There are currently just 11 breweries in Prague: ten micros (U Fleků, Pivovarský dům, Novoměstský pivovar, Richter, the university brewery at Suchdol, the closed-to-the-public school brewery at SPŠPT, Klášterní pivovar Strahov, Pivovar Bašta at U Bansethů, U Medvídků and the new U Valšů) and just one mega-brewer, Staropramen.

But of course years ago there were dozens of small brewers all over the Czech capital. The Czech national archives have plenty of references to brewers who haven’t been around for years, many of which were in locations around Prague that might surprise you.

For example, the catalog from the Všeobecná zemská výstava, Prague’s jubilee exhibition of 1891, has an advertisement listing several popular breweries of the day, one of which — Pivovar u Bílé labutě — was right where the Bílá labuť department store is on Na Poříčí today.

Just across the street, Pivovar u Rozvařilů stood approximately where Archa Theatre is today. It brewed for nearly 600 years, from 1340 until its closure in 1922.

Of the breweries in the advertisement, both U Fleků and U Medvídků are still going, though the tiny brewpub at U Medvídků is a brand-new addition from 2005; the old brewery there functioned only until 1898.

It’s interesting that three of the five breweries prominently feature the name of their sládek, or brewer, in bold type.

And in contrast to the 95% pale lager consumption at today’s pubs, the ad notes that at least the brewery at U Medvídků was offering a so-called “Salvator” beer, “brewed according to the Munich manner.” This would be a Doppelbock akin to Paulaner’s Salvator and other strong lagers served at Starkbierzeit.

Catering to diverse tastes, in 1891 U Medvídků was also offering “well-lagered regular beer, as well as beer in bottles.” Bottled beer is decidedly unpopular in Prague pubs today, and virtually no one advertises how “well-lagered” their beer is anymore.

Rummaging through the archives brought me all the way home: an earlier building at the address where I live once housed the brewery U Šetelů, founded in 1612, according to Pavel Novotný’s “Petrská čtvrt dům od domu” (Libri, 2008). After 1794, the house was rebuilt with a new brewery, Pivovar u Čapků, which closed in 1890, according to Pivovary.info’s excellent Prague breweries history page.

Most of these breweries were what we would call brewpubs today, with production of just 1,000 hectoliters per year in the case of Pivovar u Čapků, and most of it sold on the premises. In some ways, the recent arrival of new brewpubs in Prague — two in the last year with at least one more opening next year — is the same “return to normality” that Garrett Oliver used to describe the rise of craft breweries in America.

So what kind of beer were the old Prague brewpubs selling? It depends on the era. Though lager beers existed in Bohemia hundreds of years ago, lager brewing really started to spread only after 1840, when the brewmaster Vojtěch Wanka first started making bottom-fermented beers in the Prague brewery U Primasů, right on Wenceslas Square, according to Marie Černohorská’s article “The beginnings of bottom fermented beers in Bohemia” (“Kvasný průmsyl,” 5/2004). NB: that’s two years before the invention of Pilsner Urquell in 1842.

Before that, the book “Vypravování z domácího života starých Čechů” (Nákladem kněhkupectví Mikuláše a Knappa, 1875) — a title which roughly translates as “Storytelling from the domestic life of old Czechs” — compares “Prague wheat beer, called white” in quality and taste to the revered wheat beer from the western Bohemian town of Stříbro, which was favored in Nuremberg. “Excellent bitter beers were brewed all over Old Town and New Town in Prague,” the book says, with one big exception: Malá Strana, the district just under Prague Castle, which, it was said, couldn’t brew a decent beer despite all efforts to the contrary.

Back in March I wrote about pre-lager brewing in Bohemia, citing an article-slash-lament on the subject from the December 3, 1876, New York Times. That story detailed the “complete revolution” in brewing then taking place in late nineteenth-century Bohemia, the western half of today’s Czech Republic, moving away from the traditional “high fermentation” breweries (making ales) to the newer style of “low fermentation” brewing which produced lagers.

Today, 99.9% of Czech beer production is lager. But what were the beers here like before the big switch to industrial lager production?

Well, at least some of them were also lagers.

An article by Marie Černohorská in the Czech brewing journal Kvasný průmysl (issue 5, 2004) notes that even before the arrival of factory lager production in the late nineteenth century, bottom-fermented beers had long played a role in Bohemian brewing, albeit a small one.

In the fifteenth century, the town of Žatec (Saaz) brewed a famous bottom-fermented beer called samec. Beer from Žatec is mentioned as being of extremely high quality in “De Cerveceria,” a sixteenth-century Latin text on brewing by Tadeáš Hájek z Hájku, court physician to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II.

Another old, bottom-fermented beer style was popeněžní (akin to “post-money”) pivo, which, according to a story at the Rakovník brewery website, was said to be brewed from barley left on the threshing floor. In Rakovník, it was also known as freiberk, and the Rakovník brewery page calls it a “weak and cheap” drink. One imagines that it must have been a high-quality version of popeněžní that was delivered from the brewery in Jihlava to Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III of Habsburg in 1452.

Another reference to the old bottom-fermenting beers in Bohemia, according to Ms. Černohorská, is to be found in “Die Kunst des Bierbrauens” (1794) from František Ondřej Poupě (1753-1805), a celebrated Czech brewer, inventor, author and brewing industry reformer. Sometimes known by the German name Franz Andreas Paupie, Poupě wrote in 1794 that a brewer must be aware

“that beer can be fermented by two techniques — either by top fermentation or by bottom fermentation,”

and noted the places where beer was produced by bottom fermentation:

“The question is: where are beers produced with bottom fermentation? Answer: the whole of Bavaria and the English lands, and some places in Bohemia — for example, in Jirkov, in Petersburk [near Karlovy Vary], in Rakovník, and in earlier times in Žatec, the so-called samec beer, and lager beer, which is produced in the same manner.”

Poupě’s assertion that the English lands were producing bottom-fermented beers in 1794 might raise a few eyebrows, but that is apparently what he wrote. (Martyn Cornell’s Zythophile blog has more on the history of English lager brewing, though his dates don’t go quite so far back.)

For most breweries today, claiming a foundation in 1366 is highly dubious: even if a brewery did exist 600 years ago, it was probably making something very different at the time (very likely an ale, probably brown, probably cloudy and quite possibly sour), while the golden Pilsner-style beers such breweries produce now only date from 1842. But in the case of at least a few Czech brewers — Rakovník and Jihlava in particular — there is a much stronger connection from today’s modern lagers to the bottom-fermenting beers they produced way back when. As soon as someone puts popeněžní in bottles, I’m buying a case.