Tasting it at the Krušovická pivnice on Národní in Prague, I found it to be quite pretty, pouring a cloudy, very pale gold with a loose white head. The aromas briefly touched on clove with none of the conspicuous banana notes of some other Weizens; I thought I got a whiff of Band-Aid, though certainly not too much. The mouthfeel was slightly thin with more wheat than barley notes. Though it was served too cold at a pale-lager temperature, it came through pretty well, easily picking up 3 or more points on a basic 5-point scale, and definitely worth trying more than once.

It seems to fall more on the light/acidic side of Hefeweizen, rather than towards the heavy/sweet versions: in Czech terms, closer to Primátor Weizenbier than Herold Bohemian Wheat. In many ways, it’s just a classic take on the style: originally brewed at a gravity of 12.3°, resulting in 5.2% alcohol by volume, using both hop pellets and hop extract, though finishing with minimal hop presence.

You’re walking down the street in Prague, completely minding your own, when your eye hangs on a sign announcing a new beer. What stops you is an apparent error in the picture: instead of barley, the poster is adorned with what seems to be wheat.

Called Dožínkové pivo, the Czech Republic’s newest wheat beer started to show up at pubs around the country this week. There are two surprising things about the appearance of a new wheat beer in Bohemia, not the least of which is the brewery making it. (Drumroll, please…)

First, the early word is that this beer is made by Heineken-owned Krušovice. Unless Dožínkové pivo is a total disaster, this move is going to earn them love from local craft beer fans even beyond the repair they seem to have done to the now-drinkable Krušovice Černé.

Second, Dožínkové pivo is only the second new Czech wheat I’ve heard about in the past 20-odd hours. Fans of Černá Hora might like to know that the makers of 1530 and Black Hill are coming out with their own wheat beer, Velen.

That’s a doubling of Czech wheat beers (beyond brewpub offerings), from two to four, just this summer. Actually, before the return of Pivovar Herold’s wheat beer this spring, only the well-loved wheat beer from Primátor was widely available in this country, meaning we’ve gone from one to four in just six months.

I saw Dožínkové pivo at the Krušovická pivnice on Národní 7 in Prague; it’s apparently available at a few other Starobrno and Krušovice pubs around. The big question, of course, is how does it taste?

Quitting time’s in about an hour and 20 minutes. I’ll let you know after that.

You hit the road for a few days of peace and solitude in South Bohemia and what happens? A great beer that has been AWOL for years suddenly returns to the scene.

The brew in question is the very nice wheat beer from Pivovar Herold, a brewery I pass each time I drive down to my wife’s family’s summer home in Písek. As I’ve mentioned before, the history of the brewery in the town of Březnice is covered in Ludvík Fürst’s monograph “Jak se u nás vařilo pivo” (or “How we used to brew beer”). In that book, Fürst quotes documents mentioning the production of wheat beer at Březnice in the sixteenth century. When Herold reintroduced its modern wheat beers in 2002, they were the only Czech wheat beers available in bottles at the time.

That seemed to set off a small wheat trend here. Today, of course, we’ve got the nicely clove-scented Weizenbier from Pivovar Primátor, which is available in Tesco and other big supermarkets around the country. Many brewpubs have started brewing their own wheats; the Duchmaus wheat beer from Pivovar U Rybiček is even distributed in plastic bottles, a new development for many small Czech brewers. And yet as far as I can tell, Herold — one of the first Czech producers to make a name with wheat beers in the recent era — stopped brewing its own wheat by 2007.

Then came last summer’s change of ownership. While the brewery’s black lager remained strong enough to inspire imitations abroad, there were whispers that the new owners might make some changes, including the reintroduction of the wheat. And then, just in time for summer, a shipment of Herold’s wheat beer was delivered to Pivovarský klub in Prague on Thursday, May 14.

There’s something interesting on the label: in English, Herold identifies this beer as “wheat lager,” which seems to present a contradiction. As many beer fans know, “lager” is often used as a term for bottom-fermented beers, while wheat beers are mostly top-fermenting. However, that doesn’t mean that this is a wheat-lager hybrid; as I understand it, this beer is still made using traditional top-fermenting wheat beer yeast. Instead, the term on the label is an English-language approximation of the Czech brewing term “ležák,” which refers to the relative strength of the beer, covering those beers produced at 11° and 12° Plato or Balling. (The term “výčepní,” literally meaning something like “tap” or “taproom,” covers beers brewed at 9° and 10°, even those which are not served on tap or in taprooms.)

So how does Herold’s “wheat lager” taste?

Good. It pours a very pretty, cloudy gold with a fluffy white head. There’s not nearly as much clove in the nose as in other beers; instead, I thought I noted tobacco before I detected a bit of clove on the palate as well as some pronounced barley malt flavors. Perhaps it’s the “wheat lager” on the label, but I thought it was a very Pilsner-like Weizen, reminding me of Weltenburger’s Hefe-Weißbier Hell in its citrus notes. It has a very light body and is very easy to drink.

The next time you drive by Březnice, you have a very good reason to stop and pick up a case. And while Primátor’s Weizenbier has had a near-constant presence on Pivovarský klub’s tap #6, that should change in the near future: the delivery last Thursday included bottles as well as several kegs, meaning you’ll be able to try Herold’s wheat beer on draft at Pivovarský klub for a good while to come.

Today, many — if not most — European beers are made with barley. Earlier European beers, however, were made with any number of other grains. But then came the reformers: Bavaria’s Reinheitsgebot proscribed the use of anything other than barley in 1516; in Bohemia, the great brewing scientist František Ondřej Poupě, author of “The Art of Beer Brewing” (1794), helped kill off other grains at the end of the eighteenth century, famously declaring that oats were for horses, wheat was for cakes, and only barley was fit for beer.

So before barley was the only ingredient to use, what did beers taste like? They might have been a bit like the Historisches Emmer Bier from Germany’s Riedenburger brewery, made with malted emmer, einkorn and spelt (all early domesticated forms of wheat), as well as barley and modern wheat.

Beyond the grain bill, it’s an unusual brew with unusual flavors. From my swing-top bottle it poured a cloudy amber with a thick head and a slightly spicy nose. In the mouth, it was malty and finshed a bit sour, roughly akin to a dark wheat but also rich and full like a Vienna lager. There was also a strange flavor I couldn’t quite place. What I come up with was umami, the flavorsome, food-like notes that reminded me most of doughy notes mixed with vegetables: a good pizza, a rich bowl of pasta, a great sandwich on fresh bread.

It’s also worth noting that this beer is a Naturtrüb, and it is correspondingly cloudy with some amazing amounts of sediment. I’m not sure if you can tell from this shot down the bottle neck, but the last centimeter of liquid was fairly viscous gunk.

My guess is that the hearty, food-like notes came from the primitive wheats in use. In any case, I’d definitely try it again: like a Vienna lager, I think it would be an ideal pairing with pizza or pasta.

Right now, Richter Brewery in Prague has something similar on tap: a polotmavý (half-dark, meaning amber) Weißbier. It’s brewed at a conventional 13° with about 5% alcohol, versus 18.5° and a massive 8.2% for the brawny German.

The strength might be the biggest difference between the two, as some of the flavors and aromas are quite similar. The nose of the Polotmavý Weißbier has cooked plums and chocolate and cocoa notes with just a breath of citrus acidity. In the mouth, it starts out with fairly sweet and complex fruitcake flavors before a dry finish.

Half-liters of Richter’s Polotmavý Weißbier are 35 Kč. Get one while you can.

Though the Czech Republic’s overall beer output rocked an all-time high of over 20 million hectoliters (12 million barrels) last year, growth is slowing as it hits the top of the arch. One category is still rocketing forward, however: nonalcoholic beer. In 2007, production of Czech nonalcoholic beer fully doubled from the year before, hitting half a million hectoliters of fine-to-drive lager containing .5% alcohol by volume or less.

That’s quite a change from just a few years ago, when nonalcoholic beer was rarely seen. Now nearly everyone offers nealkoholické pivo in bottles, and several varieties are even available on draft, with more versions showing up every month: Svijany introduced its nonalcoholic beer in 2006; Chodovar sent out its brew in 2007. Growth appears in every corner of the country: Litovel’s nonalcoholic beer production jumped 57% in 2007; Primátor expanded its distribution of NA beer by 65% from the year before; Budvar grew its sales of nealkoholické pivo by 55% last year.

Two reasons for the pick up:

1 . The Czech Republic has a zero-tolerance policy for drinking and driving. (It might be flouted, but that is the law.)

2. Some Czech nonalcoholic beers actually taste good.

In fact, some nonalcoholic beers are pretty darn amazing. Budvar’s very hoppy nonalcoholic beer turned the heads of more than a few drivers (and passengers) when it first appeared. Even better versions have come from fave small producers like Bernard, who combined the interest in driver-friendly brews with its own unpasteurized aesthetic, introducing an unpasteurized, nonalcoholic golden lager called Bernard Free that rated at the top of the list for at least one taster, as well as SPP.

Then, in a nod to the continuing local love affair with amber beers, Bernard came out with Bernard Free Jantarové — an unpasteurized amber brew roughly akin to a Vienna lager, but without alcohol. There’s not much nose, but it has a nice taste of malt and mixed whole grains in the mouth. The finish is mild and lasting, but not overly sweet. Most beer lovers wouldn’t be desperate to order this over a regular Bernard amber beer, a lovely brew itself, but if you can’t or don’t feel like consuming alcohol, you could do far worse for a decent sip to go with lunch.

Oh, and that slogan on the label? It’s “Bernard s čistou hlavou,” literally “Bernard with a clean head,” and it shows brewery owner Stanislav Bernard — something of a rock star in these parts — with his characteristic curly locks shorn clean off. Normally, he is substantially more hirsute. Here’s how he appeared when he and brewer Josef Vávra accepted SPP’s award for nonalcoholic beer of the year 2007:

There’s certainly more room for innovation in the market: as far as I know, no Czech producer makes anything like Franziskaner Hefe-Weissbier Alkoholfrei, a bottle of which I brought back from Starkbierzeit in Munich last weekend. As the name implies, it’s a non-alcoholic Hefeweizen, arriving with a visible yeast deposit at the bottom of the bottle. In general, it is the same as your average Bavarian wheat: it pours a cloudy gold with a thick, well-set white head; the nose is of citrus blossoms and fruit; in the mouth it is just slightly acidic, then slightly malty, finishing with a hint of banana, if not clove.

It’s spot-on for the taste of yeast and wheat, and only afterwards do you notice that one normal aspect of a good beer is missing: the astringent feel of alcohol in the mouth. At the same time, you might notice that something else is unexpectedly present: a perfectly clear — if not clean-shaven — head.