AUTHOR’S NOTE: It now appears that Heineken did not apply for the “Czech Beer” designation for its own brew, but rather on the part of Krušovice. This post has been corrected.

Today’s Prague Daily Monitor has a translation of a story from the Czech newspaper Hospodářské Noviny on the first beers to use the České Pivo (“Czech Beer”) label. Officially approved by the EU last autumn, the label is a mark of Protected Geographical Indication that indicates minimal levels of local products, traditional methods of production, and the beer’s place of origin.

And the first brand listed in the story is Heineken.

That is to say that Heineken, virtually synonymous with Holland, is said to be among the first brewers to apply for and use the official EU designation of “Czech Beer.” While an earlier version of this post assumed that Czech-brewed Heineken would qualify as “Czech Beer,” it now appears that Heineken has only applied on behalf of its Krušovice subsidiary. However, problems with the designation remain.

When we first reported this story, Honza Kočka commented that his brewery, Kocour, apparently wouldn’t qualify for the designation, despite traditional methods of production and Czech ingredients, simply because its location — inside the Czech Republic but very close to the country’s northern border — lay outside the area described by the regulations.

If my reading of the “Czech Beer” regulations is correct, a highly hopped pale lager with more than the upper limit of 45 EBC units of bitterness will not qualify for the “Czech Beer” label, no matter where it is made.

Also interesting: the designation will include a range of beers from 2.6% to 6% alcohol by volume. Meaning if a beer has 6.5% alcohol, it no longer qualifies to call itself “Czech Beer,” despite having 100% Czech ingredients.

However, the beers that do qualify as “Czech Beer” don’t technically have to use 100% Czech ingredients — nothing close to it. Take wonderful Czech Saaz hops, for example, which might be considered a key element of Czech beer. The regulations state:

The minimum quantity of Czech hops or products processed from them is 30 % for pale lagers and at least 15 % for other types of beer.

That is to say: if a pale lager uses 30% Czech hops and 70% Chinese hops, it can still be “Czech Beer.”

Of course, Krušovice and other famous dark lagers can get by with up to 85% Chinese hops and still call themselves “Czech Beer.”

If there was any doubt about the efficacy of the label before, it is now clear exactly how much sense it makes.

By all means, have a Czech beer. But there’s no need to look for the “Czech Beer” label to do so.

I’ve written before about Slovak brewers using Slavic models to market their beers in Germany. Now a German brewery is using a Slovak model to promote its beers in America.

That is to say St. Pauli Girl — the second most-popular German beer brand in the USA — has picked its annual eponymous spokeswoman. This year’s model is Katarina Van Derham, who “grew up in a small village in the woods of Slovakia, a communist country at the time,” and picked by fans of the beer in online voting. She’s third from the left in the cattle-call shot above.

It’s worth noting that no one I know has ever seen St. Pauli Girl — the beer — in Germany; St. Pauli Girl’s Wikipedia page says it is “only produced for export and is not sold in Germany.” For real beer fans, that might not be such a reassuring sign.

But perhaps that is beside the point: after all, it’s not called “St. Pauli Beer,” but “St. Pauli Girl,” with the emphasis on the lady rather than the liquid. While the cult Scottish beer maker BrewDog is allowing its fans to choose the next beer it produces, St. Pauli Girl is allowing its fans to select which model should represent the brand. In other words, fans of the beer are choosing the “girl” both when they vote online and when they order the beer in a bar. And in that sense, it’s probably very easy to find a new and appealing St. Pauli Girl — as in the spokeswoman — every year.

Just as long as you like them golden, bland and fizzy.

Beer geeks everywhere are talking about the small Scottish brewery BrewDog, and for good reason: despite being just a couple of years old — meaning very young — they’re already putting out some head-turningly good beers, and backing them up with a masterful PR game.

One of their recent nice moves on the marketing pitch: offering a sampler of prototype beers and asking drinkers to pick their favorites. Among the prototypes was Zeit Geist, “a 5.1% Black lager taking inspiration from the Czech classics.” As an imitation of a clasic Czech dark lager, it was just begging to be compared to three classics of the genre: Bernard’s speciální černé pivo, Bohemia Regent tmavý ležák and Budweiser Budvar tmavý ležák.

So how does the Scottish upstart compare to the old masters?

In terms of overall drinkability, I would say it wins. And in the case of Bohemia Regent and Budvar dark, Zeit Geist doesn’t just beat them — it pushes them in the gutter and takes their lunch money. Here’s how they stacked up.

Bernard speciální černé pivo: This beer had the nicest, fluffiest and longest-lasting head, pouring a very deep amber, almost black with a pronounced nose of Dutch cocoa. It was sweeter than Budvar but less sweet than Bohemia Regent, and much sweeter than Zeit Geist (more on this later). In the mouth there were notes of cocoa and biscuity malt. A great beer.

Bohemia Regent 12° tmavý ležák: This beer had the least long-lasting head and was lightest in color: deep amber, but far from black. There were cola notes in the nose and a gingery sweetness in the mouth. It was the sweetest of all four, with a clumsy, saccharine finish.

Budweiser Budvar tmavý ležák: This beer had the second longest-lasting head, fluffy creamy color, second darkest color, but the nose had weird cooked-vegetable notes. It had a thin body, and, in comparison to Bernard and Zeit Geist, was not terribly charismatic. It turned out to be the least appealing of all four, making me think that this was perhaps a bad bottle.

Brewdog Zeit Geist: Virtually identical in color to Bernard, though not as long-lasting in the foam department. The nose smells conspicuously like smoked malt, and there’s a pronounced Rauchbier taste in the mouth. Very nice, and reminiscent of their Rip Tide stout in the body with a strong astringence in the finish.

Bernard, as usual, was excellent; the Bohemia Regent and Budvar versions were disappointing. But here’s the thing: although I really liked Zeit Geist, I don’t think it tasted very Czech, certainly not like the other three beers, which easily stood together in a group: Zeit Geist was far more dry in the finish, far more of a German Schwarzbier than a Czech tmavý ležák. If I had known this, I would have compared it to Herold Bohemian Black Lager, one of the only dry dark lagers in the Czech lands.

In any case, it was interesting to see what Scottish brewers think a Czech dark lager should taste like. If I understand it correctly, Zeit Geist didn’t make the cut in the voting, so I’m not sure if we’ll ever see it produced: my prototype bottle, visible at the right of the picture at the top of the page, didn’t have a label or any means of identification beyond the cap. As it turns out, Brew Dog’s contest winner was a beer in the style of yet another country: Chaos Theory, an absolutely outstanding, extremely complex take on an hoppy, citrus-scented American IPA.

Next month, Japan’s Kirin brewery will offer a pair of retro brews to celebrate its 120th anniversary, serving up vintage-style cans packed with vintage recipes of the company’s original Lager and Pilsener beers.

The big difference between the old styles and today’s modern Kirin? According to an English-language post at Japan Marketing News, the modern version of Kirin is made “with rice and starch,” while the earlier versions “did without starch” or were made with barley and hops only.

Now, to celebrate its founding back in 1888, Kirin will offer a limited run of beer made without the stuff that isn’t really supposed to go into good beer — just like it did way back when.

Imagine what might happen if this idea spread to the Czech Republic.

Pilsner Urquell might offer a commercial run of the beer it still ferments and lagers in wooden barrels just as it did years ago, a sought-after brew which is currently only available for visitors on the PU brewery tour.

InBev in the Czech Republic might offer the legendary 12° Braník dark, or a Granát that tastes like it did when it was called Millennium.

U Fleků might turn their dark lager back into a dark ale, switching yeast from Saccharomyces carlsbergensis back to the Saccharomyces cerevisiae they used from 1499 up until the late nineteenth century.

Breweries in Rakovník, Jihlava and Žatec might offer popeněžní, freiberk, samec and other pre-Pilsner lager styles from Bohemia.

Brezňák might once again produce their syrupy Doppel-Doppel Bock… or perhaps their Afrikakorps beer.

Gambrinus might re-issue their wheat beer or their two Gambrinus darks.

And so on.

Now that I think about it, I’m not sure that this is going to end well. On the one hand, this is a nice way for a brewery like Kirin to celebrate its birthday and show off how long it has been around.

But on the other hand, putting out retro recipes seems slightly dangerous. You’re saying “Taste how good our beers used to be!”

When consumers taste the old versions, like them, and then ask why your beers don’t taste like that anymore, what on earth is the marketing department going to tell them?

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.

If you want to figure out what’s happening — or not happening — with Czech beer, it might help to look at how some of the other guys do it. Take, for example, the Punk IPA from Scotland’s BrewDog.

But I don’t mean the beer itself. I just mean the packaging.

In contrast to most Czech beer labels, the Punk IPA label goes almost all the way around the 330-ml bottle, and as such it has room for a lot of information. (Also in contrast to most Czech beer labels: it contains a lot of information.)

Some of this will sound familiar to those who remember the thoughts on Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf post which disappeared down the server wormhole. Indeed, many aspects of the BrewDog packaging are similar to Kocour’s, such as the use of a logo — “a symbol or small design adopted by an organization to identify its products” — beyond the brewery’s name. In Kocour’s case, it’s a stylized K that looks like a tomcat.

Similarly, BrewDog has its howling dog.

I can’t recall any Czech craft brewer beyond Kocour that has a functioning logo. Avar, maybe? (By contrast, think of Heineken. A certain shade of green and a red star, right?)

Another point from the Kocour post was “never miss a chance to talk about your beer.” Even the Punk IPA’s crown cap makes use of available space — you’ve got the brand name and the logo on top, with phrase “Aberdeenshire’s Mega Microbrewery” written around the side.

Other parts of the label tell us the brewers, Martin Dickie and James Watt, as well as “the BrewDog Promise,” which includes putting “no preservatives, additives or other junk in your beer.” This is a lot of information, and it represents a concept that is completely absent in Czech beer marketing: start a conversation with your consumers. This label even suggests that such communication could possibly go both ways: “Let us know what you think of Punk IPA: punkipa@brewdog.com.”

However, there are two suggestions from the Kocour post that the Punk IPA packaging doesn’t follow. The first is to tell consumers more about the ingredients and how you used them. We don’t know what kind of hops were used in the Punk IPA (Fuggles? Kent Goldings? Styrian Goldings?) and we aren’t told what kind of malt (Maris Otter? Weyermann?). Nor do most Czech brewers do this, though they certainly should.

The second aspect from the Kocour post that is missing here: don’t bullshit us. In fact, the BrewDog label contains a massive shovelful of BS, though in this case the bull comes off as the kind of funny and harmless joshing between good friends: “It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to appreciate the depth, character and quality of this premium craft brewed beer.” (Really? Try me, ace.)

The overall impression, though, is really positive: the design, like it or hate it, is not an afterthought, as it often seems with most Czech beer packaging. Much like the Kocour typeface, BrewDog’s stencil-like block caps suggests street smarts and punk rock, not a bad image for an upstart brewery, and perfectly in line with a beer BrewDog calls “aggressive” and “post modern.” If this beer were made by a Czech brewer, it would probably have a dead baroness on the label and a name written out in some kind of ridiculous Baroque script.

And for the beer itself: it’s really very good, quite hoppy, nicely bitter in the finish, though not nearly as aggressive as it claims. N’est pas gourmand qui veut, as the man said, and the same holds true for punks.

This post marks Beer Culture’s return to regular publishing after the wormhole incident and is part of a joint project with Fuggled and Pivní Filosof on the same subject. Go read their posts now.

When you spend all day at Pilsner Urquell, you learn lots of things.

Above is a shot of senior trade brewmaster Václav Berka in the maltings with the crew from the Discovery Channel. During a full day of shooting, I had time to ask a number of questions about the brewery and how it operates. The malt house is a case in point: it’s not on the standard tour at Pilsner Urquell, so few visitors get to see it. And yet it’s a rather special feature: Pilsner Urquell is the only major Czech brewery which still has its own maltings, buying raw barley from Czech and Moravian farmers and producing just one type of malt which constitutes 100% of the grist of Pilsner Urquell. Any extra malt is sold to Czech homebrewers and small producers, or used to make Kozel.

And while many people assume Pilsner Urquell and Gambrinus to be the same brewery, there are enough differences to consider them as separate entities. To start, the Pilsner Urquell brewhouse is only used for that beer; Gambrinus has its own, separate brewhouse.

More factoids gleaned during a day at Pilsner Urquell:

• Yes, Gambrinus is now produced through high-gravity brewing: there is just one original Gambrinus beer which is brewed at 13° and then diluted to make the two Gambrinus beers on the market.

• Gambrinus and Pilsner Urquell are produced in two different brewhouses using two different yeast strains: Gambrinus uses the company’s W strain, Pilsner Urquell the H strain.

• Every week a new batch of yeast is started from a single yeast cell.

• Each batch of yeast is used three or four times.

• Pilsner Urquell today has 40 IBUs. The hops, in the form of pellets, are 100% Saaz, added in three hoppings.

• Pilsner Urquell has about 35 days of lagering, which the brewery says is the same as in Josef Groll’s time.

• Pilsner Urquell recently switched to flash pasteurization, using a very moderate amount of 15 pasteurization units.

• The only unpasteurized beers from the Pilsner Urquell group are sold in tanks. There is tank Pilsner Urquell, tank Gambrinus, tank Kozel, tank Radegast, and even tank Birrell, the group’s non-alcoholic beer which did so well at the World Beer Cup.

• Nine coopers remain on staff to maintain the oak barrels shown in the brewery tour at Pilsner Urquell. This year the coopers made the brewery’s first new wooden fermentation vessels in 35 years.

Let’s say my father-in-law is not a beer guy — when it comes to drinking for pleasure, we’re talking wine. But like most people here, he regularly drinks beer with meals, the same way that people in other European countries down mineral water: at every lunch and every dinner, there is one bottle of medium- or low-strength pale lager from Platan, his local brewery, on the table. This makes his beer consumption just about average for a citizen of the Czech Republic: just about one half-liter a day, just about every day of the year. But if it’s a question of his preferred beverage, it’s vino, generally Moravian, generally white, and generally very good.

But that still doesn’t explain the Mussolini beer.

In fact, almost nothing explains the Mussolini beer, only that some friends of his came back from Italy and the Mussolini beer showed up shortly afterwards. About a month before, my wife and I had gone to Italy to research a story on the Italian craft brewing scene, and we brought back several great Italian brews, the kind of rare ales and lagers that obsessive beer heads around the world lose sleep and twitch over before they finally get to tick their names off lengthy lists. Panil Barriquée. The outrageously good Oppale from 32 via dei Birrei. Three bottles of Montegioco. The full line of Birrificio Grado Plato. Don’t even get me started on Baladin.

Some of those beers I shared with my father-in-law in a sort of defense-by-way-of-goodwill gesture, as if to say, “Yes, I do write about beer, but the stuff I’m writing about is not quite the same as your lunchtime substitute for Perrier.” In fact I believe my father-in-law actually enjoyed some of these brews, and I suppose word got out to his friends that beers from Italy were not that bad. He seemed especially impressed by Grado Plato’s rich Chocarrubica, a chocolate-and-carob-flavored stout with a prodigious amount of oats, which makes it very lush and full in the mouth. (Dare I say it is winelike?)

So after sampling a few Italian bottles with me, the mere mention of which would cause tremors and a quick Pavlovian response from any real beer fan, my father-in-law got an Italian bottle of his own as a gift. I felt my eyebrows rise up when he first mentioned it. I wanted to try Baladin’s Xyauyù again, or maybe one of the brews from Troll, or anything — absolutely anything — from Milan’s great Lambrate brewpub, a place that I still remember with a long sigh and the image of heaven placed on earth.

Instead, I saw Il Duce.

La Birra del Duce, it said on the side of the label, along with the image of Benito making what was either a girlish wave or a fascist salute. In the right corner was a Roman fasces. At the top — where a normal label would say something like “Produced with the finest barley malt, fragrant hops and pure spring water” — were the words Dio, Patria, Famiglia, which I read as God, Homeland and Family.

So much for Baladin and Lambrate. Instead, I was facing a gimmick which would obviously be a waste of time. But I got out my notebook anyway.

(Does anyone really need a review of Mussolini’s beer? If you absolutely have to know, it’s surprisingly okay,  other than the disappointingly loose head and fizzy carbonation, with a decent aroma of hops and a lightly bitter finish. It’s definitely not great, though for a basic lager you could do far worse.)

But. Still.

Uncomfortable wasn’t the half of how I felt. This was a beer, it seemed, whose entire point of being was — at best — to play upon novelty or — at worst — to exploit fascist sympathies. It was impossible not to think of how much fascism had hurt this country, to say nothing of my father-in-law’s own family, and how stupid it was to sell a brew that made light of those tragedies. I had my problems with the beer itself — it was drinkable but uncharismatic; at one point I thought I got a cooked-corn whiff of dimethyl sulfide, though that could have just been my distaste for the God, Homeland and Family slogan — and the back of the label showed that the same company produced fascist wines as well, meaning that I wasn’t holding the product of a brewery so much as that of a marketing group.

But maybe I take these things — and beer — too seriously.

My father-in-law poured his own glass, which he sniffed and glanced at before taking a sip. His expression seemed to suggest that he didn’t understand what the big deal was with all these Italian beers, and why anyone really cared.

“It’s fine,” he said, putting the glass down and turning back to his dinner. He offered a small shrug. “It’s something to drink with a meal.”

On the label, Il Duce waved girlishly to his friends just beyond the frame.

About half a year back, we had a tasting of beers from Pivovar Strakonice, a complete run-down of the brewery’s lineup in the cellar of Pivovarský klub.

Afterwards, a few of us — ah, who am I kidding? It was just me and Max Bahnson — started grousing about the event, especially regarding the company’s marketing. Later, we were told that our comments had been reported to the directors of the brewery.

Six months later, it almost looks like they listened.

At the time, our big complaints about Strakonice beers were the following:

1) The brewery had no clear brand identity. Some beers were labelled “Strakonice,” some were labelled “Dudák,” and some “Nektar,” with one oddball (the 10° pale lager) not bearing any of those names. Our question: how can you hope to build brand loyalty when the consumer doesn’t know what brand it is he’s buying?

2) Unpasteurized beers are big now: Bernard and Svijany, for example, are basing entire advertising campaigns on the fact that their beers do not undergo pasteurization. And even though all of Strakonice’s beers are unpasteurized (as we found out once we asked), somehow the brewery had forgot to put that on the label.

3) The brewery was producing three virtually indistinguishable pale lagers at 10°, 11° and 12°. And while polotmavé pivo — “half-dark” or amber, our vestigial descendant of Anton Dreher’s legendary Vienna lager — is one of four brewing trends in the Czech Republic, Strakonice didn’t offer one. How hard would it be to put out an amber?

Well, we got the answer to that question with the arrival of the brewery’s new Klostermann polotmavý ležák (half-dark lager), named after the bilingual Czech author Karel Klostermann, a resident of the area around Strakonice and nearby Písek. Since I’m spending a lot of time in the area this summer, I stopped by last week to check things out.

Coming in with 5.1% alcohol, Klostermann pours a beautiful clear amber with a light tan head. The nose is malty and nutty; the body is surprisingly light for a malty beer, and there are some lovely semi-sweet maple notes before the slightly bitter finish.

While it might not be the country’s best amber, it strikes me as an ideal brew for this summer. And once again, it’s proof that state- (or city-) owned breweries can innovate: much like Pivovar Primátor and the city of Náchod, Pivovar Strakonice is apparently still owned by the city of Strakonice.

In fact, Klostermann answers two of our marketing complaints in one swoop. Not only is it a polotmavé, but the label proudly says that this it is also nepasterované pivo.

All that we need is for the label to actually say Pivovar Strakonice on it and we’ll have a hat trick.

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.