You hit the road for a few days of peace and solitude in South Bohemia and what happens? A great beer that has been AWOL for years suddenly returns to the scene.

The brew in question is the very nice wheat beer from Pivovar Herold, a brewery I pass each time I drive down to my wife’s family’s summer home in Písek. As I’ve mentioned before, the history of the brewery in the town of Březnice is covered in Ludvík Fürst’s monograph “Jak se u nás vařilo pivo” (or “How we used to brew beer”). In that book, Fürst quotes documents mentioning the production of wheat beer at Březnice in the sixteenth century. When Herold reintroduced its modern wheat beers in 2002, they were the only Czech wheat beers available in bottles at the time.

That seemed to set off a small wheat trend here. Today, of course, we’ve got the nicely clove-scented Weizenbier from Pivovar Primátor, which is available in Tesco and other big supermarkets around the country. Many brewpubs have started brewing their own wheats; the Duchmaus wheat beer from Pivovar U Rybiček is even distributed in plastic bottles, a new development for many small Czech brewers. And yet as far as I can tell, Herold — one of the first Czech producers to make a name with wheat beers in the recent era — stopped brewing its own wheat by 2007.

Then came last summer’s change of ownership. While the brewery’s black lager remained strong enough to inspire imitations abroad, there were whispers that the new owners might make some changes, including the reintroduction of the wheat. And then, just in time for summer, a shipment of Herold’s wheat beer was delivered to Pivovarský klub in Prague on Thursday, May 14.

There’s something interesting on the label: in English, Herold identifies this beer as “wheat lager,” which seems to present a contradiction. As many beer fans know, “lager” is often used as a term for bottom-fermented beers, while wheat beers are mostly top-fermenting. However, that doesn’t mean that this is a wheat-lager hybrid; as I understand it, this beer is still made using traditional top-fermenting wheat beer yeast. Instead, the term on the label is an English-language approximation of the Czech brewing term “ležák,” which refers to the relative strength of the beer, covering those beers produced at 11° and 12° Plato or Balling. (The term “výčepní,” literally meaning something like “tap” or “taproom,” covers beers brewed at 9° and 10°, even those which are not served on tap or in taprooms.)

So how does Herold’s “wheat lager” taste?

Good. It pours a very pretty, cloudy gold with a fluffy white head. There’s not nearly as much clove in the nose as in other beers; instead, I thought I noted tobacco before I detected a bit of clove on the palate as well as some pronounced barley malt flavors. Perhaps it’s the “wheat lager” on the label, but I thought it was a very Pilsner-like Weizen, reminding me of Weltenburger’s Hefe-Weißbier Hell in its citrus notes. It has a very light body and is very easy to drink.

The next time you drive by Březnice, you have a very good reason to stop and pick up a case. And while Primátor’s Weizenbier has had a near-constant presence on Pivovarský klub’s tap #6, that should change in the near future: the delivery last Thursday included bottles as well as several kegs, meaning you’ll be able to try Herold’s wheat beer on draft at Pivovarský klub for a good while to come.

A while back I tried BrewDog’s prototype Zeitgeist beer, a dark lager “taking inspiration from the Czech classics.” That line gave me the idea of trying it against three classic Czech dark lagers, coffee-like black beers which generally finish on the sweet side.

But the Zeitgeist (or Zeit Geist, as it was back then) seemed to be made of different material, so to speak: I liked it, but as I wrote then, “I don’t think it tasted very Czech… Zeit Geist was far more dry in the finish.” And I added that if I had known it was a dry dark beer, like a Schwarzbier, I would have tasted it with Herold Bohemian Black Lager, one of the only dry dark lagers the Czechs produce.

Later, I found out that Herold was in fact the very inspiration for Zeitgeist. And then came the word that Zeitgeist was going into full production and wide release in Britain. So once I got a copy of the production brew, I decided to compare that to the originals, both prototype and paragon.

The Scottish and Czech beers are more different than you might imagine: Herold has 5.3% alcohol, while Zeitgeist went from 5.1% in prototype to 4.9% in production. The Herold is half a shade darker with a sandy head; the production version of Zeitgeist has cream-colored foam.

As I wrote back then, the prototype Zeitgeist had a touch of smokiness in the nose and mouth. That’s still there, though BrewDog has assured me there’s not a grain of smoked malt anywhere near the thing. The astringence — the drying, slightly acidic notes in the finish — that I noted in the prototype are still very much present in the production version. There’s a touch of cooked fruit, and some nice bitter notes.

By contrast, my bottle of Herold Bohemian Black Lager has almost no smokiness and much more chocolate and dry cocoa flavors. It’s dry in the finish, but not quite as dry as Zeitgeist. (It’s also surpremely drinkable: dark beers are not generally thought of as summertime drinks, but Herold’s Bohemian Black Lager is light enough in the body to be quite refreshing on a very warm evening. As is Zeitgeist.)

So which do I prefer? Considering I live in Prague and I really believe in drinking locally, that’s a no-brainer: I’ll take the Czech bottle, thank you. But in terms of taste?

If you can’t get Herold, you surely won’t regret having a Zeitgeist: it’s an excellent dark lager with loads of flavor and surprising complexity. If you can get them both, you have a choice: a bit more cocoa and chocolate with the Herold, or a bit more dryness and bitter fruit flavors with the Zeitgeist.

Marx would probably say that Zeitgeist (the beer) is influenced by the material — in this case, the malt, hops, yeast and water — with which it is produced, and that is why it tastes the way it does. But in this case I think I’m going to go with Hegel. Zeitgeist, at least the beer, is greater than the sum of its parts.

Recently, new owners have taken over at storied Pivovar Herold, the small regional brewery located in Březnice, Central Bohemia. So far, not much seems to have changed: Herold’s Bohemian Black Lager is just as rich and full of coffee and chocolate notes as ever. But you might be wondering if new management harkens good news for the brand, especially in terms of its meagre distribution and lack of widespread availability.

Your chance to find out is this Tuesday, 17 March, 2009, when Pivovarský klub will host a Herold beer tasting.

At least some changes have already shown up: the Herold brewery website has finally been updated, noting a current lineup of just four brews: the 10° pale lager (světlé výčepní pivo), a 12° pale lager (světlý březnický ležák), the magnificent Bohemian Black Lager (called “tmavé speciální pivo” in Czech and brewed at 13°) and the brewery’s 14° amber special (polotmavé speciální pivo). Not mentioned is the brewery’s gimmicky Bastard beer, nor is there any reference to Herold’s long-absent and once-revolutionary wheat brews. Expect to get the final word on these at the tasting.

Especially nice on the new website: the brewery proudly lists its long lagering times, often a good sign for the quality of the brew. Both the dark and the amber get 70 days; the 12° pale lager gets 60. (By contrast, Pilsner Urquell gets about 35 days of lagering. Most of the industrial beers in this country are produced much faster than that, though Budweiser Budvar says it still matures its beer for up to 90 days.)

Considering the tightness of Herold’s line — just four models brewed at 10°, 12°, 13° and 14° — the brewery manages to put out some highly diverse flavors, many of which have turned heads recently: the amber special took first place earlier this year at the Česká pivní pečeť in Tábor, and BrewDog’s James Watt told me that Herold’s Bohemian Black Lager was the inspiration for their excellent new Zeitgeist beer.

The brewery is especially interesting when you consider its noble history, much of which is covered in Ludvík Fürst’s fascinating monograph, “Jak se u nás vařilo pivo” (or “How we used to brew beer”). In 1586, “how” for the brewery in Březnice meant both “white beer,” made with wheat, and “old beer,” meaning barley; historical archives have clear records of the brewery’s founding in 1506 and its production in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. On Tuesday, it would be nice to hear some good news about Herold’s future.

Herold Beer Tasting
Where: Pivovarský klub, Křižíkova 17°, Praha 8 – Karlín
When: Tuesday, 17 March, at 6 p.m.
How much: 140 Kč (students, journalists and cardholders 70 Kč)
Tel: 222 315 777

Herold beer has had a long and winding path over the past few years. Less than a decade ago it was found fairly often in expat hangouts like the Globe, though not always in the best condition, and sometimes in downright terrible condition. Although things had markedly improved by the time Michael Jackson came to Prague to promote Herold in late 2004, the brand’s image had been damaged by the occasional bad pints from before.

And yet Herold was making great beers, including one of the country’s first widely distributed wheat beers, the first Czech dark wheat most of us had ever seen, and a full line of quality lagers, including what must have been the country’s best bottled dark. They were always a bit hard to find in Prague, but then they became much harder to find, until only a couple of places carried the beer by the time I was finishing Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic.

One of them was the Dívčí skok restaurant in Prague’s Divoká Šárka park, a favorite setting for hiking and sunbathing. When the temperatures moved up earlier this summer, I went out there to have a pint.

Getting there is easy: the park has its own tram station just a couple of minutes past the Dejvická metro station. (It’s currently served by the 8 and 36 trams or the 108, 119 and 218 buses.) Once you get off at Divoká Šarka, follow the trails — largely unmarked — to the Džbán koupaliště, or swimming pool, about 15 minutes northerly by foot. Continuing on the trail two minutes past Džbán, you’ll see Dívčí skok. They have blue and white umbrellas on the terrace that say Pivovar Herold on them.

But when I got there, a small blackboard announced that they were serving Svijany. I asked what happened to Herold.

“We had too many problems with it,” the barman said. “It kept going bad.”

He said they made the switch at the end of 2007. When I mentioned that some people thought that Herold was the best dark lager in the country, he replied that Svijany was also pretty good. I ordered a half-liter and took a seat on the terrace under one of the Herold umbrellas.

Nearby, a group of bronzed, middle-aged men in swimming suits were drinking beers and talking about the difference between malé pivovary and big breweries, and how with the beers from the big breweries there was žádná chuť.

The Kněžna from Svijany was good, but it didn’t have the depth I remembered from Herold’s dark lager. I had a slice of sekaná and thought I was missing something.

On my way back through the park, I saw a flash of silver on the trail ahead. A park crew had driven through on the way to clear some brush, and their tire tracks went straight over what looked like a tighty woven steel belt. When I got closer I saw it was a slow worm, or slepýš, a limbless reptile which is considered endangered in the Czech lands. It had been crushed by the weight, leaving behind the pattern of its scales and a slight gleam in the shadows from the trees.

Max Bahnson has an interesting post about the opening ceremonies and the first day at the Czech Beer Festival, along with some good insight and opinions on what works and what doesn’t. Please read.

From where I sat, the first day seemed to go very well, especially given the scale of the event and the fact that this year’s is the first. There were some great beers that are never seen on draft in Prague. There was a friendly, festive atmosphere with lots of catching up. Honza Kočka from Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf dropped by. Tomáš Erlich from SPP showed up with friends from Poland’s Bractwo Piwne (still in town from the recent Days of Polish Beer at Pivovarský klub).

The most rewarding thing? To my eyes, the beers from small producers were by far the most popular.

But it turned out I wasn’t the only one who thought so. The next morning, I got a call from the festival organizers.

Everyone, they said, was going for the beers from the small breweries. The vast tents from state-owned Budvar and the large breweries owned by multinationals were not nearly as popular. Thus, they had a request: could I recommend another small brewery or two to bring in?

I offered up a few suggestions. I’m happy to say that from today onward, the festival will also serve Herold Bohemian Black Lager and Herold Bohemian Granát Lager, two great Czech lagers that definitely deserve wider recognition (and wider distribution). There’s a chance that even more beers from small producers will show up this week.

Another possible change: the festival organizers have been considering dropping the 120 CZK entry fee, or at least dropping it after 8 p.m. Though it hasn’t been ixnayed yet, if there’s news, you’ll see it here.

In any case, I think it’s a great sign that, given the choice between the big brands and small producers, consumers are picking the smaller breweries.

And why not? The vast Pilsner Urquell tent serves Pilsner Urquell, a great beer, sure, but one which is available in what seems to be more than half of the pubs in Prague. At the small breweries tent, you could try twelve unusual brews including Jihlavský Grand, a strong golden lager much like a Doppelbock, with a rich maltiness that completely masks its 8.1% alcohol, which many Ratebeerians seem to admire, and yet which is never seen on draft in Prague. I found the Rohozec 12° pale lager to be in fine form at the festival, and yet I know only a couple of pubs in Prague that have it regularly.

According to the organizers, there’s a chance as well that Konrad will start bringing in more of its beers beyond the first two on the Czech Beer Festival’s official beer list. (Perhaps the beer called Joker, which no one at Beer Advocate has even tried.)

Depending on how things shake out, more of the festival space currently devoted to industrial brewers might be turned over to small producers — almost the exact opposite of what usually happens in most beer retail outlets.

For a first attempt at a festival on a large scale, things are looking pretty good: great service, friendly atmosphere and plenty of unusual beers (with even more on the way). It actually looks quite a lot like the picture up top, though that is in fact a shot from Munich’s Starkbierzeit, which has been going on as an organized event since at least the nineteenth century. Only in its debut, the Czech Beer Festival is already almost there.

There have been a couple of comments about the widespread use of E300 in Czech beer, both here (in a comment from Max Bahnson on the post about Czech beer as a protected name) and from David over at Beer Oh Beer (where Max again casts his vote against it). Nothing more than ascorbic acid, also known as vitamin C, E300 is added as a preservative as well as to prevent the development of haze in beer.

I can understand people might want their favorite beverage to include no food additives whatsoever, but I also appreciate the use of vitamin C in my beer instead of, say, E211, also known as sodium benzoate, a preservative believed to potentially damage mitochondrial DNA, cause premature aging and possibly even cause Parkinson’s disease. (E300 it is!)

In fact, quite a few Czech beer labels show E300 on the back, including some of the very best — the one above is from Herold’s absolutely outstanding Bohemian Black Lager. But how much E300 are brewers allowed to put in your favorite bottle? The answer might surprise you.

Drumroll, please… According to EU regulations, there is no maximum amount of E300 that can be added to a beer. Nor is there any stated limit on any of the following:

E270, lactic acid
E301, sodium ascorbate
E330, citric acid
E414, acacia gum

For all of these E’s, the regulatory principle involved is one of quantum satis, meaning that there is no maximum specified. (The phrase can be parsed as “however much is needed.”) In regulatory terms, that might not be terribly reassuring. But in the case of vitamin C, it’s hard to imagine that even a high dosage would be anything other than beneficial.

Here’s a link for a PDF of Directive 95/2/EC, which regulated the amounts of food additives other than colors and sweeteners in the European Union.

Here’s a link for a PDF of Directive 2003/114/EC, which amends Directive 95/2/EC.

If you search through the documents, you’ll find that EU regulations also allow:

100 milligrams per liter of E405, propane-1, 2-diol alginate (propylene glycol alginate) in beer
1 gram per liter of E1520, propan-1, 2-diol (propylene glycol) in all beverages
200 milligrams per liter of E210 (benzoic acid), E211 (sodium benzoate), E212 (potassium benzoate) and E213 (calcium benzoate) in kegged alcohol-free beer

In addition, there are many weird E-numbers that are allowed to appear in all foodstuffs, not just beer. Go on, read it, but don’t open the file if you’re about to eat. It’s sure to put you off your lunch.

So if vitamin C is all we’re up against, I think I’m okay with it. I haven’t heard if ascorbic acid can affect the taste of beer, but I would imagine that it might contribute to the slight citric finish in some Czech brews, especially Czech dark lagers, which are hopped at much lower rates than Pilsner-style beers, and thus might need another natural preservative like ascorbic acid to stay good longer.

Here’s my final thought: vitamin C is an essential nutrient for life on earth. Many organisms synthesize it internally, though humans, of course, do not. It helps our bodies to neutralize free radicals. It helps protect our cells from oxidative stress. It helps our bodies absorb iron from food and is believed to reduce the risk of stroke. But more importantly: if a beer with a bit of added vitamin C can taste as good as Herold’s Bohemian Black Lager, how could it possibly be bad?

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.