[THC] beer tour through the Czech Republic

[Thomas E. Hess]

August 6, 2006
The Ultimate Beer Run in the Czech Republic
By EVAN RAIL

IN the jagged Jizera Mountains of the northern 
Czech Republic, the village of Stary Harcov seems 
an unlikely place for an epicurean pilgrimage. 
Driving through a dark forest on a linden-lined 
lane barely wide enough for a single Skoda, I 
approached a row of timber-framed houses that 
felt as idyllic and lazy as a Sierra Nevada ski 
town in midsummer. The only sound was the buzzing 
of insects from a nearby meadow.

But as the sun set, a crowd formed outside a 
barnlike family house, taking seats at three 
roughhewn picnic tables in the front yard. 
Dressed in T-shirts and plumbers’ coveralls, they 
lined up at a small window, fetching half-liters 
of Vendelin, a honey-colored lager, as if it were 
liquid gold, even though the price of 15 koruna 
(roughly $.70) was only about half the usual rate for a Czech beer.

Why travel all this way, near the borders of 
Poland and Germany, for a cold one? For starters, 
the beer is outstanding, with an unusually 
complex aroma: a bouquet of apricot blossoms with 
a note of fresh-baked bread, like fruit jam on 
sourdough toast. In the mouth, the taste is rich 
and sugary followed by a long, crisp finish.But 
more importantly, this is the only place where 
you can sip this particular Czech lager. Brewed 
in small batches in a tumbledown shed by the 
owner and namesake, Vendelin Krkoska, the beer 
has a distribution zone of about two mountain 
meadows. It is available nowhere else, and 
nothing else I’ve ever tasted is quite like it.

“Of all the lager beers, Czech beers are 
certainly the most unchanged,” said Garrett 
Oliver, the brewmaster and author of “The 
Brewmaster’s Table,” speaking via phone from his 
office at Brooklyn Brewery. “And when you go back 
there, you go back to the original flavors.”

Going to the source is an emerging pastime for 
beer lovers. The wine trails of Napa, Bordeaux 
and Piedmont need no introduction. The same, 
however, cannot be said for the beer trails of 
Bohemia and Moravia. And yet, in recent years, 
amateur beer hunters have begun carving their own 
paths through these ancient Czech kingdoms, 
tapping into the same passion for local hops and 
barley that drives oenophiles to cross the globe for zinfandel and nebbiolo.

Wine snobs might call this overreaching, but 
great beer is inextricably tied to its 
environment in much the same way that a great 
Burgundy displays a characteristic terroir. Real 
Pilsner, for example, is made with the 
low-sulfite, low-carbonate water of the Czech 
city of Pilsen, its original home. Many have 
tried, but it’s nearly impossible to make a good 
Pilsner elsewhere without doctoring the water, 
and even then, it will never taste the same.

Around Europe, a handful of beer trails have 
already emerged, like the lambic breweries of the 
Senne Valley in Belgium, the seven Trappist 
monastery breweries of Belgium and the 
Netherlands, and the dozen or so Kölsch beer 
makers of Cologne. But the Czech lands are, in 
some ways, the birthplace of modern beer making, 
with a brewing history that dates back more than 
a millennium. Today there are some 450 Czech 
beers made by about 100 breweries, ranging from 
golden Pilsners to black, Baltic-style porters. 
It is also the beer-drinking capital: Czechs 
consume more beer than any other country in the 
world — more than 320 pints annually for every man, woman and child.

“Bohemia is it,” Mr. Oliver said. “It is the 
fountainhead, if you like, of most beer in the world.”

The Czech tourism bureau recently started to 
promote this fountainhead, alongside its historic 
castles, spa towns and cosmopolitan capital. 
There are now beer festivals, packaged beer 
trails and a new brochure, “Beer Travels” — the 
only English-language booklet on Czech breweries. 
Beer makers, too, are now actively courting 
visitors, with factory tours, slick tasting 
rooms, gift shops and even beer hotels.

For my own beer trail, I decided to start with 
two of the largest and most beloved, Budvar and 
Pilsner Urquell, which together constitute much 
of the country’s zymurgical and political 
history. To round out a four-day trek, I looked 
to the country’s smallest makers: Vendelin, which 
struck me for its picturesque remoteness, as well 
as Novosad in north Bohemia for its colorful 
backstory. And I would check out one of the 
country’s newest breweries, hidden inside a 540-year-old pub.

I started off with the most controversial. From 
Prague, I drove south for three hours, past 
fields of white poppies, carp ponds and thick 
pine forests, until I reached the city of Ceske 
Budejovice, home of the country’s most famous — 
or infamous — brewery: Budvar. It makes a 
flavorful lager called Budweiser Budvar, and for 
years it has locked horns with the American giant 
Anheuser-Busch over the rights to the iconic name.

Budvar’s argument is straightforward: its 
hometown, Ceske Budejovice, is known as Budweis 
in German, and “Budweiser” refers to someone or 
something that originates from that town. Like 
Champagne and other gastronomic appellations, 
Czechs argue that the name is specific to the 
beer’s place of origin. (It is also a point of 
national pride: Budvar, which is 
government-owned, was originally founded in 
response to an earlier, German-owned brewery in town.)

Anheuser-Busch disagrees, arguing that it brewed 
its first Budweiser in St. Louis in 1876; the 
Budvar brewery, it points out, was founded in 
1895. Courts around the world are still working out the details.

One thing is certain: Ceske Budejovice, the 
largest city in south Bohemia, is nothing like 
St. Louis. Its preserved Old Town is a sleepy 
warren of candy-colored Renaissance and Baroque 
buildings, spread out under a 16th-century Black 
Tower. At the pubs around the main square, 
waiters serve Budweiser Budvars to the strains of 
Czech polka. (Don’t even think about asking for a Bud Light.)

The beer is made about a mile north of the Old 
Town, in a mixed residential and industrial 
neighborhood surrounded by green hills. On a hot 
Friday afternoon, a dozen people gathered inside 
the sleek visitors’ center, furnished with plasma 
screens, plush banquettes and multimedia displays 
showing Budvar’s global distribution. A gift shop 
was piled high with souvenir shirts, backpacks, 
bottle openers and just about anything with room for a Budweiser Budvar logo.

Although the brewery was founded 111 years ago, 
it is surprisingly modern. Six copper kettles 
that resembled giant, upside-down goblets 
sparkled in a vast, sunlit brew house. The smell 
of fresh hops punctuated the air, a sweet and 
slightly peppery funk that is somewhat similar to 
marijuana, its botanical cousin. The hops come 
from the town of Zatec in northwest Bohemia, 
widely considered among the finest in the world. 
They give Budvar its characteristic citrusy nose, 
adding brightness to the sweet golden body.

The tour concluded in a factory-style tasting 
room, littered with plastic cups of Budvar. 
Having sampled beers all over Europe, I was 
surprised by how much more vibrant the brew 
tasted at its source. The hoppy bitterness 
arrived like the chirpy opening notes of a 
Hammond organ. The malt struck a rich, deep bass. 
The only thing it shares with the other Budweiser was the name.

After visiting the country’s most disputed beer 
maker, it was time to sample its most beloved: 
Pilsner Urquell. It is home of the original 
Pilsner, which revolutionized beer making in 1842 
as the world’s first non-cloudy golden beer to go 
into production. It is still rated the best by a majority of Czechs.

 From Ceske Budejovice, I drove two hours to the 
western Bohemian city of Pilsen (that’s the name 
in German; it’s Plzen in Czech), along a winding 
road dotted with castle ruins, old monasteries 
and pilgrimage sites. The sizzling June sun 
nearly overheated my borrowed 20-year-old Skoda.

Pilsner Urquell is a pilgrimage site in its own 
right, or at least it should be. As the original 
Pilsner, it has gone on to inspire imitations 
around the world. But few, if any, have achieved 
Pilsner Urquell’s unique bittersweet taste, a 
combination of the town’s soft water and regional 
ingredients like Moravian malt, Zatec hops and proprietary strain of yeast.

Though the city of Pilsen is not nearly as 
attractive as Ceske Budejovice, the brewery is 
dressed to impress. A sprawling campus that 
spreads out behind the double-arch brick gate 
that appears on every bottle, the brewery looked 
more like an Ivy League school than it did 
Laverne and Shirley’s bottling plant. To the 
right of the gate is the sprawling Na Spilce, one 
of the largest restaurants in the Czech Republic, 
which serves traditional Bohemian dishes like 
roast pork and dumplings. To the left is a 
polyglot visitors’ center, which opened in a former hop plant in 2002.

The tour begins with a 10-minute film that 
trumpets the glory of Pilsner Urquell, which 
produces more than 1.5 million pints a day. 
Afterward, the eye-opening tour took us from a 
sauna-hot brew house to the arctic-cold cellars.

It’s fair to say that everyone in the group had 
tried Pilsner Urquell before. But few of us had 
sampled the prototype, when it was aged in 
pitch-lined oak barrels, a practice discontinued 
in the early 1990’s when the brewery switched to 
stainless-steel tanks. Fortunately, the brewery 
still keeps a few oak barrels around — partly to 
compare tastes between the two methods, partly as a novelty for tourists.

We walked to a dark corner, where several massive 
oak vats seemed to gurgle under a cap of thick 
foam. I noticed a sharp tang of hops in the air 
as I was handed a glass of the oak-barrel 
Pilsner. It was far more dynamic than its 
imitators, and noticeably better than the 
supermarket variety. The sugary malt body was 
more pronounced, as were the sweet notes of 
caramel and the tart bitterness of the hops. 
Pilsner Urquell from a store would never taste the same to me again.

Not only are breweries opening their doors to 
tourists, but some are also inviting guests to 
spend the night. Encouraged by the steady flow of 
visitors, breweries are starting up their own 
hotels. The Krakonos brewery in Trutnov, for 
example, whose brewing history began in 1582, 
opened a 18-room hotel last year with rooms 
beginning at 650 koruna a night (about $29 at 23 koruna to the dollar).

On the flipside, some hotels are now starting 
their own breweries. U Medvidku, a beer hall and 
hotel in Prague that dates to 1466, just opened a 
tiny brewery of its own, though it remains something of a secret.

Most visitors never get past U Medvidku’s busy 
beer hall, with its wooden booths and ceaselessly 
replenished trays of Budweiser Budvar. But hidden 
upstairs is one of the newest microbreweries in 
the country. It produces just one beer: a 
semi-dark amber called Oldgott that is brewed at 
13 degrees on the Balling scale. (The Balling 
scale is based on the percentage of malt sugar 
before fermentation, and many Czech beer drinkers 
specify a number — “10,” “12” or “13” — when 
ordering. Higher Balling numbers usually mean 
more alcohol, though not always.)

Oldgott is also a kvasnicove pivo, or yeast beer, 
a rare subspecies of Czech Pilsner that has fresh 
yeast added after fermentation. The extra yeast 
makes the beer extremely crisp and vibrant. It 
seems almost alive — which, in a sense, it is 
since yeast beers are usually unpasteurized. And 
since unpasteurized beers do not travel well, 
they must be consumed quickly, usually right 
where they are made. The lack of pasteurization 
also leaves the flavors at their most forceful: 
the malt undertones are richer and sweeter, the hops sharper and more bitter.

“Pasteurization cuts the taste in half,” said 
Ladislav Vesely, U Medvidku’s brewer, as he 
handed me a half-liter glass tapped directly from the lagering barrel.

The malt was so rich and unctuous that I hardly 
noticed the alcohol, which comes in a bit above 
the Czech standard of 5 percent. Which brings up 
a word of warning: the Czech Republic is home to 
some of Europe’s strictest drunk-driving laws. It 
is illegal to drink even the slightest amount of 
alcohol and operate a motor vehicle.

Instead of driving from the brewery, I found it 
easier to check into a hotel, then taxi to the 
brewery and back. (In the case of a beer hotel, 
the problem is moot.) Moreover, you can take a 
train or bus to just about any brewery anywhere within a few hours.

 From Prague, I took a winding, three-hour bus 
ride to Harrachov, a resort town in the northeast 
Krkonose Mountains. It is home to one of the 
lightest and, perhaps, most storied beers in the Czech Republic.

Harrachov is famous for ski-jumping, with a 
single road lined with chalets, hotels and shops. 
It is also home to the Novosad glassworks, a 
300-year-old factory where workers still blow 
glass by hand. On a recent visit, the factory 
floor was filled with burly bare-chested men who 
were sweating profusely near the hot kilns.

As the story goes, the glassworkers used to cool 
themselves off in the 120-degree heat with so 
much store-bought beer that management decided it 
would be more cost-efficient to make their own. 
So four years ago, the factory built a 
microbrewery next to the factory floor and 
started making a special low-alcohol brew. Only 
later, the story continues, did Novosad realize 
that guests visiting the factory might also enjoy the beer as well.

So the glass company added a pub, furnished with 
wide pine tables and long benches. I grabbed a 
seat as a Czech country band played a Buck Owens 
cover. The waiter brought an 8-degree: it was 
refreshingly bitter, as thin and sweet as an 
energy drink, though far more vivid. But what 
stunned me was my next pint, Novosad’s 12-degree, 
a pale gold kvasnicove pivo with a thick and 
foamy white head. Hints of orange and vanilla 
were apparent, followed by an extremely long-lasting finish.

As I left, I spotted a glassworker pushing a 
wheelbarrow of glass shards, his back glistening 
with sweat. It was hard work, but he had a few 
pints of fresh-made beer to look forward to at 
the end of his shift. Some people, I thought, have all the luck.

VISITOR INFORMATION

The Czech Republic has about 100 breweries 
scattered throughout the ancient kingdoms of 
Bohemia and Moravia. New ones open every year.

MAJOR BREWERS

Pilsner Urquell (U Prazdroje 7, Pilsen; 
420-377-062-888; www.prazdroj.cz) is the gold 
standard of Czech beers. Despite its enormous 
scale, it remains a beer of exceptional quality. 
Tours are 120 koruna (about $5.50 at 23 koruna to the dollar).

Budvar (Karoliny Svetle 4, Ceske Budejovice; 
420-387-705-347; www.budvar.cz) is not just a 
famous name. The beer has earned top honors, 
including at a recent tasting competition in Seattle. Tours are 100 koruna.

Prague’s homegrown brewer, Staropramen 
(420-257-191-402; www.staropramen.com) is part of 
the huge, Belgium-based InBev beverage conglomerate. Tours are 120 koruna.

MICROBREWERIES

Novosad (420-481-528-141; 
www.sklarnaharrachov.cz) is a glassworks first, 
brewpub second. From the mezzanine, you can watch 
glass-blowers work up a thirst.

Vendelin (420-485-163-096; Lukasovska 43, Stary 
Harcov, just outside of Liberec) is so 
underground it doesn’t even have a Web site. The 
beer tastes better that way, but only if you can find it.

BREWERY HOTELS

Czech brewery hotels are usually family-owned 
affairs with a small brewpub and restaurant on the ground floor.

U Medvidku (420-224-211-916; www.umedvidku.cz), 
one of Prague’s oldest beer halls, is now home to 
its newest microbrewery. It is near the Narodni 
trida metro station, just a short stumble from 
Prague’s Old Town Square. Doubles are 3,000 koruna until Sept. 7.

Krakonos (420-499-819-190; www.hotel-krakonos.cz) 
in Trutnov shares its name with an ancient giant 
who is said to guard the local mountain range. 
The year-old hotel was a former millhouse. Doubles are 1,300 koruna.

BREWERY INFORMATION

The Czech Tourism agency publishes a brochure, 
“Beer Travels,” the only English-language booklet 
on Czech breweries. The current edition lists 
about half the country’s breweries (free by 
e-mailing your postal address to info at czechtourism.cz).

For more listings in English, go online to 
www.pivovary.info, a Web site run by amateur 
Czech beer historians. It may be rudimentary in 
design, but it lists nearly every Czech brewery.

Another good English-language Web site is Ron 
Pattinson’s list of Czech breweries 
(www.xs4all.nl/~patto1ro/czecbrew.htm), which 
includes historical information, beer ratings and opinions.

GETTING AROUND

Trains and bus schedules are listed on the Czech 
national timetable’s Web site (www.idos.cz). A 
reduced-fare train ticket called the “Sone+” is 
good for two adults and three children up to the 
age of 15. Perfect for a weekend getaway, a one-day fare starts at 160 koruna.

EVAN RAIL, who lives in Prague, writes often about food and drink.

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