On Friday, the Czech Beer Festival kicked off at Letňany exhibition grounds (last year’s version is pictured above). It’s fair to say that there was some chaos at the opening: when Velký Al from Fuggled and I arrived a half hour after things got started at 3 p.m., there was only one beer available on tap. Tent #6, which was supposed to have Kout and other indies, had nothing going. Nor did any other tent besides #3. It sounds impossible: at a beer festival, beer fans were going thirsty.

But within an hour or so, the situation righted itself. Several great beers from Náchod’s Pivovar Primátor started flowing, including the brewery’s new 11° pale lager. Within a short while we were even sampling Kout na Šumavě 10°, a desítka with as much character as most 12° beers in these parts.

It’s very different from last year’s festival in that there is no entry fee. Most beers are 40 crowns, though this year the strong beers, like Jihlava’s 18° Jihlavský Grand, are served in .3-liter glasses, which makes far more sense than serving them by the pint. You definitely should check it out before the festival closes on May 31.

But there’s more.

Soon after we got to Letňany, Velký Al and I were joined by Max Bahnson of Pivní Filosof. He had just come from the concurrent festival at Zlý Časy, an all-micro running over the same days, including beers from the new brewery at Broumy (more on this soon) and the return of Rampušák, a brewery closed since before the publication of Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic and only recently returned to production. Zlý Časy’s festival theme is 30 micros in 10 days, making just about every beer an interesting one, and most kegs are one-offs, so when they run out, they’re gone. Go.

In other news, next month’s big event is the wheat beer tasting at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. In the same vein as last year’s outstanding Christmas Beer Markets, Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf owner and Czech beer juggernaut Honza Kočka will present a tasting of various wheat beers, including Leipziger Gose and the return of Herold’s Bohemian Wheat. The cost is 150 Kč for each four-hour session. The dates and sessions are as follows: Friday, 12 June, 6-10 p.m.; Saturday, 13 June, 1-5 p.m.; Saturday, 13 June, 6-10 p.m.; and Sunday, 14 June, from 3-7 p.m.

And finally, I’ve agreed to host another beer tasting and dinner at the Mandarin Oriental on Thursday, 26 June, in the wine cellar of the hotel’s Essensia restaurant. The program for this tasting isn’t completely set, but earlier tastings have covered new Czech beers and focused on raw materials. Suffice it to say we will have great food and outstanding Czech brews on hand. For reservations and more information: tel. +420 233 088 612, or via email at moprg-pr@mohg.com.

There’s a Czech expression that says that the quality of a pint depends half on the brewer, half on the barman, but the truth is that much of it happens long before either one is involved.

Beyond mere brewing and tapping, it is the incredible high quality of Czech raw ingredients — Haná malt; Saaz hops; extremely pure and remarkably soft water; excellent strains of yeast — which allows this country to produce some of the world’s greatest lagers.

On Thursday, November 13, 2008, I’ll be leading another beer tasting and seminar in the wine cellar of Essensia restaurant, inside the Mandarin Oriental hotel. The combined dinner, talk and tasting will last about three hours.

In addition to excellent lagers and ales, many of which are never seen in Prague, Essensia will serve some of its outstanding Czech and Asian culinary specialties. This is not a pub session, but rather akin to a five-star restaurant meal accompanied by some truly great beers and a spirited discussion on Czech brewing, with a special focus this time on raw ingredients.

At this tasting, you won’t just look for the aroma of Saaz hops in your beer — you’ll have a handful of raw Saaz hops with you in order to compare. You won’t just taste the malt notes in the lagers and ales — we’ll actually taste raw Haná malt, too.

Earlier tastings in this series have been received very positively. You can read a review of one beer tasting at Beer Oh Beer. The food blog Cuketka has another review of a beer tasting in Czech.

If you’re interested, here are the details from Essensia and the Mandarin Oriental on the third seminar of their Czech Beer Academy:

“Raw Materials: What Makes Czech Beer Czech?”

On Thursday, 13 November, 2008, the wine cellar beneath Essensia restaurant will host the third seminar of the Czech Beer Academy at Mandarin Oriental, Prague.

This seminar and guided tasting (in English) will be led by Evan Rail, a Prague-based writer specializing in beer and travel. Our third seminar’s theme is “Raw Materials: What Makes Czech Beer Czech?”

During the course of the evening, participants will have a chance to discuss and taste seven different kinds of new, top-quality Czech beers, and discover the raw ingredients behind them: the world’s most expensive hops, best barley, original yeast strains and extremely pure water. The tasting will be complemented by an array of Czech and Asian specialties prepared by Essensia restaurant.

Date/Time: Thursday, 13 November, 2008, 7 p.m.—10 p.m. (A seminar on Czech Christmas beers will be held on December 18, 2008; further events will take place in 2009.)

Price: 1,150 CZK per person

Reservations: Kindly contact us at at the telephone number +420 233 088 612 or the e-mail address moprg-pr@mohg.com. Reservations are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Last Sunday, 35 beer fans from around Europe met in Plzeň to sample what must have been one of the world’s best collections of unusual beers: the Grand Tasting of the 2008 Ratebeer European Summer Gathering.

How unusual? This year’s Grand Tasting list included brews from Ghana, Saudi Arabia and Argentina, as well as scores of other countries which are even better known for malt beverages. It included geographically obscure brands of average quality, like Bosnia’s Sarajevsko, as well as sought-after cult favorites like Bass No. 1 and P-2 Imperial Stout, all of which were imported into the Czech Republic in the backpacks, suitcases and automobiles of users of Ratebeer.com. All were readied for the hard work of tasting — and rating.

“It gets kind of weird once you get up past 100 beers in a tasting,” admitted one attendee.

The event came as the culmination of the group’s three full days of beer tourism in Plzeň and Western Bohemia. On Friday, the Ratebeerians were given a special behind-the-scenes tour of Pilsner Urquell, where they tasted possible special beers that brewery has not yet produced (including rye beer and a red ale). On Saturday, they had a blind tasting of the Czech Republic’s yeast beers at Klatovy’s renowned Modrý Abbé. In between they visited brewpubs in Plzeňský kraj, including this year’s new arrival Purkmistr, all the while gathering steam for the Grand Tasting on Sunday.

Previous commitments kept me from showing up for the first two days, but I did manage to make it to the Grand Tasting with a few unusual bottles from home, including three of Klostermann, one of Pivovarský klub’s Florenc 14:14, and one of Grado Plato’s Chocarrubica.

(Unfortunately, the flip-top Florenc 14:14 bottle had developed a strong brettanomyces character in the many months since it was bottled. A couple of tasters liked the acidity, but that’s certainly not how it was meant to taste.)

With what looked like more than 300 bottles, cans and mini-kegs, it would be impossible to overstate the range of the beers. I was especially impressed by the Mikkeller Barrel Aged X Imperial Stout 2007, of which only 40 signed bottles were produced, all of which were sold for charity, this being example number 30. Intensely black and vinous, it tasted like soy sauce, only if soy sauce were a beer, and if that soy sauce beer were utterly delicious.

Other faves: the ‘98 geuze from 3 Fonteinen. The twenty-six-year-old Felix Oud Bruin from 1982. The outstanding Schneider & Brooklyner Hopfen-Weisse. The Grain Barrell Stout from Gourmet Bryggeriet. The Rojiza Fuerte from Argentina’s Araucana. And many more.

The enthusiasm for beer was infectious — these are people who live and breathe beers and rating them. The general preference seemed to be for imperial stouts, strong porters and Belgian sour beers, but more than a few unusual Czech brews showed up, courtesy of attendees who had spent the previous days touring the country. I saw plastic bottles of Belgrád polotmavý from Hotel Belvedér in Železná Ruda, as well as the full line of bottles from Pivovar Novosad in Harrachov, neither of which I’ve ever seen in Prague.

One thing I didn’t see: local attendees, other than organizer Filip Miller, who put the event together. Perhaps Czech beer fans are content with their own beers, and don’t have too much interest in trying rare Flanders reds. Perhaps it’s a language issue.

In the end, the pictures speak for themselves. Here are a few snapshots of what must have been one of the world’s greatest private beer tastings — at least until next year.

It’s the start of the travel season, and that means I’ve been on deadline for a handful of stories. Consequently, my thoughts are fairly well fragmented at this point. Here are some of the many beery notes that are bouncing around my cranium.

Yesterday I saw the first poster (at a bus stop) for the Czech Beer Festival. Considering the starting pistol is set to go off in just 10 days, you’d think there would be a wee bit more coverage — is the word getting out? Someone, at least, should follow-up on the fact that they told us they’re brewing and serving a beer for dogs.

I recently tried another Lučan Premium Tmavé, a once-great dark beer from Žatec, and found that it was nowhere near as dark — nor as flavorful — as it was in my earlier tasting notes. Max Bahnson came to a similar conclusion about the whole line of Žatec beers at Pivní filosof. It reminds me of how different beer (and beer writing) is from wine, given beer’s ephemeral nature: a great beer can become mediocre with the next batch, but a great wine often seems more permanent, or at least more permanently great, because everyone knows you’re talking about (at least if it were beer) the 2007 Lučan Premium Tmavé, not every Lučan beer ever made. This is different in the case of beers marked with a vintage, but how many of those are there, anyway?

I’m not sure if it had anything to do with our anti-Heineken email campaign (more on this later), but there’s clearly much less Heineken on display at my local Albert supermarket: it used to take up about a meter of shelf space, plus several grab-a-beer cases on the floor. Now it takes up half a meter of shelf space and that’s it. Did someone hear us?

In related news, I had a Starobrno Medium (owned by Heineken) yesterday and thought it was great. Not craft beer, but a good factory-made lager by any measure. So perhaps foreign ownership of local beers is not the end of the world — aside from the repatriation of profits, that is.

To judge by numerous recent tastings, Primátor’s Weizenbier is currently firing on all cylinders. Just in time for summer…

Among other assignments, I’m working on an article about Prague’s beer gardens, so I visited a small one nearby that is said to be an occasional haunt of Czech President Václav Klaus: Na krásné vyhlídce (Na Dlážděnce 35, Prague 8). Mr. Klaus wasn’t there, but just before I left First Lady Livia Klausová did stop by. The pub serves Pilsner Urquell and Gambrinus 10°, as well as Schöfferhofer pale and dark wheat beers, both of which were okay.

On that note, how hard would it be to get them to serve Primátor’s Weizenbier?

Even better, how can we get the Letná beer garden to serve it? More on this soon… I have a plan.

Pivovarský klub is holding the Days of Polish Beer starting on Tuesday 20 May with a tasting at — CORRECTION — 3 p.m., which lasts UNTIL 6 p.m., after which the four Polish brews will be on draft until they run out. If you want to attend the tasting, it’s 100 Kč for those who are not members of SPP or Pivoklub, and you’ll need to make a reservation at Tel. 222 315 777.

Budvar dark is a lovely beer. Herold dark is still my current favorite. But perhaps because I tasted that amazing 101 Oktan Imperial Stout in Stockholm, as well as the good Carnegie porter and Slottskällans Imperial Stout I brought home, I’m having trouble getting back into pale and golden lagers: it’s either wheat beers or darks at this point.

Thus I was very glad to read Pivní filosof’s take on Grado Plato’s Chocarrubica, a beer that deserves more attention. I’m working on my piece about Italy at the moment and I know I’m going to ask why this beer isn’t in more high-end restaurants, both in the kitchen and on the beverage list.

On that note, I had lunch recently at the Four Seasons’ Allegro restaurant, famous for earning the first Michelin star in all of post-communist Europe (take that, Moscow). Among many outstanding dishes, chef Andrea Accordi serves a rich trio of foie gras, prepared au torchon, “nature” with rhubarb, and as foie gras ice cream, cooked with Bernard dark beer and paired by the sommelier with Guinness Extra Stout. How many other high-end restaurants in Prague do anything of interest with beer?

One comes to mind: on Friday 16 May I’ll be giving a lengthy talk entitled “Czech Beer: Beyond Plzeň” at Essensia, the restaurant inside Prague’s Mandarin Oriental hotel. The talk will include tastings from some of the country’s best small producers, all focusing on beers that are not made in the Pilsner style, along with an array of Essentia’s excellent pan-Asian cuisine. For more information: Tel. +420 233 088 888.