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.

You say tomato, I say rajčatka: there’s more than one way to name almost everything in this city. Take, for example, the Dancing House, also known as the Dancing Building, locally called Tančící dům, although its official title is the slightly less-romantic Nationale-Nederlanden Building. Designed by Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunić, the building’s resemblance to a dancing couple earned it yet another nickname: Fred and Ginger. (I usually just say Dancing House myself.) It remains one of the most visited and most frequently photographed sites in Prague.

So what does that have to do with great beer? As of last month, the building’s newly renamed café and restaurant became only the second place in Prague to regularly stock beer from Pivovar Kout na Šumavě, one of the country’s best craft brewers.

Located on the Vltava’s eastern riverbank right at Jiráskův most, one bridge south of the National Theater, the Dancing House’s top floor has long been home to an arch, reservations-only French restaurant. But in late 2008 that location was taken over by the management of the great Angel Restaurant in Old Town, who opened a new restaurant with a new name, Céleste.

As you might expect from a Gehry building, the atmosphere and interior spaces are remarkable. (A balcony encircles the weird spherical sculpture that could represent Fred Astaire’s head.) The views of Prague Castle and Malá Strana are literally spectacular; the inventive, French-based cuisine is outstanding. And now, to go along with the restaurant’s seven-course tasting menu (1,450 Kč, or about $70 at today’s rates), you can choose a draft lager from one of the country’s best breweries.

Interestingly, the bar manager decided to stock Kout’s classic 12° pale lager. My favorite is the brewery’s 10° beer, which is as vibrant and bittersweet as many breweries’ premium brews, but the bar manager told me he believed that Kout’s 12° was better suited to pair with their food. It’s available in Céleste along with meals, as well as in the café-bar at the street level. I found it exceptionally well-tapped when I tried it with Max Bahnson recently. It’s not Žižkov-dive cheap — prices are 40 Kč per .3-liter glass in the ground-floor café, 65 Kč for the same in the top-level restaurant — but you have to remember you’re also paying for atmosphere, service and location. For me, considering the amazing views and the cool architecture, the price isn’t an issue.

What this means, however, is more than just wider availability for a great beer: it shows that one more of the city’s highest-profile, most luxurious restaurants is taking good beer seriously. Instead of just stocking whatever beer would give them the most money or would offer to pay for the most coasters and lights, the management at Céleste figured that they would do better by selling the beer that tastes the best.

What a concept. Incidentally, when I asked about sales, the bar manager said that with Kout on tap, he was selling three times more beer than he had anticipated. It’s certainly not going to be their biggest money-maker: Céleste is a restaurant, after all, with $35 main courses. But selling three times as much beer means they can probably afford to pay for their own coasters.

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.