Some corrections, comments, clarifications and addenda to the Czech entries of The Oxford Companion to Beer:

“The majority of beer sold in the Czech Republic is relatively light lager classified as výcepní [sic], these are brewed from original gravities between 8° Plato and 12° Plato” (page 277).

Correctly spelled “výčepní,” this category of beer has long had an upper limit of 10° Plato. Czech beers of 11° and 12° Plato compose a different legal classification, called “ležák.” (Source: Czech State Agricultural and Food Inspectorate.)

“Beers having more than 5.5% ABV are referred to as special [sic] Speciální” (page 278).

Called “speciální pivo” (or “speciál”), this legal classification is for beer “with an original gravity of 13° or higher.” The amount of alcohol has no bearing here. (Source: as above.)

“Budvar… has 5% alcohol by volume and 20 units of bitterness” (page 191).

According to the company’s press spokesman in the Czech Republic, Budweiser Budvar’s 5% alcohol lager has 22.5 units of bitterness, not 20.

In the entry for “Bohemian Pilsner,” the book states that for Czech versions, “the brewing grists are invariably 100% pilsner malt” (page 140).

Actually, many breweries in the Czech lands use a small portion — about 1% — of caramel malt in their premium pale lagers, or “Bohemian Pilsners.” (Source: interviews with Czech brewers and brewery consultants.) While 100% pilsner malt might be a traditional grist for a Czech pale lager, it is not “invariably” the case today.

“Throughout the Middle Ages, the general populace, from peasants to kings, produced beer within their own households” (page 277).

This seems to contradict Ludvík Fürst’s 1941 monograph Jak se u nás vařilo pivo, which notes that brewing was outlawed or banned for the general public in the Czech lands during much of the Middle Ages. For example, St. Adalbert (956–997) banned brewing under the threat of excommunication, a decree which lasted over 200 years until it was lifted by Pope Innocent IV at the urging of the first King Wenceslas, Václav I (1205-1253).

At this point, things actually went from bad to worse, as brewing in all forms started to become subject to the Mílové Právo, or Mile Right, which granted noblemen or small groups of burghers in many Czech towns and cities an exclusive monopoly on producing beer (and occasionally other products) within a radius of one Czech “mile” — a distance equal to about 7,530 meters, or 4.6 miles by our measure. Thus, brewing was prohibited — “occasionally under the punishment of death,” as Fürst notes — for everyone except the holders of the Mile Right, generally within an area of about 66 square miles in each location.

Pivovary.info’s piece on the Mílové Právo notes that the monopoly was instituted in Opava in 1224, in Olomouc in 1230, in Kroměříz in 1240, in Brno in 1243, in Trutnov in 1260, in Louny in 1265, in Prague in 1278, and in České Budějovice in 1351, among other settings. This ban lasted for much of the late Middle Ages, from the early 13th century until about the late 15th century, though the law continued to exist in some areas and in some form until its definitive abolition in 1788. 

Meanwhile, in the countryside, “the right to brew beer for members of households was gradually transferred to manor houses,” writes Fürst, noting that this exclusive brewing right of local lords was — later — explicitly confirmed by Vadislav II in the year 1485.

Jak se u nás vařilo pivo does include some evidence of home brewing by the Czech populace during the Middle Ages, but, given the numerous prohibitions on brewing and the area’s many brewing monopolies, it seems incomplete — if not downright incorrect — to claim that brewing in households was commonplace “throughout” the Middle Ages here.

“Bohemian brewing became famous in the 13th and 14th centuries when some of the aforementioned towns were granted brewing privileges and banlieu [sic] rights (which meant that within a certain distance of the town only beer brewed by the town’s burghers could be legally sold)” (page 140).

It is not clear why we are using a French word here, nor why that word is misspelled — it should be banlieue — though in any case this is not exactly what was meant by the Mile Right, as noted above. Under the Mile Right, it was not merely forbidden to sell beer from somewhere else: it was against the law, sometimes as a capital offense, for anyone but those holding the Mile Right “to brew beer, produce malt, or open a tavern.” Moreover, it should be noted that this right was not enjoyed equally by all burghers in each town: “The older, established burghers later claimed this right for themselves and did not grant it to the new [burghers].” (Source: Jak se u nás vařilo pivo.)

“Martin Stelzer, founder of the Burgher’s [sic] Brewery of Pilsen” (page 408).

A celebrated local architect, Martin Stelzer was one of two principal builders of the Burghers’ Brewery in Pilsen, but it is wrong to call him a founder. Most importantly, Martin Stelzer was not among the twelve prominent Pilsen burghers who requested the construction of a new brewery on January 2, 1839. Nor was he one of the 250 Pilsen burghers who held brewing rights at the time of the brewery’s founding. (Source: Měšťanský Pivovar v Plzni 1842–1892). He might have been hired by the founders, but he was not a founder himself.

(Obviously, the correct spelling should be “Burghers’ Brewery,” as this is a plural possessive. This shows up again as incorrect on page 277, though it appears in a different incorrect form, as “Burgher Brewery,” on pages 74, 102, 393, 419 and 597, and is translated differently — and perhaps equally correctly — as “Citizens’ Brewery” on page 386.)

“Groll smuggled a Bavarian lager yeast across the border” (page 409).

According to the 1892 chronicle Měšťanský Pivovar v Plzni 1842–1892, “seed yeast (yeast, material) for the first batch and fermented wort were purchased from Bavaria.” There is no mention of Mr. Groll’s involvement.

More importantly, it was clearly not the case that lager yeast needed to be “smuggled.” The book notes that, by 1841, fully one-tenth of all breweries in the Czech lands were already using bottom-fermenting lager yeast (including one of the largest producers in nineteenth-century Bohemia, the Wanka brewery in Prague, just 57 miles away). Well before the first batch of Pilsner Urquell was brewed in 1842, the town of Pilsen was already “flooded” by bottom-fermented beer, as the founders of the brewery stated the situation in 1839.

“Smuggled” might be romantic, but it is clearly not accurate.

“A legend in Pilsen says the wrong type of malt was delivered to the brewery by mistake but this seems fanciful” (page 653).

It most certainly is fanciful, as the original Burghers’ Brewery was constructed with its own malthouse on the premises, a crucial element from its initial concept. The title of the 1839 document which founded the brewery reads “Request of the Burghers with Brewing Rights for the Construction of Their Own Malt- and Brewhouse.” In it, the founding burghers’ fifth point highlights the importance of being able to produce their own malt, declaring that a brewer who would trust his barley and malt to someone else “threatens his capital with fire.”

This essential part of the brewery was even given priority in construction: “At the end of September, 1842, the whole brewery, interior and exterior, was completed, and because the malting had begun even earlier, brewing could begin without any further delay in early October.”

(Some background: in Czech, the main word for “brewer” is “sládek,” meaning “the man who prepares the malt,” or “maltster,” as for centuries here, the task of many brewers — like Mr. Groll — was, in large part, to make malt. This is still done today by the brewer Jaroslav Nosek at Pivovar Broumov, a small brewery which spends the bulk of its late spring and early summer malting its own barley for use in the coming brewing season.)

And in point of fact, the historical record clearly notes that the brewery’s very first load of “hard barley” — definitely not malt, and definitely not the wrong kind — “was purchased at the then-weekly market at an average price of 3 florins and 12 crowns.” (Source: Měšťanský Pivovar v Plzni 1842–1892.)

Martin Stelzer “toured Europe and Britain to study modern breweries” (page 653).

Strangely, The Oxford Companion to Beer’s previous entry does not even agree with this statement, noting on page 652 only that “Martin Stelzer was commissioned to design and build the new brewery. He traveled extensively around Bavaria,” period, with no mention of any trips elsewhere.

According to Měšťanský Pivovar v Plzni 1842–1892, the two architects who were hired to create the new Burghers’ Brewery both took trips to see bottom-fermenting breweries — though not to Britain. The builder František Filaus “made a trip around the biggest breweries in Bohemia which were then already equipped for brewing bottom-fermented beer,” while in December of 1839, Martin Stelzer “traveled to Bavaria, so that he could tour bigger breweries in Munich and elsewhere and use the experience thus gained for the construction and furnishing of the Burghers’ Brewery.”

More obviously, the goal of the new brewery — clearly stated in the founding document in 1839 — was to produce bottom-fermenting beer, also called “Bavarian beer.” Obviously, Mr. Stelzer would have been unlikely to find many producers of Bavarian lager in Britain in 1839.

This entry seems to be confused with the story of Gabriel Sedlmayr and Anton Dreher, who did travel around Britain visiting breweries a few years earlier.

“It’s more likely that Martin Stelzer brought back from England a malt kiln indirectly fired by coke rather than directly fired by wood. This type of kiln was used to make pale malt, the basis of a new style of beer brewed in England called pale ale. A model of a kiln in the Pilsen museum supports this theory” (page 653).

This is simply wild speculation. As noted above, the brewery’s own chronicle has no record of Martin Stelzer — one of the most prolific architects of his age, the author of hundreds of buildings in Pilsen — taking time off to travel all the way to Britain. Given his task — to construct a Bavarian-style, bottom-fermenting brewery — there would have been no reason to do so.

However, it is apparent that the Burghers’ Brewery was originally outfitted with a noteworthy kiln, whose description in Czech (“dle anglického spůsobu zařízený hvozd”) seems to make it clear that this was not, in fact, a kiln which had come from England, but rather “a kiln equipped in the English manner,” according to Kniha pamětní král. krajského města Plzně od roku 775 až 1870, an extensive chronicle of Pilsen published in 1883. (According to this book, this kiln was “vytápěný odcházejícím teplem z místnosti ku vaření,” or “heated by heat leaving the boiling room.”)

“Plzensky Prazdroj [sic],” page 654 and page 277.

A small mistake to outsiders, but technically a misspelling in local terms, as N and Ň (and Y and Ý) are considered different letters in Czech. (Strangely, The Oxford Companion to Beer itself spells the name correctly, as “Plzeňský Prazdroj,” on pages 74, 103, 140, 386, 651 and 652.)

At Budvar, “Soft brewing water comes from a deep natural lake beneath the brewery, using a well that dates back several thousand years,” (page 191).

The town of České Budějovice was founded in the year 1265 AD, though the Budvar brewery was only built in 1895, in a much younger northern suburb there.

A well is a man-made structure, “a shaft sunk into the ground in order to obtain water, oil or gas,” while “several” means “more than two but not many.” Thus, this passage reads as if part of a brewery from 1895 somehow dates from around 1000 BC, making it many centuries older than the arrival of the Celts in Bohemia, and thus one of the oldest man-made structures in the country. This is preposterous.

Budvar’s own claims for the age of its wells on its company website sound far more reasonable: “In 1922 the first artesian well was bored and after some further time an additional two artesian wells were also bored.”

Imagine my surprise when I saw the changes in a new version of that document. Errors have been fixed, a few vagaries have been cleared up, and at least one category of Czech beer has been washed away — while an interesting new Czech beer category has been proposed in its place.

At the time of the publication of GBG Prague, there were just a few legal categories for beer:

• Lehké pivo (“light beer”), under 7° Balling in original gravity and less than 130 kJ/100 ml
• Výčepní pivo (akin to “taproom beer”), 8° to 10° in original gravity
• Ležák (“lager”), 11° to 12° in original gravity
• Speciální pivo (or “special beer”), 13° and higher in original gravity
• Porter, a dark beer composed primarily of barley malt, 18° and higher in original gravity

And that was largely it, with a few more clarifications or specifications: the grist of pšeničné pivo (“wheat beer”) had to contain at least 1/3 wheat malt; kvasnicové pivo (“yeast beer”) was (confusingly) only defined as containing an addition of fermenting wort, but not yeast itself; řezané pivo (“cut beer,” generally a mix of pale and dark lagers) had to be of two beers from the same category (eg, two “taproom” or two “lager” beers).

You can see the old document here: http://iom.vse.cz/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/vyhlaska_335_1997.pdf

The new document, available from the website of the State Agricultural and Food Inspectorate, makes some very interesting changes. You can find it here: http://www.szpi.gov.cz/docDetail.aspx?docid=1007482&docType=ART&nid=11816 (click the first PDF, titled “[vyhlaska_335_1997_Sb.pdf]”

Can you spot the differences?

• Lehké pivo is gone completely. (This won’t be missed. I think I only ever encountered two or three examples.)
• In its place is a new style of beer: stolní pivo (“table beer”), made primarily from barley malt, up to 6° original gravity (inclusive).
• Výčepní pivo now ranges from 7° to 10°, up to a full percent weaker in terms of original gravity.
• Ležák is still 11° and 12°.
• Speciální pivo is still 13° and up.
• Kvasnicové pivo is now defined as containing an addition of clean yeast culture or an addition of fermenting wort.
• A new category, pivo z jiných obilovin (“beer from other grain,” meaning other than barley or wheat), of which — if I’m reading this correctly — at least 1/3 of the grist must be the other grain specified.

Also, the earlier document seemed a bit too focused on yeast types, specifying as tightly as “Saccharomyces cerevisiae subsp. uvarum (carlsbergensis)” for Czech bottom-fermented beers; now it just says “bottom-fermenting brewing yeast.” (Interestingly, both documents acknowledge the possibility of also using both acetic- as well as lactic-acid-producing bacteria in brewing. However, this is possible only for top-fermenting beers: lambic-lager hybrids are still not on the cards.)

Personally, I’m thrilled about the idea of Czech table beers that are not limited to low-calorie versions: this is an entirely new style that deserves some great new examples from some courageous Czech brewers, stat. For the moment, however, I’m most interested in — and most confused by — that “beer from other grain” category. Are we going to start seeing rye beers built on at least 33% rye, or oat beers with at least 33% oats? (Answer: unlikely.) But more importantly, does that mean that you can’t call your beer a “corn beer” if it doesn’t contain at least 1/3 corn?

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.”)

If you’re interested in things like Grodziskie, Lichtenhainer, Horner Bier or pre-lager brewing in Bohemia, you don’t have to travel to the Czech National Library or the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv to start your research. In fact, Google Books has a bunch of electronic books — “free” as in “beer” — that desperately need curious readers and writers to share their wealth of information. Best of all, they’re in the public domain, so you don’t have to pay for them. And because they’re digitized, you can easily search for interesting terms like “sauer” or “Grätzer.”

To start, get J. C. Leuchs’ Brau-Lexikon from 1867. Nice stuff here on all kinds of older Central European beers and how they were made.

Move along to the Allgemeine Hopfen-Zeitung, Volume 10, Issues 1-74. The chemical analysis of Grodziskie on page 259 tells you exactly how much alcohol that beer had in 1870: just 1.923% by weight.

If you were really interested in Czech hops, you’d probably want to sneak a peek at Böhmens Hopfenbau (1846), by Johann Wenzel Hocke.

And the big one, of course, is the 1854 edition of Karl J. N. Balling’s Die Gährungschemie, which notes that “The well-known Horner Bier near Vienna is an oat beer: it is very fizzy and refreshing, but it is cloudy.” With all the interest in historical beers and sour brewing, someone has got to make an authentic Horner Bier one of these days soon.

I don’t know everything that’s in these volumes, only that much of what is in there isn’t widely known, so please dig around and see what you find. Perhaps you’ll bust some myths, misconceptions and made-up histories of your own. And if you come across other public-domain brewing books that deserve a wider audience, send me a link and I’ll update this list.

It’s always humbling to be called an expert on anything, and the more I learn about Czech beer the more I come to think my expertise extends only as far as the drinking of it. Nevertheless, I was happy to be asked to write some tasting notes for a Czech Beer Festival that took place at the Porterhouse pubs in London and Dublin this past November.

The surprise? The festival lineup went well beyond the expected also-rans and usual suspects. Among the Czech beers we all know quite well were several rarities, as well as a few I hadn’t yet heard of, including what looked like two new beers from Pivovar Žatec, the historic underdog brewery in the great hop-growing town also known as Saaz.

On the list: Žatec Strong, an 18° beer, as well as what looked like a new 14° dark lager. And when I checked the brewery’s own website, I saw they were even putting out a new, gluten-free beer, called Celia, and a Cornish Steam Lager. Whatever happened to the old underdog that couldn’t seen to think beyond the common půllitr?

Impressed by the lineup, I wrote to the brewery managers and asked if it would be possible to taste the new beers. The Cornish Steam Lager was unavailable, but they were able to provide a couple of samples of their Strong, Celia and the 14° dark.

First surprise: the “new” 14° dark lager was in fact just a new label on the beer we know as Xantho, originally promoted for its high level of xanthohumol, a compound naturally found in hops, and the “magical effects” thereof, and which initially seemed to be marketed towards women. At Ratebeer it is listed as one beer, “Xantho (Dark Lager),” while BeerAdvocate gives separate listings (and different ratings) for Xantho and Dark Lager, though both with the same 5.7 alcohol. It is in fact the very same beer, and a very good one: dark ruby in color with slight molasses and honey notes in the nose, a relatively light mouthfeel for 14°, with nice maple sweetness balanced by lightly gingery, moderately bitter finish. My sample bottle was in great shape, better than I remember from my tastings of the original Xantho.

Žatec Strong surprised: when I heard it was an 18° beer, I immediately thought it would be a Czech “Porter,” meaning a Baltic Porter, meaning nearly black. In fact it’s more of a strong polotmavý, or half-dark: a gorgeous clear amber with a loose tan head of very little duration — pehaps not surprisingly, considering its strength of 7.3%. In the nose, it has rich dough and slight pumkin-pie spice, followed by plummy, povidla-like flavors in the mouth with significant butterscotch and toffee notes, creating a sweet, koláč-like impression followed by a bitter, herbal, almost medicinal finish. After a few sips, I thought the buttery diacetyl flavors were perhaps too strong. Later tastings brought out more pleasant, syrupy notes of sour cherries.

Considering it is made for people suffering from celiac disease, Celia is really pretty okay — much better than you might expect. It pours a clear gold with a fluffy white head, followed by grainy, corn and malt notes in the nose with just a touch of aroma hops. It has a light, malty body with an understated, bitter Saaz hop finish. I’d say it’s about average for a pale Czech lager, which is very good by international standards, and I’d call it excellent for a gluten-free brew from just about anywhere.

Like many beer fans, I’d love to see a beer from Žatec that really showcases the aromas of the town’s noble Saaz hops — despite the name, Žatec beers seem only about average in hop character, and certainly not as wow-packed as the brews coming from upstarts like Pivovar Kout na Šumavě. But one great dark lager, a good strong amber, and a new brew that brings a fair dose of flavor to the gluten-free market? Plus a fugitive take on steam lager, aka California Common?

It’s heartening to see a storied old brewery trying new things, and with such success. Heartening, and humbling, too.

When she needed to make what she described as “some major life changes,” Shannon Essa turned to beer — Italian craft beer.

The result is Ms. Essa’s American tour company, Grape Hops, that offers trips to many of the up-and-coming microbreweries in Piedmont and Lombardy, along with more traditional wine and culinary adventures elsewhere in Italy and in Spain. Founded by Ms. Essa in partnership with Kim Riemann, an administrator for the slowtrav.com travel website, Grape Hops came about after the two heard about the region’s burgeoning craft beer scene, which inspired them to start offering complete pre-planned trips as well as custom tours, hitting everything from Birrificio Montegioco to the great Lambrate brewpub in Milan, pictured above.

“We first put together an itinerary and we went over and did a dry run,” said Ms. Essa, speaking on the phone from her home in San Diego. She recalled her first experience with the vibrant Italian craft beer scene as nothing short of amazing.

“They are cooking with hops, cooking with beer — they’re experimenting with everything,” she said. “We had pieces of veal that were breaded with hops. And they had desserts that they use beers that they infuse mint into and they make desserts out of that.”

Among the many stops on the tours are the Grado Plato brewpub and Teo Musso’s legendary Le Baladin.

“I loved Grado Plato, just because it was a cool spot and their beer was excellent,” Ms. Essa said. “Le Baladin was great, because we visited their restaurant, not their pub, where they do the five-course meal and pair a lot of beer with it. Just in terms of an experience, from when you walk in the door until you leave, I’ve never experienced anything like that.”

Indeed, most visitors have not attended many beer dinners quite like the multi-course meal taking place in Le Baladin’s moody, caravansarai atmosphere.

“When you walk in the door and there’s that music and that vibe, it’s incredible,” she said.

Upcoming tours include a trip in October this year, as well as trips scheduled for next March and May, one of which will be in partnership with a Brooklyn pub that serves many craft beers from northern Italy. In addition, Ms. Essa noted that Grape Hops can put together custom tours for four to six travelers, creating easy-to-enjoy, beer-themed vacations without a lot of stress.

“It’s really cool for people who don’t know Italy, don’t speak Italian, don’t want to drink & drive,” Ms. Essa said. “All they have to do is arrive in Milan and depart from Torino. We get them their food, we get them their beer. It’s a lot of fun.”

While beer tours in Italy might sound different to some, Ms. Essa noted that much of the good vibes and friendly atmosphere are just like those in craft brewing circles elsewhere. Only perhaps more so.

“They’re so passionate and they’re so cool and they’re so fun,” Ms. Essa said. “They’re Italian basically.”

We were on Dlouhá, close to Lokál, and Jonas was just waking up from his afternoon nap; I was wet from the rainstorm that had just passed. I was pushing his carriage towards a couple of errands and then home when I saw a friend from the Prague beer scene ahead of us on the sidewalk.

“How are things?” he asked, smiling.

“Good but busy,” I said. “I started brewing.”

“How much?” he asked.

I did some quick math. “Zero point twenty-two hectoliters.”

“And what kind of beer?”

“Well, the first batch was a saison, because it was 29 degrees in the apartment last week.”

“Perfect.”

“Yeah, it smells like black pepper. Tastes great. And today Jonas and I are going to brew a wit.”

“A wit sounds good right about now.”

“I’m looking forward to it. Do you know there’s going to be a new pub here, called the Prague Beer Museum, with something like 30 Czech craft beers on draft?”

“Where, around the corner somewhere?”

“No, right there on Dlouhá. There,” I said, pointing across the street.  ”Where the Tom Tom Bar used to be.”

“So something like Zlý Časy?”

“Yeah, only here in the center.”

“Great news. Oh, and before I forget,” he said, “today we’re brewing the Grodziskie.”

“Wow. Where’d you get the…”

“Yeast?”

“No, the malt.”

“We’re using smoked malt from Weyermann. But the yeast we got direct from Grodzisk.”

“So, in about a month?”

“Yes,” he smiled. “In about a month.”

And with that my boddhisatva said goodbye, shaking my hand and touching Jonas’s cheek before striding deeper into Old Town. And as we pushed off down Dlouhá towards our errands, and then home, both of us were grinning.

Site news: as part of our tinkering under the hood around here, we’ve had Google Analytics functioning for the past two weeks. The results are surprisingly good — who knew that a bunch of old articles about beer would crank up thousands of pageviews every week?

What’s also surprising is seeing just what people are reading. Here’s the list of Beer Culture’s most popular posts and pages for the past two weeks:

For some reason, our post on Katarina Van Derham, last year’s St. Pauli Girl, really hit a nerve and is now our most popular read, even though the photos at that page don’t seem to display correctly. (If it’s working above, Ms. Van Derham is third from the left.)

Not so surprisingly, the story (and review) of Czech beer cosmetics is number 2 with a bullet.

Whatever happened to Beer Culture, our “we’re back” post, comes in at number 3.

A post on Pivovar Platan being purchased by K Brewery Trade is number 4, quite possibly because people are interested in knowing where the new beer called Lobkowicz is being made, since it’s not at the brewery that used to be called Lobkowicz.

The must-see visualization of beer consumption by country, courtesy of Snippets.com, is number 5.

Number 6 is about the return of Krušovice Černé, a legendary Czech dark lager that was once great, then bad, and now pretty good.

Our seventh most popular point is the page that pimps Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic. (Someday I’ll figure out how to get that page not to display the link to that page in the sidebar.)

The tag “Primátor,” calling up all articles related to the Primator brewery, is number 8.

Number 9 is the post that could have been titled “On First Drinking Pivovar Kout Na Šumavě’s Beer, in the Town of Domažlice.” (That’s from February of 2008. It’s hard to believe that just over two years ago, Kout beer — now a favorite of many — was completely unknown in Prague.)

And the tenth most popular thing you’re reading is on the Czech Republic’s beer map, which might already be in a second edition, according to scuttlebutt.

More soon. Now back to the wrenches, pipes and wiring…

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.

In fact, Beer Culture didn’t start out as a weblog: I launched Beer Culture in early 2003 as an old-media, dead-tree newspaper column at The Prague Post, the English-language newspaper in the Czech Republic, where for several years I ran the food & drink desk. If I’m not mistaken, just two Beer Culture pieces were guest-written: one by Prague Post staff writer Dan Macek on the SPP, the Czech beer consumers’ organization, when it became part of the European Beer Consumers Union in 2005, and one in which the award-winning beer writer Alastair Gilmour described a festival celebrating one thousand years of Žatec (Saaz) hops in 2004. The remaining 36 or so Beer Culture newspaper columns were written by yours truly.

When I left the paper in early 2006, the column left with me for what we could call its first hiatus. But just before the publication of Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic in early 2007, I wrote a couple of articles for my friends at the Prague Daily Monitor, the Czech Republic’s daily English-language news website. By the end of the year, we were ready to relaunch Beer Culture as a Prague Daily Monitor weblog, where it ran from December of 2007 until October of 2009, publishing over 100 posts on everyone’s favorite beverage.

By any measure, Beer Culture 2.0 did very well: by September, 2008, the weblog already had about 5,000 monthly visits and was serving up almost 9,000 pageviews per month. March of 2009 saw over 14,000 visits and just a shade under 20,000 pageviews.

But even by that point, it was clear that Prague Daily Monitor was about to go through some major changes. It took a few months of planning and negotiating, but on November 4, 2009, it was finally announced that Prague Daily Monitor had been acquired by Prague TV.

I think the world of the people at Prague Daily Monitor, who put out a great editorial product that remains an English-language must-read for anyone interested in Czech culture and news. And as a 10-year resident of the city, I’ve long been a fan of Prague TV. I remain good friends with — and a reader of — both publications. But the switch gave me the chance to publish Beer Culture entirely on my own, something I’ve been wanting to try for a while. In addition, it allows me to make a break and do things in a new way. Call it Beer Culture 3.0.

So what’s going to be different?

A bunch of stuff. Part of the new plan is visible in the new address at www.beerculture.org. Not having Prague in its domain name means a lot more than just a different URL. Perhaps just psychologically, that frees up Beer Culture to have a wider focus.

Another change is simply personal: at least for now, I don’t feel much like writing tasting notes or announcing the arrival of new pubs. And honestly, there are already enough blogs covering those subjects.

Instead, I hope to write more stories — to tell the tale of how something happened, in other words. How a beer got made, imported or drunk. To tell you who did it and why. And at the same time, I hope to add some light to the history of beer in central Europe: there is simply too much that hasn’t been written about the beer culture here, certainly not in English, and I have to imagine that you, as a reader, would be much more interested in reading those stories than in hearing my personal reactions. You can find personal reactions anywhere. But good stories? Those are hard to come by.

This won’t be a daily weblog, so please feel free to sign up for the Beer Culture RSS feed, or just check back to the home page whenever you feel like it. There’s more stuff coming, including the very material question of how Beer Culture will be able to support itself, which should be interesting. (And fun, or so one would hope.)

I leave you with a raised glass and a na zdraví. To Beer Culture, and to beer culture.

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…