Beer Culture

Stories about great beer from the countries that invented it.

Tag: Opat

The New Bay-Leaf Beer from Pivovar Broumov

For a long time, the only innovation on the Czech beer market was the production of gimmicky flavored beers, usually a standard Czech Pilsner-style beer with fruit extract added after lagering. For many real beer fans, these flavored beers represented only a half-step toward the goal of better quality and bigger variety in the local beer market, a stumble in sort of the right direction.

Better would have been beers made with the whole fruit or herbs — not extract or syrup — in the brewing kettle, not added at the end as a kind of cocktail. Better still would have been to skip the gimmicky flavored beers and honestly attempt the world’s classics: Vienna lager; Baltic porter; Bock and Doppelbock; smoked beers; wheat beers; Belgian styles; stout, porter, bitter, mild or IPA.

But now, many of those classic beers are being produced — often quite successfully — in the Czech lands. And in hindsight, not all Czech flavored beers seem like gimmicks. Although some were (and are) downright terrible, a few flavored beers have been quite interesting, such as vavřín, the new bay-leaf beer from Pivovar Broumov, aka Opat.

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Czech Christmas Beers: the 17° Sváteční Speciál from Broumov

Pivovar Broumov — aka Opat — is one of the country’s most interesting small breweries, regularly making an appearance at the Czech Beer Academy’s beer tastings with their “extra-hopped” medium-bodied beer, Opat Bitter extra-chmelené, one of the most aromatic pale lagers in the country. Other noteworthy models from Opat include beers flavored with honey and a new arrival made with coriander.

But this time of year is for Opat’s great Christmas brew: the 17° Sváteční speciál. Among Czech holiday beers in bottles, this one stands out.

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The SPP Czech Beer Awards: Budvar’s Tolar Wins Brewmaster of the Year

On Wednesday, November 19, the Sdružení přátel piva held its annual awards ceremony for the greatest beers, breweries, and the best brewmaster in the Czech Republic.

Often rendered in English as the Union of Friends of Beer, the SPP is the Czech beer consumers’ organization, a counterpart to the Campaign for Real Ale and other fellow members of the European Beer Consumers Union, similarly working to promote quality beer and preserve local beer traditions. Though there are many beer awards in the lager-loving Czech Republic, the SPP awards are among the most prestigious and most anticipated such ceremonies on the Czech beer calendar.

The awards, handed out this year inside the cozy beer hall on the Budweiser Budvar brewery grounds, went to the following:

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