There’s more information about the Christmas Beer Markets taking place next weekend, December 20, 21 and 22, right here in Prague. Not only will some of the best Czech brewers bring their holiday and seasonal specials to the capital, but next weekend’s festival will also include a handful of great names in brewing from around Europe.

If you’re at all interested in craft beer, you won’t want to miss a single one of the festival’s just-announced foreign brews.

From the announcement at www.pivnidenik.cz:

The Christmas Beer Markets take place next Saturday, Sunday and Monday, December 20–22, at Prague’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

Beyond domestic — meaning Czech — seasonal beers from craft producers, this year’s festival will include several notable foreign specialties.

Germany’s legendary wheat brewer Schneider Weisse will offer Aventinus Weizenstarkbier, an outrageously good wheat Doppelbock, as well as the special Aventinus Weizen-Eisbock rocking 12% alcohol by volume.

Two as-yet-unnamed surprises will come from the Bamberg region.

From Denmark’s Nørrebro Bryghus, attendees will be able to sample various beer styles including the brewery’s brown ale, IPA, stout, coffee stout, Imperial IPA and more.

From Scotland, beer from the Inveralmond Brewery.

Also from Scotland, BrewDog — makers of the excellent Punk IPA — will offer beers including the 10%-alcohol Paradox, a deep and mysterious Imperial Stout aged in whiskey casks from some of Scotland’s greatest distilleries.

As a kicker, the Christmas Beer Markets will also include a selection of beers from Belgium.

That’s a big step up in terms of variety from last year’s Christmas Beer Markets. The only thing that’s missing is the cult Norwegian brewery Nøgne Ø, whose Dark Horizon Second Edition (17.5% alcohol) the organizers planned to include, though the price and the expense of delivery proved to be a bridge too far.

Which just gives us something to look forward to next year.

Christmas Beer Markets
December 20, 21 and 22 (Saturday, Sunday and Monday)
Inside the Mandarin Oriental Hotel (Nebovidská 1, Prague 1—Malá Strana)
Tram: 12, 20 or 22 to Hellichova
Two sessions daily: 1-5 p.m. and 6-10 p.m.
Entry: 150 Kč including glass and one beer

For more information, see the previous Beer Culture post on the Christmas Beer Markets.

Of the many new brewpubs and breweries in the Czech lands, one of the most distinguished has to be Pivovar Kout na Šumavě, which returned to life by lurching off the operating table much like Frankenstein just as I was finishing Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic. Fortunately, I got the information in time to include a listing; unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to try even a single beer before we went to print.

Until now.

Located to the south of Plzeňský kraj in the beautiful Šumava forest, Kout is one of the few real breweries — not brewpubs — to reappear in the Czech Republic. Even stranger, Kout started out with remarkable success in a region that is completely pwned by Pilsner Urquell and Gambrinus, the biggest brands in the country. Just after starting up, Kout secured distribution in several towns around the region, including Pilsen. Soon, more than a few cognoscenti started saying that they thought Kout made the best Pilsner-style beer in the Czech Republic, if not the world.

After tasting it, I’m inclined to agree.

Although there are more than a few places that stock Kout beer in Plzeňský kraj (Pilsen Region), further afield the brand is almost never seen; I haven’t yet found it in Prague. But if you travel from Prague to Bamberg, you can break up the six-hour trip with a stop in Domažlice, a surprisingly nice Czech border town with an impressive square, a leaning watchtower, photogenic arcades and narrow cobblestone lanes, as well as more than a few pubs that serve beers from Kout, the best of which might be the Koutská Pivnice, a narrow beer hall with no edibles other than chips and at least two Kout brews on tap, including the 12° golden lager.

Koutský světlý ležák (5% ABV) Pours a clear deep gold with no visible carbonation and topped by a very thick, meringue-like head. There’s a touch of yeast in the nose, a full, creamy mouthfeel of lush malt followed by a startling amount of bitter hops in the finish: the initial impression is one of those great Pilsner-style beers that comes close to a pale ale. It seems to really push the limits of bitterness for the style and yet has less Saaz hop aroma than many similar brews. The head stratifies into a series of thick rings going down the glass like geological layers; additional sips bring out flavors of honey and plums. Truly remarkable.

That’s just one pivo from Kout, though it is the flagship, and rightly so. The folks at Ratebeer rank it quite highly. In addition, Kout has launched a line that includes a dark 18°, one of the current beer trends I mentioned in The Truth About Budvar, as well as a dark 14° and a quotidian golden 10°. I’ll post more on those brews once I taste them, and I promise I will taste them all as soon as is humanly possible.

By the way, if you’re thinking of going to Domažlice, the town really is remarkably well-preserved and has an interesting history of protecting the Czech border with Bavaria and the setting for Czech-German conflicts dating all the way back to the thirteenth century. Konšelský šenk is one of the most comfortable hotels we’ve found outside of Prague; our clean and modern double was roughly half the price of what we paid for a similar room last year in České Budějovice and easily twice as nice. We found kvasnicové Svijany in one of the restaurants in town; other pubs carry Chodovar as well as Pilsner Urquell and Gambrinus, naturally. But if you do go, there’s only one beer you’ll want to try.

There’s a lot more to Bamberg than just Rauchbier — the town is said to produce brews in some 50 different styles, including the buzz-worthy U, aka Ungespundetes, an “uncorked” or “unbunged” style of Kellerbier best-known in the versions from Mahr’s and Spezial, as well as very good wheats from places like Kaiserdom. If you’re tempted to take something home with you, the very last chance before you leave town is a small shop in the train station with bottles of Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier as well as one of the local oddballs: Zwergla from Brauerei Fässla.

The Fässla pub was one of my favorites on my first trip to Bamberg, if only for the atmosphere, as I got caught up in conversations with the Stammgäste there. And while Zwergla’s “Lil’ Dwarf” moniker is fairly distinctive, I couldn’t remember ever trying it. Grabbing a bottle in the Bahnhof, I figured I’d check out what I missed and compare it to some beers from back home.

On the brewery’s home page, Zwergla is listed as a Dunkles, but there’s quite a bit of red glinting through (especially if you backlight the glass with a tea candle, as in the shot above). In normal light it is a clear deep amber with very moderate carbonation and a loose tan head. The nose is honey with light ginger notes; in the mouth, it has a rich, full mouthfeel with moderate sweetness followed by a surprisingly bitter finish.

That’s pretty good, I thought. And then I made a big mistake: I opened a bottle of Herold’s Bohemian Granát from the Czech Republic. I’m not sure if it says more about Fässla or Herold, but after sampling Bohemian Granát’s rich, sweet-and-sour caramel bite and even stronger bitter finish, I wouldn’t recommend going to Bamberg just for the Lil’ Dwarf.

Of course Beeropolis has much more to try, like the newish brewpub Ambräusianum. Although we missed the Fastenbier at Schlenkerla and Spezial by a matter of days, Ambräusianum’s version, the perfectly named Ambräusiator, was ready to go. It’s the same very dark amber as their normal Dunkles, though clear instead of cloudy, with a thin, short-half-life head, due to the consciousness-altering ABV of around 7.5%. It has a malty, peppery and peach-scented nose, with a filling rich flatness in the mouth followed by tannic notes in the finish. Additional sips bring out tastes of stewed forest fruits and jam. It’s chewy, thick and unctuous, though probably not something most people would order twice, if only because of the kick.

I don’t think the same can be said of Mahr’s Ungespundet-hefetrüb, probably the closest thing in Bamberg to a Czech-style brew, and served on site in an earthenware Krug, my favorite type of drinking vessel. (More on drinking vessels soon.) As I raised the glass, I thought of Alan, who seems to like Mahr’s pretty OK. Maybe even more than just OK.

This particularly gratuitous shot is for him.

Continuing with the report from Bamberg, and now on to Rauchbier, the local specialty made with smoked malt. Above is a post-first-sip shot of Spezial’s Rauchbier, shown in the taproom on Obere Königsstraße. In Bamberg itself, there are two main producers: the oh-so-famous Schlenkerla, aka home of Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier, and Brauerei Spezial. (While a few other producers in the larger region also make Rauchbier, I’ll focus on Bamberg for now.) Before I compare the two, I’d like to talk about something else for a second: wine.

Hang on — there’s no need to choke on your Double IPA, bro. This is still Beer Culture, and of course beer and wine have much in common, not the least of which is the fact that they both make life worth living. And just as extreme beers — with more alcohol, more hops, and of course higher prices — have taken off in the past few years, winemakers have gone through their own forms of extremism, producing wines with more alcohol, more oak, more fruit, more malolactic buttery flavors and mouthfeel, and of course ever-higher prices. And not everyone has been happy with the changes.

Much of this was catalogued in the lovely film Mondovino, which pointed out how the preeminence of just one critic, Robert Parker, has single-handedly changed the way French wines are made. A high rating from Parker’s Wine Advocate can take your vineyard from obscurity to sold-out status in a matter of days. If your winery is struggling to survive, why wouldn’t you consider making wines that are just a bit more in line with what the world’s most important wine critic seems to prefer?

Another factor, of course, is the fact that many big wine tastings are done with dozens if not scores of bottles at once. (There’s a reason why they spit it out, and it’s not because the stuff doesn’t taste good.) I’ve been a judge in several blind tastings of 20 wines or more, and honestly, after trying two dozen sauvignons blancs in thirty minutes, it’s very hard to keep track of subtleties. At that point, just about the only wines that have a chance of getting noticed are the ones with more: more oak, more butter, more alcohol or more fruit. This is not the same as saying they are the best, and individually, compared one to another, the more modest, more balanced, less extreme wine might very well be every judge’s favorite. It’s just that when you’re tasting a large amount of samples over the course of an afternoon, subtlety, modesty and balance are often hard to grasp.

Well, that’s what seems to be happening with beer — not in the sense of the preeminence of a single critic, not in the sense of people tasting 20 Doppelbocks in a session, and not in the sense of judges spraying the world’s greatest brews into a spittoon. Rather, it’s happening in the sense that the loud, noisy beers, if you will, are the ones that are getting noticed in the crowd, rather than the elegant and understated beers that you’d want to bring home to Mom and Dad.

Which brings us back to Rauchbier.

As I said, there are two producers of Rauchbier in Bamberg town, and of them, Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier is about as Rauch-y as it can get, so assertively smoky that people compare it to liquid bacon. The smoke first hits your mouth like a Montecristo #2 torpedo, lingering with bacony, porcine flavors before heading off to a bittersweet finish, like the point when your maple syrup gets on the last bite of your breakfast links. For smoked beers, it is extreme, and if you’ve never had one, it pretty much blows your mind (and your gustatory papillae) the first time you try it. It is literally awesome.

And yet I think I prefer Spezial. Compared to its cross-town competition, Spezial is moderately, even modestly smoky. Instead, it’s easier to taste the malt, and much easier to taste the meal you have with it. Another bonus: after you have a Rauchbier from Spezial, you can still enjoy something else. You could have another Spezial Rauchbier and still like it, or you could move on and enjoy the subtleties of the brewery’s very nice Ungespundetes.

Whereas after you have one from Schlenkerla, it’s hard to taste anything else.

Well, that’s a brief take on Bamberger Rauchbier as it looked last week. There is another interesting beer from Schlenkerla, the Rauchweizen (“smoke wheat”) beer. It has a slightly lighter body than the Rauchbier, with a wheat beer’s spicy clove finish, and isn’t quite as aggressive in its smokiness. The Czech Republic’s new Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf is set to produce a Rauchweizen, and beer fans here can’t wait to check that out. Both Bamberg breweries also produce a strong version known as Fastenbier, available only during Lent, meaning right now.

Oh, and one more thing about wine: while extreme wines aren’t disappearing, there are rumors of winemakers in California scaling back the alcohol and fruit. I mentioned this as a possible sign for a coming sea-change in brewing trends in a discussion about extreme beers on A Good Beer Blog which Stephen Beaumont also cited in his post on the subject at On the House.

Of course the extreme will continue to get the attention from the hoi polloi, but consider Lew Bryson’s Session Beer Project in the US and CAMRA’s attempt to rekindle interest in mild in the UK. Consider the fact that non-alcoholic beers are one of the growth segments of the Czech beer market, and that cult producer Bernard is emphasizing its lehké pivo (“light beer”), an uncommon style of table beer brewed at 7.99° or less and, in this case, containing just 2.2% ABV. With that in mind, you could make the case that the next big thing — at least at the leading edge of beer culture — just might be smaller beers.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to plan my trip to Munich for Starkbierzeit.

Let’s say you’re about to get married and, hypothetically, you like beer. (Use your imagination for the former, if not the latter.) Let’s also suppose, hypothetically, that your beloved enjoys a good pint as well. The day arrives; you finally say “I do.” Where on earth do you go for your honeymoon?

That is precisely the question that faced us last week. After several years of traveling around Central Europe, taking photographs and writing about travel and food and drink, Nina and I were finally married last week in Libeňský zámek, the chateau in our corner of Prague. After the ceremony, we had lunch with family and witnesses at the neighborhood brewpub, Richter Brewery, then headed home, grabbed our bags and hit the train station for a honeymoon in the region’s most beautiful city for lovers of great beer.

That is to say: Bamberg.

I’m surprised that more hasn’t been written about the connections between Bamberg and Prague. Not only are there historical ties (a house near Bamberg’s Obere Brücke has a sign noting that Albrecht von Wallenstein stayed there; Prague’s Wallenstein Palace is the home of the Czech senate), but the beer culture is similar in both cities, as is the cuisine — we had a very good goulash, for example, at Schlenkerla. Furthermore, the travel connections can be as difficult as falling off a log: a fast train from Prague to Nuremberg (with enough time there to pick up a delicious snack of Nürnberger Rostbratwurst), then a 45-minute regional express to Beerville. Total minimum travel time: 6 hours, 8 minutes.

Of course, there are plenty of hotels in Bamberg, and most zymurgical tourists will want a guest room at a brewery like Spezial or Fässla, both of which have decent lodgings at moderate prices, with both breweries almost directly facing each other on Obere Königsstraße. However, we wanted something a little more memorable, so we took a recommendation for Hotel Sankt Nepomuk, a reconverted mill on its own island in the Regnitz with a panoramic view of the Rathaus, the river, the bridges and the cathedral, and named after the Czech saint who was drowned in Prague in 1393. (Seriously, the connections are practially Swedenborgian.)

We were a few days too early to try Schlenkerla’s Fastenbier, which was only tapped this week, and which I loved last year. Instead, our second bryd-ealu was the pub’s standard Rauchbier, that not-so-far-from-Bohemian goulash and a couple of perfect Schnitzels, followed by a pint of Schlenkerla’s Rauchweizen. (I’ll write more about the beers in a separate post.)

In any case, Bamberg was an excellent choice. Lest you think it’s all about Rauchbier, the city is also a UNESCO World Heritage site, due to its pristine Gothic and Baroque architecture and rich history. It’s also home to great pastries like the Bamberger Hörnchen, reminiscent of the best croissants you’ve ever had, only flakier and more buttery. There’s a lively pedestrian zone with lots of cafés and bakeries along and around the Grüner Markt, with the Bamberger Dom, founded in 1004, overlooking everything from the top of the hill.

If you do go, give yourself enough time to wander the city’s narrow lanes and cross the many small bridges over the Regnitz. Check out Ron Pattinson’s Bamberg Beer Guide online; Fred Waltman’s downloadable Bamberg Beer Guide booklet is very highly recommended. And I would especially suggest contacting the Bamberg tourist office, which is open seven days a week and which offers maps, books and self-guided beer tours to the city’s 10 functioning breweries.

Even if you aren’t crazy about beer, Bamberg is a lovely place to visit. And if you do enjoy a good pint, you’ll probably feel the same way we do.

Best. Honeymoon. Ever.

Prague is not in bad shape for beer, not by any means. Not only do we have U sadu, U kláštera and a few hundred other great pubs in town, but we also have about a dozen outstanding local beers, including one brewed by college students. Last month we had the Christmas Beer Markets to keep us warm. And now we’ve got a brand new brewpub in Praha 4-Nusle: Pivovar Bašta.

Also known as Sousedský pivovar U Bansethů (something like “neighborhood brewery U Bansethů”), Bašta sits just across from the nuselská radnice, next door to the old U Bansethů pub, a neighborhood stalwart for a century or so and a good source for Pilsner Urquell.

If you board an 18 tram or 193 bus at metro station Pražského povstání (C line), Bašta is just a few minutes away, right at the Nuselská radnice stop. Or if you take a 6 or 11 tram from metro station I.P. Pavlova (C line), you can get off at Náměstí bratří Synků and Bašta is less than 5 minutes away by foot. Alternately, you can catch the 18 tram at metro station Karlovo náměstí (B line) and take that to Nuselská radnice, which should take about 12 minutes. From the outside, it looks like this:

Inside, the atmosphere is classic hospoda, with traditional wood paneling rising halfway up the walls and lots of hooks for coats and caps. The menu board lists sadlo, grundle and other typical Czech pub treats, as well as four regular beers: pšeničné (wheat), světlý speciál (light special), tmavý speciál (dark special) and polotmavý speciál (half-dark special). But perhaps because Bašta just opened, supplies seem to be mysteriously limited.

On my first visit, only the polotmavý was available, a cloudy amber with a thick-set creamy head (pictured at the top of the page). Brewed at 12.5° Balling, it ends up with about 5% alcohol by volume. When I tasted it, it had a lovely nose that reminded me of a great single-malt — the roasted barley of the whisky, if not its alcohol. In the mouth it was almost chewy in its richness, with a strong caramel note, and the finish was a fair bit hoppier than I expected.

On a second visit, other beers were available. Remembering that he’d only had one beer the first time, the waiter made a point of telling me they now had the pšeničné and the světlý speciál. And then, a minute later, when I tried to order them, he said that they’d just run out again.

However, there was still something the waiter called a Bavorská třináctka (or Bavarian thirteen, apparently brewed at 13° and ending up with around 5.5% alcohol). In the dim light of the pub, the Bavorská was virtually indistinguishable from the polotmavý speciál.

At least in appearance. In flavor, it had much more malt sweetness, especially in the finish, and far less bitterness. It reminded me of a few beers in Bamberg, like the lovely Ungespundetes (or “U”) at Brauerei Spezial and the Ungespundet-hefetrüb at Mahr’s. Bašta’s polotmavý is no slouch, but that Bavorská třináctka was outstanding.

In a nod to the neighborhood (not one of Prague’s priciest), beers here are inexpensive, only 25 Kč per half-liter. In Prague, I’m generally comfortable spending up to about 37 Kč before I feel like I’m getting clipped (though I do regularly drop 49 Kč on the lovely Oldgott at U Medvídků, but that’s another story). At 25 Kč, I almost feel like I can’t afford not to have another, especially when they taste this good.

Pivovar Bašta
Táborská 49
140 00 Praha 4–Nusle
(tram 18 or Bus 193 to station Nuselská radnice, or tram 6 or 11 to station Náměstí bratří Synků)
Tel.: +420 261 222 530
www.ubansethu.cz

Pivovar Bašta is only the first of two new brewpubs opening in Prague, to catch us up with the other new brewpubs and breweries set to appear elsewhere in the Czech Republic. If you like good beer, I’d recommend visiting as soon as possible. A word of warning: I was told Bašta only opens after 3 p.m., so check the hours before you head out. And if the waiter says they have the pšeničné and the světlý speciál, order both of them immediately.