We seem to be entering a great time for beer writing (and reading), with wonderful work being done by Ron Pattinson at Shut Up About Barclay Perkins and by Martyn Cornell at Zythophile, two writers who are sharpening our understanding of beer’s lengthy history, and correcting a lot of inaccuracies and misunderstandings along the way, especially in the field of British brewing.

Over at A Good Beer Blog, Alan McLeod is knocking out whimsical investigations of Albany Ale (what’s that?) and 19th-century brewing in Canada and America.

But at the moment, Central Europe’s storied brewing history seems to be getting less attention in this regard, at least in English beer writing — a pity, because our beer culture suffers from at least as many inaccuracies, misunderstandings and made-up backstories as those northwest of here. (I’m not convinced, for example, that Prague’s traditional beer style is the U-Fleků-style dark lager, or even that “the standard medieval Czech brew was decidedly dark, not blond,” as Horst Dornbusch has written. That clearly wasn’t the case by 1672, when Bohuslav Balbín wrote that “Pražskému pšeničnému, jemuž se říká světlé, se může máloco rovnat, pokud jde o blahodárné účinky,” or, roughly, “There may be little equal to Prague wheat beer, which is called ‘pale’, in terms of its beneficial effects.”)

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So whatever happened to Beer Culture?

In the spirit of where Beer Culture plans to go in the future, I’d like to tell the story of Beer Culture’s past.

It should be obvious by the capital letters that I’m talking about Beer Culture the weblog, not the lowercase “beer culture” in the sense of “the customs, institutions, achievements and observable manifestations of the activities of producing, serving and drinking lagers and ales.” That particular beer culture is doing just fine, thank you very much. But in case you haven’t noticed, Beer Culture, formerly hosted by Prague Daily Monitor, has been on hiatus for the past six months or so. It’s returning now at a new address — please update your links to www.beerculture.org — as well as with a new sense of what it intends to address.

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There’s a new trend in Prague pubs: rotating beer selections. The widest range is probably at Pivovarský klub, whose six taps change constantly to include various brews from around the country and around Europe (mostly from small, regional producers, with Pivovarský dům’s Štěpán and Primátor’s Weizenbier enjoying near-štamgast status at taps 5 and 6, respectively).

Other Prague pubs with rotating taps include the great První pivní tramway and Zlý časy, described by Max Bahnson as a font of great beers and good goulash. Following that post, Jay commented that the same sort of things were taking place on at U Radnice in Prague 3, a Žižkov stronghold for Podkováň beer when I listed it in Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic, but which switched breweries to Rohozec after Podkováň closed before branching out to include a wider selection.

This week I stopped by to see what they’ve got on tap.

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