We have always been at war with Eurasia.

On Monday, Pivovarský dům in Prague hosted a tasting of six beers from Pivovar Kocour, the Czech Republic’s newest brewery, with draft versions of Kocour’s 12° pale lager, English pale ale, Scottish ale, American IPA, V3 Rauchbier, and Stout. Like most of the attendees that night, I was impressed enough by these beers to consider the event a success.

However, since then I’ve had some time to think about Kocour’s success a little more. What strikes me now is much more than Kocour’s beer: in fact, in terms of planning, marketing and promotion, Kocour seems to be doing everything right. This comes in stark contrast to many small Czech brewers, who often seem to be doing just about everything wrong.

Some thoughts on what Kocour is getting right:

• Get Your Beer into Bottles. Yes, draft is far more popular in Central Europe, but the taps at most pubs — especially in Prague — are largely locked up by industrial brewers. If you want to have a chance of expanding beyond brewpub range, you have to get your beer into bottles ASAP. Even PET plastic bottles are fine, or standard recyclables — Kocour is using both — just so long as you have some means of getting your beer to the people who want it.

Remember that the bottles are a way of expanding your marketing, which brings us to the following:

• Think About Your Image. See that stylized cat logo in the label above? Kocour is one of the few Czech breweries I can think of — feel free to chime in, beer geeks — with a true logo ♣. This one works pretty well: it represents a tomcat, the meaning of the name “kocour” in Czech; the form of the letter K reinforces the Kocour name; the stencil-art, gritty, street style of the design promotes the idea that Kocour is new, cutting-edge, and somewhat of a punk, at least in Czech beer terms. (Brewing English and Belgian beer styles with imported ingredients is a lot like saying “bite me” to the mainstream Czech beer establishment.)

Compare that to a brewery like Strakonice, which at one point had at least four different brand names for its beers, and no uniform logo or label design.

Not only does Kocour have an iconic logo and design, but at the tasting they also presented their new glassware, all of which bears the tomcat logo. Oh yeah, and some dude — as in a beer fan, not an employee — was walking around wearing a Kocour T-shirt, which actually looked great. (Don’t forget that T-shirts and glasses can provide a secondary revenue stream for breweries. Of course, this only works if you actually have something worth buying. Like a cool design or good logo. Get it?)

• Never Miss a Chance to Talk About Your Beer. I will never understand why Czech breweries continue to waste space on their beer labels: You’ve got a bottle of your beer in someone’s hands. You can reasonably assume that the person holding the bottle is at least slightly interested in beer. And instead of taking that opportunity to spread your message, you have what, blank space? An etching of farmers and fields? A picture of some dead duke or baroness?

Just in terms of information on labels:

1) Tell us more about what ingredients and how you used them. Where do you get your malt? Does your brewery have its own maltings? What hops do you use? What’s special about them? Do you use 100% Saaz? Do you buy from a particular hopyard? Do you use any new Czech hop varietals like Agnus, Harmonie and Rubin? If so, why?

2) Don’t bullshit us. I’m serious, if I read “střední hořkost” (”medium bitterness”) one more time, I’m going to clock someone (I’m talking to you, Pivovar Herold). Treat beer lovers like the sophisticated, intelligent consumers you know we are. Don’t say “střední hořkost”: instead, tell us exactly how many IBUs — international bitterness units — your beer actually has. Tell us how long your brewery has brewed this particular beer in this particular way. Tell us the exact original gravity and how long it lagers. Tell us what kind of equipment you use, especially if you still use traditional open fermenters.

Give us something we can hold onto, something about your beer that we can wrap our brains around and you’ll have dedicated customers for life. Treat us like idiots and we’ll repay the favor.

On Kocour’s label for their American IPA, they include contact info for the brewery (a surprisingly rare thing on Czech beer labels); a recommended serving temperature (practically unheard of) of 7° C; a better-than-basic list of ingredients including the type of hops (”American Centennial”); and a good Czech overview of what an IPA is and where the inspiration for their version comes from.

Compared to “střední hořkost” or a painting of a dead baroness, this is a freaking Russian novel.

• Claim Your Ground. Did anyone check the list of beers at the tasting? Most are ales, a rare but increasingly popular thing in this country, and only one beer from the lineup — the 12° pale lager — is in a style regularly brewed here. In other words, it’s not just that Kocour is brewing a greater variety than just about any other single brewery in the Czech Republic. In fact, you could argue that Kocour is brewing a greater variety of beers than all the other breweries in the country put together.

But don’t be mistaken: it might sound like I’m saying that breweries should strive for variety. That’s not it. What I’m saying is that by claiming the ground of variety — by presenting itself as the Czech brewery that makes top-fermented beers and special beers — Kocour has very neatly defined itself: Kocour is the brewery for Czech beer geeks. Kocour is the brewery for people here who like foreign beer styles. In other words, Kocour has claimed its turf.

Compare that to Pivovar Nymburk, which brews a line of several very similar, good-but-not-great pale lagers and one dark lager. I challenge anyone to complete the phrase

“Nymburk is the brewery for _____________________________ ”

with anything other than “people from Nymburk.” That’s not enough to build and maintain a beer brand.

Unfortunately, it’s not just Nymburk: perhaps two dozen Czech medium-size breweries — Nová Paka, Chodovar, Janáček, Rebel, Pelhřimov, Ježek, etc. — have no clear “home turf.” Most of these breweries have very little to argue for their beers beyond simple regional patriotism. Good luck with that.

• Get Your Web Site In Order. This is the one place where Kocour lags, at least at the time of this writing: like many Czech brewers, Kocour has no web presence. However, we were told at the tasting that Kocour’s homepage at www.pivovar-kocour.cz should be up sometime this month. Beyond just presenting the beers, the web site is supposed to allow customers to actually order beers — in lightweight PET plastic bottles — on-line. Customers in the Czech Republic can then pay for the beer and shipping charges directly from the postman. (In the Czech Republic, postal COD remains a popular and highly functional way of shopping.)

That’s almost too smart, especially considering the difficulties most small Czech breweries have with distribution, and if Kocour can really pull that off, I’m sorry to say I’ll be slightly surprised. But given everything Kocour has done right so far, another success should really come as no surprise at all.

♣ In the comments for this post on BrewDog’s Punk IPA, Max and I discuss this point further. I stand by what I said here. NB, I’m not talking about a logotype, the name of the beer or other text set in a particular typeface, but rather a logo — a symbol or sign — just as I wrote above.

A quick post before heading out to Pilsner Urquell, whose distinctive water tower is pictured on every bottle of that brew, as well as in the snapshot above. (Not in the frame off to the left is the gigantic Pilsner Urquell chess set, whose toddler-size pawns look like Pilsner Urquell bottles.) I’ll be working with a crew shooting a Discovery Channel television special on beer, which, back home, will include brewing stars like Sam Calagione from the offensively good Dogfish Head and Professor Charlie Bamforth from my old alma mater, the University of California, Davis.

But that’s not why I’m writing. I’m writing to say that no matter what you do, you have to go to Pivovarský klub next week to taste the new saison beer from up-and-comer Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf, a brewery so new it doesn’t even have a website yet.

Last night we had our second beer tasting and dinner at Essensia restaurant, inside Prague’s Mandarin Oriental hotel. All of the beers were great. (The biggest surprise might have been the Mary-Jo from Regent, because it looks terrible but tastes quite nice.) But Kocour’s saison completely turned heads, even from the few people there who weren’t all that into beer. It is a cloudy light gold with a thin, easily quaffable, semi-sweet body, followed by an eye-opening amount of hop bitterness and a slight squeeze of citric acidity in the finish. It’s an excellent summer ale, the kind of beer you’d want to change your calendar for, only we don’t know the exact date when it will be first served at Pivovarský klub. (I’d recommend keeping the entire week open and stopping by regularly, just in case.)

The word on the saison echoes the news from the Ratebeer European Summer Gathering last weekend, whereby the attendees had a sampling of many kinds of Czech beer. When I showed up for the Grand Tasting on Sunday, I was told that the most popular beer, by far, was the Varnsdorf 12°.

Off to Plzeň…

The tradition of Czech brewing may go back more than a thousand years, but it’s also clearly moving forward. Beer lovers here have been thrilled by recent developments like the appearance of Pivovar Bašta and other new brewpubs, cutting-edge new regional breweries like Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf, and the reappearance of older styles such as Klostermann amber lager — all of which have arrived since the publication of Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic last May.

To that end, I’m doing another seminar, this time one titled “New Brews: Recent Developments in the Czech Brewing Scene,” which will take place Thursday, 3 July, 2008, in the wine cellar of Essensia restaurant (inside the Mandarin Oriental hotel). The combined dinner, talk and beer tasting will last about three hours.

In addition to a slew of new lagers and ales, many of which have never been seen in Prague, Essensia will serve its delicious Czech and Asian culinary specialties. Think of it as a luxurious meal in a five-star restaurant — only one which is accompanied by some truly great beers and a spirited discussion on the history, news, background and future of Czech brewing.

And then there is the beer list to consider.

Herewith the provisional selection of what we’ll be tasting on July 3:

Roggenbier, Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf
Klostermann, Pivovar Strakonice
Opat Bitter Extra-Chmelené, Pivovar Broumov
Xantho, Pivovar Žatec
Mary-Jo, Pivovar Regent
Stout, Pivovarský dům
Saison, Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf

For me, each of these beers tells us something about what makes Czech beer so interesting, whether it is the use of world-class ingredients like Haná barley and Žatec/Saaz hops, a tendency for creativity and innovation, or a desire to recapture some of the region’s long-lost brewing traditions. The first talk we did was an amazing amount of fun; this one promises to be even better.

If you’re interested in attending, these are the details from Essensia and the Mandarin Oriental on the second event of what they’re calling the Czech Beer Academy:

“New Brews: Recent Developments in the Czech Brewing Scene”

On Thursday, 3 July, 2008, the wine cellar beneath Essensia restaurant will host the second seminar of our new 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 second seminar’s theme is “New Brews: Recent Developments in the Czech Brewing Scene.”

During the course of the evening, participants will have a chance to discuss and taste seven different kinds of new, top-quality Czech beers. The beer will be complemented by an array of Czech and Asian specialties prepared by the Essensia restaurant.

Date/Time: Thursday, 3 July, 2008, 7 p.m.—10 p.m. (Future seminars will be held in October and December 2008; dates are yet to be announced.)

Price: 1,150 CZK per person

Reservations: Kindly contact the Concierge at the telephone number +420 233 088 605 or the email address moprg-concierge@mohg.com. Reservations are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

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.

If you missed the Prague Christmas Beer Markets, you missed out on more than just outstanding brews — you also didn’t hear the news. For starters, there was the announcement of the forthcoming brewery at the eastern edge of Ústecký kraj, north of Prague and very near the German and Polish borders. Set to take off in early 2008, Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf will brew classic Czech lagers as well as several top-fermenting beers, including an English pale ale, an IPA and a Rauchweizen.

This marks the arrival of more than just another outstanding Czech microbrewery (and no, it’s not a brewpub — these beers should actually be distributed well beyond where they’re made, at least in kegs). Continuing the ever-greater variety in Czech brewing, Kocour is in the possession of several oak casks from Hungary and is planning to age some of its beers in wood, reminiscent of U Medvídků’s excellent oak-aged lagers and the popular oaked ales from Innis & Gunn.

The market also featured a début from the new Pivovar Hradec Králové: the outstanding Patriot kvasnicový ležák (4.6%), a picture-perfect yeast beer — light gold with extremely mild carbonation and a creamy, smooth mouthfeel and notes of vanilla and grassy hops in the finish. For the time being, Patriot appears to be brewed at Pivovar Žamberk, though in the near future it should (hopefully?) move back to its hometown in a new location. The town’s former brewery, long closed, has been recently reconstructed, reappearing as a set of modern flats and offices.

Ironically, that old brewery building is also the new site for Hradec Králové’s Pivovar Rambousek, the maker of a heart-stopping, half-dark, chestnut-honey lager that defies description in anything but the language of angels. In case you missed the earlier news, consider yourself ahead of the curve on this one: Rambousek’s web page says they look forward to welcoming guests in 2008.