The big news last week: pivni.info (and others) reported that Pivovary Staropramen, the Anheuser-Busch InBev powerhouse in the Czech Republic, was cutting Kelt.

Marketed under the tag line “[the] strength in us,” and said to be “born of the original Celtic recipe,” Kelt was one of many products that played upon the Czech Republic’s affinity for things Gaelic. (If you’ve ever seen the slightly confused, kilt-wearing hibernophiles in Prague, you know what I’m talking about.) Bohemia, after all, is named after the Boii, a Celtic tribe who were resident here in Roman times. The Czechs love beer long time. Why shouldn’t they have their own domestic version of Guinness?

So for about 10 years, they had Kelt, a beer that, head-to-head, often tasted much better than the Guinness you could buy in bottles in central Europe. At less than half the price, and that was for a full half-liter portion of Kelt, versus a 330-milliliter bottle of Ireland’s black blood.

Pay no attention to the fact that I completely ignored Kelt when I wrote about the arrival of Primátor’s excellent Stout: I actually thought it was pretty good. It seemed that others did as well, but recently interest has fallen: the beer achieved its greatest volume of sales in 2004.

The money quote from Staropramen: “We see greater potential in our other brands.”

Though production of Kelt was finished this spring (and the beer has already been de-listed from Pivovary Staropramen’s web page), the beer is still available in shops, and should be around for a while. The bottle I bought today is labeled “Good until October 23, 2009.”

I usually found it to be pretty okay, with a nice roasted barley note, though kind of thin in the mouth. Was that due to the ingredients?

Let your eye fall on “maltózový sirup,” meaning “maltose syrup” and probably made from corn, which is listed as Kelt’s second ingredient after water. The third ingredient is roasted barley, followed by “Czech” barley malt, meaning Pilsner malt, and caramel malt, then hop extract and nitrogen.

Not exactly a confidence-building list, but I would say that the beer itself transcended the sum of its parts. You could often find Kelt in crappy supermarkets that didn’t have a great beer selection. You could find it in pubs that otherwise only served Staropramen. It was at least something different, and yet affordable, that you could pick up when the only other options were boring (or bad) pale lagers. I often found myself feeling grateful to Kelt for just those reasons. Like Staropramen’s Millennium, later known as Granát, it probably helped break ground for other, better beers to follow.

Godspeed, Kelt. I’m raising a glass of Primátor Stout to you tonight.

Listen, we’re beer lovers: we’ll accept just about any excuse for a special brew. Feel like putting out a beer for a public holiday (like our Czech Christmas beers)? Sounds like a great idea. Maybe it’s the anniversary of the founding of your brewery? We could always use more Fuller’s 1845. Or perhaps your country is hosting the 2008 World Championships in Sheep Shearing?

Wait. What?

At least that seems to be the reason why the Norwegian microbrewery Berentsens released its Sorte Får Stout last year. When sheep-shearing teams from around the world descended on the Norwegian town of Bjerkreim last autumn, they were met with far more than mere wool: a special dark beer, named after the local wild sheep, was brewed to celebrate the occasion.

Thanks to Gunnar Jensen from the frozen land to the north, I was able to try the Sorte Får Stout (apparently a rare thing, as the beer has just four evaluations on Ratebeer at this point). To put it through its paces, I compared it simultaneously with Guinness Extra Stout and Primátor Stout. Here’s what I came up with:

Berentsen’s Sorte Får Stout
(4.7%, 330-milliliter bottle)
Pours a very dark amber, nearly black. It has better coffee and smokiness in the aroma than the drain-pour Guinness. Its loose, sandy-colored head is upstaged a fair bit by the creamy microfoam of Primátor Stout. The nose has plenty of cold coffee with some vinous, stewed-fruit notes. In the mouth, it has a tart fruitiness reminiscent of raspberries with a bitter chocolate finish, like raspberries or under-ripe strawberries dipped in bitter chocolate, then dusted in ground coffee. Very good.

Mr. Jensen was kind enough to include an English translation of the label, which I’ll reprint here.

Sorte Får, the Norwegian wild sheep, brings the tradition from Rogaland further on. An autumn market, sheep shearing an a good brew belong together. The 2008 sheep shearing championship was held in our area in October, and our contribution was this dark and tasty stout beer, made of the best ingredients. Drink this brew cold, in the shadow of your barn.

An excellent idea. What remains to be seen is how many more excuses we can come up with for brewers to make special beers. Some of them seem quite obvious, and yet they are often overlooked. In the Czech Republic, for example, last year’s big beer festival aimed for thirty beers — but not a single one of them was brewed for the occasion.

For years, the most innovative Czech brewery has been Pivovar Primátor, currently the property of the city of Náchod, which earned its title by putting out three very good strong lagers and one of the first widely distributed Hefeweizens, followed by a decent take on a pale ale. Though the newer (and much smaller) Pivovar Kocour is trying even more new things, Primátor still puts out the most interesting beers in Prague supermarkets. And as of last month, the Náchod city beer maker is offering a further innovation: the country’s first real stout.

To skip to the chase: it’s excellent. And when you consider that East Bohemia is fairly removed from the traditional sources of stout in London and Dublin, you’d have to call it outstanding.

The beer departs from Czech tradition in several ways: while virtually all Czech beers are produced using a decoction mash — a complicated process requiring the separation and heating of part of the beer’s initial “grain soup” to higher temperatures — Primátor stout is made using a simpler infusion mash, roughly like the way you brew tea.

The ingredients include four kinds of barley malt — Pilsner, Bavarian and caramel malt with just a touch of smoked malt — as well as roasted unmalted barley, unmalted oats and unspecified British hops. British hops are weird enough in the homeland of Saaz, but when you combine it with a grain bill that includes unmalted barley, oats and Bamberg-style smoked malt in a not-so-Czech infusion mash and you’ve got something fairly weird indeed. We’re through the looking glass, people.

After trying it several times recently, both on tap and in bottles, I can say I’ve found it quite impressive, with one caveat, which I’ll discuss later.

The beer pours a very dark amber, almost black, with a creamy tan head, and is quite similar in appearance to bottled Guinness Extra Stout, to which I compared it on my last tasting. The aroma smells strongly of cocoa dust and carob. In the mouth there is a rush of toasty malt, a touch of oat porridge, some bitter chocolate, more cocoa and carob, with a light note of good arabica coffee in the finish, followed by a lingering, slight smokiness with a touch of astringency for balance.

The coffee note is subtle but clear. In fact, on tap at U Radnice recently the beer was listed as “Stout – kávové” or “Stout – Coffee [beer],” and the waitress wouldn’t hear of it not actually including being made with coffee. “It is coffee beer,” she said, and at least in terms of how it tastes, she’s right.

The Guinness, by comparison, is far less complex — there’s no cocoa, no carob notes, and the coffee flavor is bitter and sharp like an overbrewed robusta. Sampling the last flat drops at the bottom of the bottle, it came off saccharine like a cheap cola.

Overall, Primátor stout is an excellent beer on its own terms, and a very agreeable stout in global terms. In comparison to quality stouts from elsewhere, however, I thought I detected one slight difference: the Primátor stout’s lack of stoutness. That is to say that the flavors of Primátor stout are all there, but the mouthfeel — the texture, viscosity, heft and fullness of the beer — is thinner than that of many stouts I’ve enjoyed. That’s an observation, not a criticism, and I wouldn’t ask for it to change.

However, it’s worth noting that it is also the mouthfeel of Primátor’s English Pale Ale which seems most unlike the beers it is trying to emulate. Perhaps the difference arrives through the use of undermodified Czech malts in the mash, as opposed to well-modified English malts in the originals. Or perhaps it is due to the difference in Náchod’s water, which is likely to be lower in sulfates and carbonates than the water used in breweries that traditionally produce ales.

In any case, Primátor stout is an absolutely excellent new arrival. From outside the Czech Republic, it might sound crazy for us to be thrilled by such a conventional style as stout, especially when craft brewers in America, the UK, Denmark, Italy and elsewhere are creating new beer styles, experimenting with souring and over-hopping and innovations like oak-aging, new trends that don’t exist at all in the homeland of Pilsner brewing.

But perhaps they will soon.

The tradition of Czech brewing may go back more than a thousand years, but it’s also clearly moving forward. Beer lovers here have been thrilled by recent developments like the appearance of Pivovar Bašta and other new brewpubs, cutting-edge new regional breweries like Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf, and the reappearance of older styles such as Klostermann amber lager — all of which have arrived since the publication of Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic last May.

To that end, I’m doing another seminar, this time one titled “New Brews: Recent Developments in the Czech Brewing Scene,” which will take place Thursday, 3 July, 2008, in the wine cellar of Essensia restaurant (inside the Mandarin Oriental hotel). The combined dinner, talk and beer tasting will last about three hours.

In addition to a slew of new lagers and ales, many of which have never been seen in Prague, Essensia will serve its delicious Czech and Asian culinary specialties. Think of it as a luxurious meal in a five-star restaurant — only one which is accompanied by some truly great beers and a spirited discussion on the history, news, background and future of Czech brewing.

And then there is the beer list to consider.

Herewith the provisional selection of what we’ll be tasting on July 3:

Roggenbier, Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf
Klostermann, Pivovar Strakonice
Opat Bitter Extra-Chmelené, Pivovar Broumov
Xantho, Pivovar Žatec
Mary-Jo, Pivovar Regent
Stout, Pivovarský dům
Saison, Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf

For me, each of these beers tells us something about what makes Czech beer so interesting, whether it is the use of world-class ingredients like Haná barley and Žatec/Saaz hops, a tendency for creativity and innovation, or a desire to recapture some of the region’s long-lost brewing traditions. The first talk we did was an amazing amount of fun; this one promises to be even better.

If you’re interested in attending, these are the details from Essensia and the Mandarin Oriental on the second event of what they’re calling the Czech Beer Academy:

“New Brews: Recent Developments in the Czech Brewing Scene”

On Thursday, 3 July, 2008, the wine cellar beneath Essensia restaurant will host the second seminar of our new Czech Beer Academy at Mandarin Oriental, Prague.

This seminar and guided tasting (in English) will be led by Evan Rail, a Prague-based writer specializing in beer and travel. Our second seminar’s theme is “New Brews: Recent Developments in the Czech Brewing Scene.”

During the course of the evening, participants will have a chance to discuss and taste seven different kinds of new, top-quality Czech beers. The beer will be complemented by an array of Czech and Asian specialties prepared by the Essensia restaurant.

Date/Time: Thursday, 3 July, 2008, 7 p.m.—10 p.m. (Future seminars will be held in October and December 2008; dates are yet to be announced.)

Price: 1,150 CZK per person

Reservations: Kindly contact the Concierge at the telephone number +420 233 088 605 or the email address moprg-concierge@mohg.com. Reservations are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.