my taste, creating overwhelming butterscotch and vanilla notes. Once you get past the diacetyl, it’s got a pleasant, long-lasting bitter finish. In terms of aroma, the front of the house is dedicated to malt, with strong corn and grainy notes. (And unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot of Hop Action™ here.) One good note: the alcohol is pretty subtle for a walloping 8%.

To be honest, I think this beer might have been more successful if it had actually been brewed at 18.34°. A wort strength above 18° Plato would lend itself to the style of strong dark lager called “porter” in Czech, meaning a Baltic Porter like Pardubický Porter and Primátor’s Double 24°. Instead, this is a strong pale lager much like Jubiler, but without Jubiler’s hoppiness to balance the sweetness of the malt. And the diacetyl is just too much for me. In this case, the brewery might have taken its name a bit too seriously.

Perhaps something less rebellious and slightly more charismatic for the 200th?

Each year, the Czech Republic consumes the most beer per capita, regularly hitting around 160 liters for every Czech man, woman and child. But how does that compare to other countries?

The visualization above is part of a 12-nation comparison from Snippets.com, and re-posted here with kind permission. Each glass depicts the relative annual beer consumption per person for the specified countries, using data from a 2004 report by the Japanese brewer Kirin, whose retro recipes we noted earlier.

Here’s how the 12 nations stack up:

Poor Brazil. Poor China! Even people in the United States drink only about half as many beers as what the Czechs consume — and much of that, of course, is Bud Light.

NB: this is not a list of the first 12 places, but rather a comparison among various countries. According to Wikipedia’s list of beer consuming countries in 2004, Austria (not depicted here) would come before the UK, while Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Slovakia and Spain would all rank ahead of the United States. And you can forget about 12th place: China’s meager beer consumption of 22 liters per person would not even place it among the top 35 countries.

It’s worth checking out the visualization’s large-format original.