Recently, new owners have taken over at storied Pivovar Herold, the small regional brewery located in Březnice, Central Bohemia. So far, not much seems to have changed: Herold’s Bohemian Black Lager is just as rich and full of coffee and chocolate notes as ever. But you might be wondering if new management harkens good news for the brand, especially in terms of its meagre distribution and lack of widespread availability.

Your chance to find out is this Tuesday, 17 March, 2009, when Pivovarský klub will host a Herold beer tasting.

At least some changes have already shown up: the Herold brewery website has finally been updated, noting a current lineup of just four brews: the 10° pale lager (světlé výčepní pivo), a 12° pale lager (světlý březnický ležák), the magnificent Bohemian Black Lager (called “tmavé speciální pivo” in Czech and brewed at 13°) and the brewery’s 14° amber special (polotmavé speciální pivo). Not mentioned is the brewery’s gimmicky Bastard beer, nor is there any reference to Herold’s long-absent and once-revolutionary wheat brews. Expect to get the final word on these at the tasting.

Especially nice on the new website: the brewery proudly lists its long lagering times, often a good sign for the quality of the brew. Both the dark and the amber get 70 days; the 12° pale lager gets 60. (By contrast, Pilsner Urquell gets about 35 days of lagering. Most of the industrial beers in this country are produced much faster than that, though Budweiser Budvar says it still matures its beer for up to 90 days.)

Considering the tightness of Herold’s line — just four models brewed at 10°, 12°, 13° and 14° — the brewery manages to put out some highly diverse flavors, many of which have turned heads recently: the amber special took first place earlier this year at the Česká pivní pečeť in Tábor, and BrewDog’s James Watt told me that Herold’s Bohemian Black Lager was the inspiration for their excellent new Zeitgeist beer.

The brewery is especially interesting when you consider its noble history, much of which is covered in Ludvík Fürst’s fascinating monograph, “Jak se u nás vařilo pivo” (or “How we used to brew beer”). In 1586, “how” for the brewery in Březnice meant both “white beer,” made with wheat, and “old beer,” meaning barley; historical archives have clear records of the brewery’s founding in 1506 and its production in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. On Tuesday, it would be nice to hear some good news about Herold’s future.

Herold Beer Tasting
Where: Pivovarský klub, Křižíkova 17°, Praha 8 – Karlín
When: Tuesday, 17 March, at 6 p.m.
How much: 140 Kč (students, journalists and cardholders 70 Kč)
Tel: 222 315 777

In the minds of a few small thinkers, wine remains the only suitable drink to go with haute cuisine. But in recent years, there has been more and more widespread acknowledgment of the role of beer in quality food and drink pairings.

Among those noting the versatility and depth of beer is the British wine writer Jancis Robinson, who wrote that at one multi-course tasting paired with both beers and wines, she preferred the beers four times out of six. In the USA, Brooklyn Brewery’s Garrett Oliver has done extensive work with food and beer, as have Susan Nowak, Ben McFarland and Will Beckett, among others, in the UK. Then there were the surprising words of one wine steward in the German edition of Sommelier a few years back, who explained the inclusion of a great craft Pils among his recommended pairings by saying “Sometimes the best wine for the job is a beer.”

Recently, more and more food and beer pairings are taking place in Prague, a city that surely loves its beer, but rarely takes it seriously in terms of fine dining.

As far as I recall, the first quality restaurant to take beer seriously here was Essentia, inside Prague’s Mandarin Oriental hotel, where I contributed a list of Czech craft beers which chef Ari Munandar has used to accompany his outstanding pan-Asian cuisine, and where I continue to lead beer tasting seminars every month or so. And working with chef Roman Paulus last year, I helped the Radisson SAS Alcron hotel’s La Rotonde restaurant come up with a list of Czech craft brews to use as pairings in its food-and-beer menu (PDF), built around classic Czech recipes.

Now, in partnership with the local Slow Food organization, Prague’s Pivovarský klub will host a six-course food-and-beer menu this Thursday. Called “Pivo v poháru i na talíři,” or “Beer in the Glass and on the Plate,” the dinner offers six courses, each of which includes beer as an ingredient, and each of which is to be paired with a specially chosen lager or ale. Attendees will receive the recipe for each dish as a souvenir.

While some of the dishes may be familiar to visitors of Pivovarský klub and its sister restaurant, Pivovarský dům, a few will be entirely new. “There will be a beer soup which we don’t have normally, and rabbit rolls braised in beer,” said Pivovarský klub manager Aleš Dočkal, who described the dinner as “something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.”

The price for this one-off special event is 500 Kč, with a reduced fee of 333 Kč for holders of the Pivovarský klub card and members of Slow Food.

Space is limited, and reservations will be taken only through Tuesday, January 20.

Beer in the Glass and on the Plate
Thursday, 22 January, 7 p.m.
Pivovarský klub
Křižíkova 17, Praha 8-Karlín
Tel. +420 222 315 777
Price: 500 Kč; reduced price of 333 Kč for Pivovarský klub members and members of Slow Food

The world seems to have gone beer-haiku crazy: just 24 hours after our month-long reader contest was announced and we’ve already spawned a lengthy and very funny beer-haiku thread at Ratebeer, got a shout-out from Nunc Scio (cool) and the always-excellent Beer Haiku Daily (those guys are pros) and been challenged to a beer-poetry-contest-contest by A Good Beer Blog.

And we already have our first winners.

Our very first entry comes from James Gogarty in Roztoky u Prahy, who ponders one of life’s great beer mysteries: foam or no foam?

Europeans give,
those bloody Britons do not,
a full inch of head.

I like it when we talk about the deep stuff. James wins the bottle of beer shower gel from Manufaktura.

There are three winners so far in the rhyming division. The first rhymed entry and an automatic winner is from Michael Halligan, whose work describes the mood-elevating affects of great Czech lagers:

Tap handle pulled down
pouring luscious liquid out
smile out of a frown

Michael gets an A for effort and the Budweiser Budvar mouse pad. Send us your mailing address, hoss.

The next winner comes from Martin Thibault of Montreal, Canada, who celebrates the legendary king of Flanders and the namesake of the other beer from Pilsen, as well as the annual holiday for the rest of us:

Avé Gambrinus
For this soulful Světlé and
Tmavé Festivus

For incorporating words from Latin, Czech and Seinfeld, Martin wins the talking Budweiser Budvar bottle opener pictured above. (“Yeahhh!”)

A slew of nice haiku arrived from Matěj Novák of Toronto, Canada. The best four:

Homer says, “Mmm, beer,”
then goes to Moe’s for a few,
causing Marge to sneer.

Ale, lager, porter
and stout. The others I’ll get
to in short order.

Five syllables then
seven, then five more about
beer: a beer haiku.

I drink, therefore I
am drunk. I drink beer, therefore
I pee frequently.

Matěj is a former coworker and a close friend, but I believe the last entry overcomes any fear of favoritism. Matěj wins a special prize TBD.

For the following rounds, Prague’s Pivovarský klub has promised a bunch of beer glasses from regional Czech breweries as well as shirts, gift certificates and other goodies. Many thanks to Pivovarský klub, to Budweiser Budvar and to Pivovar Bašta for all the prizes donated so far. And special thanks to Staropramen, who has just offered to send out complete prize packets including Staropramen T-shirts, baseball caps and bottle openers for three of the the next lucky winners.

NEWS FLASH: Pivovarský klub will be closed for a private party on the evening of Thursday, March 6 (tomorrow), so don’t try to go there then. But do visit anytime on or after Friday, March 7, as they currently have the wonderful Märzen from Pivovarský dům on draft and will soon tap the Easter honey lager from Opat, as well as U Medvídků’s new plum beer, described by Max Bahnson over at Pivní Filosof.

Between starting this post and putting it up, I’ve received another set of beer haiku, many of which are absolutely outstanding. Stay tuned for more winners following a post about the weirdest beer museum in Prague.

Since the EU entry of Poland and the Czech Republic in 2004, many Czech brewers have been expanding their exports to the north, and just about every year a sizeable contingent from the Polish Bractwo Piwne comes south to check out the winners at the Czechs’ SPP beer awards. However, both cases are about Poles enjoying Czech beers, and the interest does not appear to cross the border in both directions: the Czech Republic does not import many beers of any kind, and certainly very few come from the land of Lech.

However, a few Polish brews have showed up recently at Pivovarský klub, so I picked up bottles of Perła and Ciechan Miedowe Niefiltrowane for a tasting.

Perła Chmielowa Pils (500-milliliter bottle / 6% ABV)
Pours a bright clear gold and quite fizzy with a loose white head that disappears within moments. The nose has only a slight touch of malt. In the mouth, a thin body is followed by a thin finish and just a hint of hop bitterness by Czech standards, in contrast to the “chmielowa” on the label. Despite being brewed at 12.2°, it ends up with a strong 6% ABV (versus 4.4% ABV for Pilsner Urquell). The alcohol is well-incorporated, but the deep fermentation reduces its heft: this is a fairly watery “pils” rather than the rich malt body of Pilsner Urquell or the similarly busty brews from Rychtář, Bernard, Opat or Svijany.

Ciechan Miedowe Niefiltrowane (500-milliliter bottle / 6.2% ABV)
This unfiltered honey beer pours a cloudy gold with a loose chalk head that dies quickly. The nose smells strongly of honey, most likely from the addition of “natural aroma” listed on the label. In the mouth, an initial sour bite fades to a lush saccharine rush and a medicinal flavor akin to that of honey-flavored candy. Compared to the Czech honey beers from Sentice’s Pivovar Kvasar and Rambousek in Hradec Králové, this is far sweeter and much more chemical in taste. The label says that this is Piwo Roku (beer of the year) 2006 from Browar Roku (brewery of the year) 2006.

It’s interesting to note that the two Polish brews are quite high in alcohol, compared to similar Czech beers, and I should point out that this is just a random sampling of what showed up at the local bottle shop — I’m certain there are even better surprises hiding in Poland. Like Ron Pattinson, I’m hoping for the return of Grodziskie, described in Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion as “an extremely pale golden beer, with a faint haze of sediment, a dense white head, and a surprisingly light body,” and with “a sourish, sappy, oaky aroma (like a box that had held smoked herring), and a smoky, dry, crisp palate.” Mmm, smoked herring boxes…

Checking out the neighbors can give you an interesting perspective on things at home. Next I’ll be writing about a syrupy new 10% ABV lager from Velké Březno that seems to be brewed exclusively for the German market, as well as an interesting dark beer from Slovakia. And if you’ve got a recommendation for a good beer from Poland or anywhere else, please drop it in the comments box.

For this year’s SPP awards, most of us in Prague first met for breakfast at Hotel Beránek, near metro station I.P. Pavlova. Before getting on the bus, we were able to try Hotel Beránek’s house beer, brewed and bottled for the hotel by Chodovar.

What a great idea, I thought. Why don’t more places have their own beers? Of course a bottle of beer is fairly hard to fold, but it would still make an interesting holiday card. Or a thank-you gift. (Personally, I’d love to use one as my business card, but that would present logistical problems involving pockets, weight and my own thirst that I shouldn’t go into here.) Homebrewing’s easy enough. How hard could it be to have a beer made, maybe just for a special occasion?

And then before Christmas, I was told that my local, Pivovarský klub, had a new beer coming out for its regular customers and friends of the house. Called Florenc 14:14, it’s a polotmavý (half-dark) lager brewed from three kinds of malt at 14° Balling, lagered for more than a month and finishing with 5.5% ABV, produced in a limited run of less than 70 bottles of 330 centiliters.

In the glass (yes, I’m still using the Sahm .3-liter glass I got at the Christmas Beer Markets), the beer first poured as a clear medium amber with very little carbonation (just how we like ‘em — great lagers are not fizzy!) The nose was nicely spicy and very malty. In the mouth there was a sugary malt rush which finished with ginger and other spice notes.

A second pour, this time including the sediment from the bottom of the bottle, produced a slightly cloudy amber with what seemed to be a touch of smoke in the finish. Both versions, with sediment and without, were excellent, with a great malt body that made me wish the production wasn’t so limited.

The bottle comes with a booklet describing the brewing process and reminding readers that not only can they taste more than 250 kinds of beer in bottles (and usually six on draft) at Pivovarský klub, they can also brew their own beer using the brewing facilities there.

In fact, when I was writing my guide to Czech beers, I included Pivovarský klub in the chapter for Prague breweries as well as the one for Prague pubs, listing the Křižíková 17° (5.5% ABV) strong golden lager it used to serve. But then that sugary 17° disappeared and Pivovarský klub became just a regular pub, albeit one which serves five rotating brews from regional producers, as well as a version of Pivovarský dům’s excellent Štěpán (brewed under contract at Pivovar Kácov). It’s nice to see Pivovarský klub return to brewing again, if only for a one-off holiday beer.

But that’s the thing: Florenc 14:14 was apparently such a hit that Pivovarský klub now plans to produce it four times a year, according to my fellow Czech beer researcher Max Bahnson, who is now reproducing his excellent Spanish-language Czech beer blog in English. (Czech, Spanish, English: I swear, we’re like the frickin’ United Nations over here. Or at least Max is.) So if you didn’t get to taste Florenc 14:14 this holiday season, you might get your chance in the spring.

One final note: polotmavý really seems to be the color of the era hereabouts. Not only are at least two beers at Prague’s new brewpub Pivovar Bašta both amber in color, but Bernard now has a polotmavý version of its well-received non-alcoholic beer. I know Ron Pattinson has something to say about amber lagers, as well as the subject of having special brews produced just for you, but I’ll leave that to him.