We were on Dlouhá, close to Lokál, and Jonas was just waking up from his afternoon nap; I was wet from the rainstorm that had just passed. I was pushing his carriage towards a couple of errands and then home when I saw a friend from the Prague beer scene ahead of us on the sidewalk.

“How are things?” he asked, smiling.

“Good but busy,” I said. “I started brewing.”

“How much?” he asked.

I did some quick math. “Zero point twenty-two hectoliters.”

“And what kind of beer?”

“Well, the first batch was a saison, because it was 29 degrees in the apartment last week.”

“Perfect.”

“Yeah, it smells like black pepper. Tastes great. And today Jonas and I are going to brew a wit.”

“A wit sounds good right about now.”

“I’m looking forward to it. Do you know there’s going to be a new pub here, called the Prague Beer Museum, with something like 30 Czech craft beers on draft?”

“Where, around the corner somewhere?”

“No, right there on Dlouhá. There,” I said, pointing across the street.  ”Where the Tom Tom Bar used to be.”

“So something like Zlý Časy?”

“Yeah, only here in the center.”

“Great news. Oh, and before I forget,” he said, “today we’re brewing the Grodziskie.”

“Wow. Where’d you get the…”

“Yeast?”

“No, the malt.”

“We’re using smoked malt from Weyermann. But the yeast we got direct from Grodzisk.”

“So, in about a month?”

“Yes,” he smiled. “In about a month.”

And with that my boddhisatva said goodbye, shaking my hand and touching Jonas’s cheek before striding deeper into Old Town. And as we pushed off down Dlouhá towards our errands, and then home, both of us were grinning.

The early details:

Some 75 Belgian beers will be available.

As at last year’s Christmas Beer Markets, this event is organized in multi-hour sessions: Friday 3–5 p.m. and 6–9 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.–1 p.m., 2–5 p.m. and 6–9 p.m.; Sunday 2–5 p.m. and 6–9 p.m.

Each session is limited to only 250 visitors.

Tickets for each session cost 150 Kč (roughly $9, or €6).

There will be excellent food, as well as special beer-and-food pairings.

The event takes place at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel (Nebovidská 1, Prague 1—Malá Strana; tram 12, 20 or 22 to Hellichova).

In terms of exactly which beers you’ll be able to try, the early announcement only says “lager, Trappist beers, spontaneously fermented beers, Belgian wits and experimental beers.” I’ll post more information as soon as I get it.

This one sounds like a winner. Earlier events have proven to be great fun as well as nice opportunities to fill up the cellar, or wherever you keep your stash. (With otherwise-not-to-be-found-in-Prague bottles available at what I find to be very reasonable prices, I usually show up with a good-sized backpack.) Mark your calendars…

The phenomenon of the čtvrtá pípa — or fourth pipe — just keeps on growing: slowly but steadily, more and more pub owners in Prague are switching over from monopolistic suds to beers from independent brewers, often on a tap they own themselves, rather than the three taps installed and owned by a major brewing group. It’s an interesting concept: when I wrote about it earlier this year for Prague Monitor Magazine, the term earned a note at the Schott’s Vocab weblog (“a miscellany of modern words and phrases”) at the New York Times.

Max Bahnson just covered two new čtvrtá pípa pubs at his Pivní filosof weblog, with not such great results. But there’s another fourth pipe pub which is a total winner: the Klášterní pivnice near Letná in Prague 7.

Klášter fans, have no fear: they still have 11° Klášter dark and pale beers in good shape and well-tapped, at 19.50 Kč — just over a buck and a dime — per half-liter.

In addition, the pub runs a special event with a new 12° beer from a different brewery every weekend. It was Rychtář when I was there last; the time before that saw Slovakia’s Steiger appear on draft. Herold fliers around the room offer evidence that Březnice was an earlier choice.

That’s three taps. To fully embrace the fourth-tap concept, Klášterní pivnice pours a rotating special beer: Telčský Zachariáš on my last visit.

Not enough to get you to Letná? Try this: in addition to the taps, Klášterní pivnice now lists a nearly complete line of Primátor’s specialty brews in bottles, including Weizenbier and English Pale Ale.

But the reason to go to Klášterní pivnice really isn’t the rare beers. It isn’t the buck-the-system independent streak, and it isn’t the low prices. The reason to go to Klášterní pivnice is this: in an era of homogenization and plastic culture, it remains a very real Prague pub, with some of the best atmosphere anywhere. Neighbors stop by and greet each other in the afternoon. Dads sneak in for a quick cold one while the kids are at the park. It’s the kind of place where it’s not strange to order one beer and nurse it over the newspaper in the middle of the afternoon or late in the morning, because that’s what you do there.

Max Bahnson wrote a nice piece about the place before it got all indie. It’s the same as before, only better: just eight tables in the main room, banquettes all the way around, wood paneling, coat hooks and bottle-bottom windows. There’s only room for about 40 lucky people.

Much like comedians and the Aristocrats, travel writers have a question they often ask each other: if you found someplace wonderful that was still undiscovered, would you write about it and potentially ruin it? Or would you keep it for yourself? All I can say about Klášterní pivnice is this: don’t ruin it.

I’ll be off in Franconia for the next week, drinking Landbier and researching beer tourism among the 200 or so breweries there. Until I return, I’ll leave you with a shot from a perfect afternoon in Prague:

Klášterní pivnice
Ovenecká 15 (at Jirečkova)
Tram 25 or 26 to Letenské náměstí
Tel. +420 233 376 150

In this part of the world, three of the most important words in contemporary beer culture are draft, draft and draft, with bottled beers making up a smaller (though growing) percentage of sales. For a long time, one of the only bottled beers from Prague’s Pivovarský dům brewpub was their Champagne-like Šamp, made off-site at a local producer with excess capacity. But now, the Czech capital’s revered brewpub is offering its classic dark lager in swing-tops.

But there’s a catch.

As I understand it, the only place you can get these bottles is the city’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel, where dark Štěpán is now the house brew. (I’d be surprised if Pivovarský dům didn’t offer them too, but that’s what I was told.)

This marks at least the third hotel in town with its own beer: there’s Hotel Beránek, which offers a specially labeled version of Chodovar as “Hotel Beránek Beer.” And the Augustine, Prague’s newest luxury hotel, offers a specially brewed version of the original Svatý Tomáš dark lager served in this location when it was still the old Pivovar U svatého Tomáše, an ancient monastery brewery in Prague which rivaled U Fleků until 1951, when it was closed by the Communists:

Considering the great potential (and, full disclosure, my own interest) in Czech beer tourism, it’s great to see hotels in Prague taking beer seriously. In addition to serving dark Štěpán in bottles, Mandarin Oriental has done much for beer here, offering a quality beer list in its hotel bar, holding regular beer tastings (some of which I’ve led), and hosting a couple of great beer festivals so far.

On that note, it’s not too early to get the word out about another event taking place at the Mandarin Oriental in October: a festival of Belgian beers beyond the Trappist brews we can now get at our local supermarkets. More info on the Belgian Beer Festival as it becomes available…

Sometimes it takes a while for a beer or a brewery to find high gear. A year ago, when the new Prague brewpub Pražský most u Valšů first tapped its own brew, it didn’t make quite the same splash as Pivovar Bašta a few months earlier. Only one beer was available, a traditional pale lager, and it didn’t do much for people who care about good Czech beer. Max Bahnson said it was nothing to write home about. I had the same impression, in as much as I stopped by, ate lunch, tried the beer, and didn’t even bother writing about it.

What a difference a year makes. Now there are two beers available, and at least one of them’s a firecracker.

Beyond the expanded beer list, there are other changes as well. There’s a nice garden upstairs, which I didn’t see last year. And the bargain 85 Kč ($4.50) lunch special they had last year appears to be long gone. I went by on Tuesday and found a two-course lunch special for 150 Kč, but at least that included a small beer. Large beers are still priced a bit on the high side, 45 Kč, but in the case of the new arrival, it’s worth it.

The new brew is a 12° dark, but this is much more of a German Schwarzbier than it is a typical Czech tmavé pivo: it finishes slightly dry, not terribly sweet, and there’s less coffee in the mouth than your average tmavé pivo. Czech brewing law doesn’t differentiate between “tmavé pivo” (or “dark beer”) and “černé pivo” (or “black beer”), but this is one case where I would suggest that “černé” should be used. Beyond just being black in color and dry in the finish, it’s excellent.

The pale lager seemed improved as well, though without the same impact, perhaps because of the surfeit of great pale lagers in the country. To date, the Czech Republic only has a couple of these Schwarzbier-like black brews: the inspirational Bohemian Black Lager from Pivovar Herold and the great Flekovské pivo from U Fleků come to mind.

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.

Ron Pattinson has written about U rotundy, one of his favorite rough pubs. It might have its charms, but for me there are two good reasons not to pick U rotundy: one, they serve Staropramen, which you could get just about anywhere else in Prague if you wanted it. And more importantly: just two doors down the very same street is Art-Café u Irmy, which you might call a “rough café.” In addition to great inexpensive Georgian food — as in the country, not the American state, nor the historical era — u Irmy is one of the few places in town where you can get draft Bohemia Regent.

Many thanks to reader James for the tip, as well as pointing out the café’s excellent atmosphere, like a wacky house party where all the characters come from different corners of the old soviet sphere of influence. The food, as well, is an eastern treat: great dolmas, outstanding lobio (Georgian red beans with red onions, pomegranate seeds and coriander), borscht, chačapuri (cheese bread), čachochbili (chicken and red-pepper stew), sacivi (walnut sauce) and chinkali (beef dumplings). How could U rotundy possibly compete with that?

And then there is the beer.

Once widely considered the second-best mass producer of beer in Bohemia (after Pilsner Urquell), Regent has virtually disappeared from taps in Prague. And yet its dark lager remains one of the country’s best, certainly when in good condition. My half-liters (40 Kč) were at the very top of their game, in excellent shape, rich and coffee-like with the bitter notes perfectly balanced by the sweetness of the malt, or at least that’s how I described it in my review of U Irmy in Lidové noviny two weekends ago.

I love rough pubs. But I think I like rough cafés even better, especially when they serve great beer, great cheap food and have convivial, Borat-esque atmosphere. In fact, just across from U Irmy is Duende, which serves Bernard, another one of the country’s great smaller brewers — and many times better, for most beer lovers, than the ubiquitous Staropramen.

If you want two great stops for great beer and a fun scene in the heart of the touristic center, you know where to go on Karolíny Světlé.

Art Café u Irmy
Karolíny Světlé 19
Praha 1-Staré Město
Tel.: 775 565 868

Last year saw the inauguration of Prague’s Christmas Beer Markets (Vánoční pivní trhy), much like the Christmas markets that appear all around Europe at this time of year, only with a serious malt-and-hops theme. Taking place in a vast pavilion at Prague’s Výstaviště exhibition grounds, the first edition featured craft and specialty beers from around the Czech Republic, as well as brews from Slovakia’s Kaltenecker.

This year, the Christmas Beer Markets will return in a more refined locale: inside Prague’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which will host the 2008 Christmas Beer Markets on December 20, 21 and 22.

The final details are still being set, but the early outline for this year’s festival sounds terrific.

From the announcement at Pivnidenik.cz:

The 2008 Christmas Beer Markets will take place at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel (Nebovidská 1, Prague 1—Malá Strana; tram 12, 20 or 22 to Hellichova) on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, December 20–22.

There are two four-hour sessions on each day: from 13–17 and 18–22.

Entry will be limited to 300 participants at each session.

The entry fee for each session is 150 Kč and includes a commemorative .3-liter glass and a beer.

The entry fee for the whole day — two sessions — costs 250 Kč.

Entry to all sessions over all three days costs 500 Kč.

Tickets can be purchased at the hotel or at selected beer-friendly pubs in Prague: První pivní tramway, Zlý časy, Obžérství and Tlustá koala.

The final beer list is not yet set, but it will include specialty and Christmas brews from around the Czech Republic, as well as rarities from Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Slovakia.

To accompany the great beers, the Mandarin Oriental will also offer its outstanding classic Czech cuisine, Asian dishes, selections of cheeses and desserts.

In addition, the Christmas Beer Markets should include exhibits on homebrewing, beer festivals, and foreign breweries, as well as beer tastings and presentations on beer and gastronomy.

Beers at the Christmas Beer Markets will be both bottled and on tap. Guests will be able to buy bottled specialties to take home.

This is realy taking things up a notch from last year’s Christmas Beer Markets, not least in terms of the location: the Mandarin Oriental is a very special place, composed of Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance architecture and newer additions, with its luxurious day spa housed in a former 14th century monastery. The wine cellar where we have our regular beer tastings and seminars as part of the hotel’s Czech Beer Academy is one of the prettiest and most atmospheric such spots in Prague, and the hotel’s Essensia restaurant serves some of the best Asian cooking in the country.

For most of us, this will be a rare chance to step into a refined world.

More details to follow soon. Mark your calendars now.

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.

I have a story about new restaurants in Vienna in this weekend’s NYT. This is another Choice Tables feature, not a beer story, but I had to include the very good Rotes Zwickl from Ottakringer, which I liked a lot as the house beer at the excellent restaurant Österreicher im MAK (whose taps are pictured above). In the story, I wrote that this is one of the few beers in Vienna to come close to the nearly extinct Vienna lager style. Before any BJCP-style-guidelines-citing readers comment that a red Zwickl isn’t anything like Vienna lager, I’ll quickly link to Conrad Seidl’s piece on a real Vienna lager from Brauerei Villach, in which he writes (my translation):

“…but in Vienna, the local beer style was no more. Of Austrian beers, Hadmar (Bierwerkstatt Weitra) and the Rotes Zwickl from Ottakringer came the closest.”

What is interesting about the Vienna lager style is that, after it died out at home, related beers continued to exist in a couple of places: Mexico, for one, and in the Czech lands. (As Ron Pattinson wrote, “Vienna lagers aren’t dead: they’ve just moved over the border.”) In fact, this is one of the four current Czech beer trends I mentioned in The Truth about Budvar and in a post on Prague’s newest brewpub, Bašta.

Nope, those beers aren’t dead. They’re absolutely thriving here.

However, just as Hans and Franz go by Honza and František hereabouts, Vienna lager seems to change its name once it crosses the border: instead of Wiener Lager or even vídeňský ležák, our versions are called jantar (amber), polotmavý (half-dark) or granát (garnet). Often brewed from 11°–14° or higher, they are clear, light amber to deep amber in color, characterized by a fairly rich body with toasty malt, caramel, toffee and even syrupy notes followed by a lasting sweet finish without much hoppiness, unlike the bitter bite of a real Czech Pilsner-style beer.

Ottakringer’s Rotes Zwickl seemed a bit lighter in color than its Czech cousins, and the unfiltered Zwickl cloudiness made it stand out. But other than a slight yeastiness, the overall flavor was fairly similar, perhaps finishing with a bit less malt, though still pretty good.

Beyond Rotes Zwickl, I enjoyed Vienna immensely: the people were surprisingly friendly for a big city, the vast art collections can practically cause hallucinations (the good kind), and Viennese cuisine is like the best meal cooked by the Czech grandmother you never had. (Much like Franz and František, the Beuscherl from the story can be found as Pajšl in the Czech lands.) I was highly impressed by the restaurants in the article, all of which seemed to be run by people who care deeply about food and where it comes from.

Of course, Vienna is historically more into wine and coffee than beer, and the fine-dining angle on this story meant I wouldn’t get to spend too much time in the pub. Nonetheless, I did find some very good half-liters at Universitätsbräu, also known as Unibräu, a brewpub on the university campus with a refreshing (and pale, in the typical Austrian style) Märzen. And one rainy night when we were off restaurant duty, Nina and I visited Sieben-Stern-Bräu, which makes a properly smoky Bamberger Rauchbier (as well as a pretty decent plate of chili con carne, at least by Central European standards — you’re supposed to cook the beans, people). Seven Stars also serve an amber Märzen that they say is akin to a Vienna lager, though what I found most interesting was the dark beer they called Prager Dunkles, in homage to what was once Prague’s favorite pivo.

Nowadays, of course, many pubs and restaurants in Prague serve only Pilsner-style brews, with rich dark lagers often quite hard to find outside of brewpubs. In fact, Prague-style dark beer makes a weird parallel to Vienna lager: a beer that was once closely associated with the Czech capital has now largely disappeared.

But that’s a different story. As for Vienna lager and Czech amber and half-dark beers, I’ll have more to write soon. In the meantime, don’t miss Österreicher im MAK on your next trip to Vienna — and don’t skip the Beuscherl.