Beer Culture

The always-great Good Beer Blog has an interesting post from Alan on brewing under license and a recent article about the Pilsner Urquell which is brewed in Russia. Unlike Pilsner Urquell, Russian journalism doesn’t have such a great reputation, and this article seems more than a bit sensationalistic, starting out with the premise that Russian beer drinkers are being cheated (it’s right there in the headline, folks).

Two things caught my eye: the article says that the Russian version doesn’t taste as good as the original, claiming that it uses Russian water and hops. Second, the article quoted a company spokesman as saying that Russia is the only brewer of Pilsner Urquell outside of the Czech Republic.

That definitely seemed strange, as everyone knows that Pilsner Urquell started brewing under contract in Poland several years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

A few months ago, a friend mentioned that when he was just starting out as a young lawyer in the mid-1990s, he did some work at a law firm here in Prague. One of his projects back then was the contract for a possible sale of Budějovický Budvar to Anheuser-Busch.

That sale never went through, of course, and Budvar and Anheuser-Busch maintain a “frenemy” relationship today, entering into distribution deals for Budvar (only under its “Czechvar” pseudonym) in the United States while continuing international legal battles over the name “Budweiser.”

But talk of Budvar’s sale (subscription required) has returned, as the Prague Daily Monitor news desk reports, via Hospodářské noviny.

Read the rest of this entry »