Pivní Filosof - Beer Philosopher

More than expected

2009-07-20T09:03:00.004+02:00

Stefan, a.k.a Quack-Duck, is a fellow beer enthusiast and, for some time, beer blogger from Germany. A couple of months ago I met him and his friend whose name a I can't remember (sorry) to spend a very pleasant afternoon drinking and talking about beer.

Stefan brought me a sample of one of his favourite beers. Tettnanger Coronator, which he gave me wrapped in compliments. Now, my friend knows his beer, and knows it well, specially the German stuff, and I don't think he's the kind of guy who spreads compliments like the wind spreads seeds. So this was sure going to be a beer that I would really like. Right?

Right?

Kronenbrauerei Tettnang is located in the region where the Tettnang noble hops are grown. Something like Pivovar Žatec in the Czech Rep. Their Coronator, a Salvator - oops! Dopplebock(*) - with 7.2%ABV pours a pretty dark shade of ocre and it's topped by a compact head that doesn't last too long. The nose is greeted by notes of dried fruit, plums, apricots, and strong caramel, but it all feels fresh and summery. The mouthfeel is silky, full bodied without being too dense. It's a beauty that caresses the palate. It's a quite complex beer, too. It's not too intense at first, it goes in with mild caramel and fruit, grows with black sugar and ends slightly dry with a touch of cherry conserve. Of the relatively high ABV, there is no news while you drink it. A wonderful beer, one of those strong lagers you can drink one after another, only to regret it the day after.
At no time I felt a strong presense of the Tettangner hops. Not that I can identify them, but I didn't feel a lot of hops at all, and I don't think they will use any other kind. Unlike the pale lagers from Žatec, here I see it as a good thing. The beer is a wonder of balance. The hops here work like an aromatic herb added just in the right amount to a sauce, it doesn't take centre stage, but still helps to finish up the product. Anyway, I couldn't help but think that one of those "innovative brewers" so celebrated by many would have been very tempted to ruin this beer by turning it into a Hopfenbombe.

Another thing I couldn't help but think while I enjoyed this beauty is that it wouldn't have been too out of place among those Baltic Porters I tasted in March. In fact, with 7.2%ABV is very likely that Tettangner Coronator is fermented at 18° Balling, which would put it in the Porter bracket for the Czechs. Interesting how styles can sometimes be so relative.

Thanks Stefan. You were right. Tettangner Coronator is a fantastic beer. I would say it's the German I've liked the most so far. Doesn't anyone want to import it?

Na Zdraví!

(*)Before Zacherlbrauerei, today Paulaner, hijacked the name Salvator was a beer style, not a brand.

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Seasonal treat

2009-07-17T15:14:00.004+02:00

July is the month of blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, apricots and other lovely delights. You can eat them fresh or turn them into an ingredient of one of the most delicious Czech specialities, ovocné knedlíky, fruit dumplings.

The other day, when I was on my way to take the bus back home, I got a text message from my wife asking me to buy hard tvaroh (curds). I didn't really feel like going to the shop, so I asked her if it couldn't wait until noon the next day. She said it couldn't because we were going to have ovocné knedlíky for dinner. I did go to the shop as fast as my legs could carry me and bought a pack.

That day the in-laws had come y my mother in law (Czech mums in law are the best!) left a nice bunch of knedlíky filled with home grown apricots.

There are two kinds of dough for these dumplings: a yeasty one and one made with curds. We like the latter better, it's lighter and tastier. The recipe is very easy, too.

Ovocné Knedlíky (serves some people)

For the dough:
250g soft tvaroh (curds), ricotta cheese can also be used, I guess.
semi meal flour
1 egg
a pinch of salt
a dash of milk

For the filling:
Whole fruits, no need to take the stone of, for example, the apricots. You can make them savoury, too, filling them with smoked meat, cheese, etc. Let your imagination run wild!

On a kneading board put the flour, add the rest of the ingredients and mix. It's better to use less flour at the beginning and then add more if necessary. Once you get a nice, uniform dough, let it rest for about 10 minutes.

Take some of the dough and shape it into a disk a tad bigger than the palm of one hand. Put the fruit in the middle (with a spoon, if you are using berries), wrap it and make a ball with it. Cook the dumplings in boiling water for about 10 minutes, fish them out and put them in a covered container so they won't get cold too fast.

There are many options for toppings to serve them. You can use wipped cream, chocolate chips or sause, poppy seeds, ground nuts or almonds, fruit sauce, etc. We topped them with melted butter, a bit of sugar and crumbled hard tvaroh.
We sat to enjoy the knedlíky on the terrace of our garden. It had been awfully hot that day, but at that time it was already very pleasant to sit outside for a tasty treat. I washed them down with Primátor Weizenbier. It was a great pairing. The dough, the melted butter and the crumbled tvaroh worked very well with the body of the beer while the slight tartness of the stewed apricots brought forward its fruitier side. It worked so well that I was able to wolf down seven or eight knedlíky without any problem.

I think any white wheat beer will be a good pairing and, considering what Boak & Bailey said recently, a good sourish spontaneously fermented beer, with or without fruit, would sure be a great accompaniment if the knedlíky are filled with berries.

Na Zdraví! a Dobrou Chuť!

Why?

2009-07-15T15:35:00.004+02:00

What you will read below is not a serious historical paper, nor does it intend to be. I haven't done any in depth research. Take this as me thinking out loud. Shall you find any bollocks, please let me know, nicely, don't hurt my feelings.

Ron Pattison has started with his series "Summer of Lager". One of the firsts posts he published is called "The Spread of Pale Lager" and is a about how the Bavarian brewers adopted the style of pale lager that had been created in Bohemia in 1842, a process that was much slower than many people believe.

Reading the post reminded me of a question that's been going around my head for quite some time: How and why the pale (pilsner) lager became the dominant style in what is today the Czech Rep., to the point of pretty much driving to extintion all the other styles that had been traditional until then?

One afternoon, while having a few beers, I discussed this with Velký Al (whom I wish the best fortune in his new life in the USA). He told me about his theory: the popularity of the pale lager was because it was escentially a "german" beer, and it became the favourite of the ethnic German community in Bohemia, which also happened to be members of the high and government classes. From there it passed to the rest of the population, who just copied the fashion.

There is some logic in there, but it doesn't quite make it for me and it generates two questions:

1- How "German" was the beer actually?

It's true that Josef Groll was a Bavarian brewer and it's very likely that al least the majority of his employers (the folks who established what was then called Pilsner Burgerbräu or Plzeňský Měšťanský Pivovar, in Czech) were ethnic Germans. The brewing process of decoction mashing, bottom fermentation and secondary fermentation in low temperatures was also the one traditionally used in Bavaria.

The ingredients, however, were all locally sourced and the resulting beer was unlike the ones brewed by the Bavarian breweries. Rich gold and crystal like appearance, instead of a dark beer.

In fact, the document cited by Pattison in the above mentioned article tells us that most of the Bavarian brewers weren't sold on the new project, with many of them refusing to adopt it until the market pretty much forced them to do so. By 1909 the pale lager had a market share of 30%. Not bad, but not very dominant, either. I've got no figures for the period in Bohemia, but I am very sure that they are higher.

Anyway, this doesn't mean much. And it wouldn't have stopped the brewers from Pilsen and the rest of the region from selling their beer as "German" just the same. Which brings me to the second question.

2- How sucessful out of the German community would a product sold as "German" have been in the socio-historical context of the middle of the 19th century?

The first half of the 19th century saw big changes in the Austrian Empire. In Bohemia, the Czech language was not clandestine anymore, something that reinforced the Slavic identity of the people. The Czech speaking middle class and intellectuals were gaining influence in every aspect of the society and little by little things like autonomy or even independence were being discussed. This doesn't mean that there were ethnic conflicts between Germans and Czechs, quite the opposite, both communities seemed to have got along just fine, and their intellectual leaders agreed in their wishes to do away with the Habsburg rule. There was a difference, though, the Germans fancied the idea of being part of a unified German Federation, while the Czechs wanted, if not total autonomy, at least a unified state composed of all the Slavic provinces of the Empire.

The situation reached a peak with the uprisings of 1848, which for a moment seemed that they were going to break the Empire apart. In the end, the rebels were defeated (in the case of Bohemia, partly due to their internal differences). This didn't mean, however, a total victory for the central government. The economy, which wasn't very healthy before the revolts to begin with (one of the causes of the uprisings), was terribly weakened. Vienna was forced to make serious concesions, specially towards Hungary. And, what is even worse, the nationalist ideas could not be erradicated, in fact, they were reinforced. Despite having lost in the battlefield, the Czechs not only could feel proud of their Slavic identity, but they were also free to say it out loud.

So I think it would have been very difficult that, during the years of the "Czech Awakening" (as the period is known), a new product identified with "germanness" would have had the success this beer did, at least not out of the German community that represented only 10% of the population.

Now, let's assume for a moment that what I've written above is not too far off the mark and let's go back to the initial question: How and why did the pale lager became the dominant style?

Its looks were sure a factor. The beer was something completely new and it looked fantastic in the glassware that, thanks to industrialisation, was now affordable for more people. But there has to be something else. A pretty face can't be enough.

Until then, top fermented wheat beers were the most popular, there were also rye and even unhopped brews. Bottom fermented barley beers and some hybrids, though not unknown, were rather marginal, more so perhaps than wheat beers are today.

Can it be that this beers were actually not that good? Or, put it in another way, that people simply liked the new pale lager better?

I'm sure the new beers were easier to drink, and more suitable for "session" drinking. Besides, it's likely that they were more stable and statyed fresh longer than the traditional beers. Two things which any drinker would certainly appreciate and two things that would have been a heaven sent blessing for anyone who made a living out of beer. This would explain why so many brewers, specially the industrial ones, were so enthusiastic in adopting the new style.

In short words, my (not very qualified) conclusion is that the pale lager became so popular because, on the one hand, people liked it more, and on the other, because brewing it was a big advantage both for the breweries and for the pubs that sold it.

I don't know, maybe someday, someone like Ron Pattison or Evan Rail, or any other beer writer with better access to historical records and more will and time to explore them will publish something that will make this piece look stupid or, why not, will more or less confirm it (which would certainly make me very happy).

Whatever the truth might be, it's a pity that these beers have disappeared and that we can't taste them today. The wheat beers that are brewed now follow the Bavarian model, with the exception of the magnificent Staročeské Bilé (Old Czech White (beer)) from Pivovar Hastrman that, at least in name, is the only one identified with the extinguished species.

Na Zdraví!

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The Tap Race

2009-07-12T13:59:00.006+02:00

There is no doubt anymore that the "rotating tap" model is a more than welcome trend that gets stronger every day. Right now there are at least a dozen hospody in Prague that have at least one tap dedicated to beers (mostly regional and craft) that constantly change. But the phenomenon is not limited only to the capital city. This kind of palces can also be found in Pilsen, Brno and Hradec Králové.

Together with the "rotating beers", many of these places are equipped with a growing number of taps. Pivovarský Klub has six, Zlý Časy has eight (for now) and U Radnice now has nine, just to mention a few. These seems to have become some sort of race that at the moment, and it is led by U Prince Miroslava and its 13 taps.
If it hadn't been for Hanz, the owner of ZČ, or for the article published in Svět Piva that noticed me of the existence of "U Prince...", I don't think I would have found the place. It's located in a part of Prague that I rarely go to and that isn't one of the nicest to go for a walk.

U Prince Miroslava is in a little street just a few metres from Radlická and it's visible from (the second) Laurová tram stop. It's got a nice patio in the front that seems almost to belong somewhere else. The restaurant itself is below street level and is divided in two largish rooms that don't have much of an atmosphere (at least not at late lunch time). It gives the impression of a place that hasn't found its identity yet. The back room wants to be intimate, but fails. It is decorated with Renaissance and Baroque looking paintings that are very out of place. The main room is unfortunately dominated by a big screen LCD TV that was showing a music channel. I don't like music channles at all, and I really hate it when I have to suffer them at bar, restaurant or café.

The food on my first visit, ďabelská masová směs (Devil's meat mix) with rice, wasn't very good. The meat wasn't as spicy as the name promised and the rice was undercooked. On my second visit I ordered an utopenec (pickled sausage) that, though smallish, was very good.

On both visits the service was fine. Young girls, pretty cute and friendly that seemed to be enjoying their job and even recommended beers.
And it was the beers that brought me all the way there. The 13 taps are distribuited among the Holy Trinity of Czech Beer (Pilsner Urquell, Gambrinus and Kozel Tmavé), Primátor, Svijany, Opat and one or two "rotating" beers. Not bad, not bad at all. More so when two of the "permanent" Primátor are the Stout and the Weizen, both at 32CZK a pint.
On the first visit the Stout was way too cold, the temperature improved when I ordered it on the second visit. On both visits the Weizen was better than lovely. The people at Náchod are doing such a good job with this beer! It's wonderful!

You might be asking why I ordered the same beers twice when I have 13 (well, 10, the Trinity doesn't count) to choose from. The reason is one of the things that U Prince could improve. Both on the terrace and at the bar there are signs with all the beers that are apparently on tap. On my first visit I fancied a Primátor English Pale Ale, but they didn't have it. I tried with another one, with the same luck. On the second visit, a week or so later, the EPA was still unavailable, so I went for the Stout (a terrible pairing for the utopenec). As a second beer I wanted Opat Bitter, I asked the waitress if they had it, she wasn't sure, so I told her to bring me a Weizen in case they didn't, and what I got was a Weizen (a much better utopenec pairing).
This is a problem with a very easy solution. It will be enough to put a couple of blackboards where the service can write what's on tap that day. It's something that will also make things easier for everyone.

What I did like, though, was the copied paper that can be found on each table and works as some sort of beer list. Apart from the beers (not all of them available all the time) with their Balling graduation and ABV, there is also a brief description of each with tasting notes and even recommended food pairings in some cases. Something that I had never seen in Prague.

The prize goes to the description of Gambáč.
For those of you who don't speak Czech, it goes something like this: "The favourite výčepní beer in the Czech lands, indicated for undemanding consumers [...]. Characterised by [...] unified and flat "europivo" flavour...". Brilliant! Not that the usual Gambáč drinker will pay any attention to details like this, but it's fun to see that people that are selling this beer are also dissuading clients from drinking it.

I don't know how often I will go to U Prince Miroslava, it's a bit out of the way for me. But it is still nice to know that there is another place that offers a pretty wide choice of beers and not just the usual stuff.

Na Zdraví!

U Prince Miroslava
K Vodojemu 4
Prague 5 - Smíchov
+420 733 360 269
uprincemiroslava@seznam.cz

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A good intention isn't enough

2009-07-10T16:04:00.003+02:00

The other day, on the beer blog Apuntes Sobre Cerveza I found an entry titled "Tasting Method". The author, Pedro Biehrman, refered to a pdf he had found in a Spanish beer website.

The paper is called "Método de Catado de Cervezas" (pdf, SP) and was written by Carlos Inaraja González, brew master at Heineken (Spain, I presume) and Francisco Javier Soriano Perdigón, Gastronomy Professor at the "Gambrinus School of Hospitality" (that also belongs to Heineken) in Sevilla. According to them, it's aimed at Somelliers, Hospitality school teachers and professionals in the restaurant business.

I thought the idea was great and worth of being promoted. The "handbook" has nine pages full of information. Much of which is very good and useful. Some of the rest can seem rather obvious to anyone with a bit of experience tasting whatever, but it is still worth reminding. There is some stuff in there, though, that seem a bit too "strict": 22°C and 60% humidity as a must to taste beers? It might be for a competition, but I think that any place where you feel comfortable and relaxed is perfectly fine to sit down for some beer tasting.

Everything would be really great anyway, if it wasn't for the two rather important mistakes that can be found pretty much at the beginning of the document and that kind of invalidate all the rest: The "freshness" of the beers and the temperatures they should be served.

The moment I read them I wanted to write a post, but I thought it would be better to ask first someone who knows more than me. I was planning to call a friend who happens to be an international judge, but a Czech beer related e-mail from Kristen England couldn't have been more timely.

And who is Kristen England some of you might be asking. Well, his e-mail signature says: "BJCP Continuing Education Director, Grand Master Judge" and, for those who follow Ron Pattison's blog, he's also the person who puts together the historical recipes for the "Let's Brew" series. I can't think of much better credentials than that.

And, just as I'd expected, his answer confirmed what I had thought from the beginning.

According to the document "beers with freshness lower than three months must always be used". It's true that there are many beers out there that should be drunk the freshest possible, Cask Ales and Kvasnicové come to mind. However, there are many more that could be drunk a bit "older" or even after some maturing in the bottle. I've seen many labels on which the maker recommends their beers to be drunk after a few months or even a year in the bottle. The authors of the document either don't know about these beers, or they are telling us to drink them before they are "ready". I just don't understand it.

But this could be considered a minor detail if we compare it with the temperatures they say beers should be tasted.

Pilsen: 3-4°C
Lager and Stout (without specifying which kind): 5-6°C
Ale, Abbey, Trappist and Bock: 7-8°C
Wheat Ales: 7-8°C (I'm sure they speak about German Weizenbieren, which ARE NOT ALES!)

Here I will qoute Kriten's comment on the subject:

"those (temperatures) are massively low. I would say pils and most other lagers at 7-8C. The rest of the ales should be around 9-10C. The higher in alcohol, darker and more complex the warmer they need to be to appreciate. Imagine drinking an 18deg (Baltic) porter at 4C. It would taste like bitter alcoholic crap."

Of course that if we are speaking about beers of the kind of Heineken, the colder you can drink them, the better. But Heineken isn't precisely a good example for Pils, or a beer you want to sit down and "taste", for that matter.

There are other things I don't quite agree with, but they aren't worth mentioning. These two mistakes are really basic. When to open a bottle ("freshness"-wise) and what temperature should the beer be drunk are two pices of fundamental information for a somellier or for someone with a bit of beer tasting experience. Not knowing them at all, or not well enough, could result in the experience not being as pleasant as it should, or ruin it altogether.

The worst of this is that the authors aren't just "a couple of bloggers writing in the free time". They are professionals in the field. And what's even more worrying, their target audience aren't just the average consumer, but mostly other professionals. No wonder then that so much rubbish is written about beer in the Spanish speaking media and that renown professionals like Ferrán Adriá can get away with the bollocks they say.

My advice to somelliers, hospitality professionals and general public: Ignor this "Beer tasting Method". If you are interested, get of people with real experience in real beer tasting.

Na Zdraví!

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Welcome, princess

2009-07-09T11:35:00.003+02:00

My daughter has finally arrived in this world, with a two week delay (she didn't want to come out, and who can blame her), and she is, of course, absolutely gorgeous, an angel. My life now isn't and will never again be what it used to. But don't be afraid, I'll keep on writing this blog, perhaps not with the same rythm as before, but write I will.

(And since I'm on the subject, I wanted to thank from the bottom of my heart all the staff of the Maternity Hospital Podolí. The birth was no party for my wife and each and every one of them were absolutely fantastic!)
As I announced back then, I wanted to brew something to celebrate such a sepcial event. The chosen recipe was a strawberry and mint weizen, which was quite a lot of fun to make.
When our princess was finally brought home I opened the first bottle. You can't imagine how curious I was. It pours an intense pink, almost red. Almost no head. The nose was like extra brut Champagne mixed a strawberry pureé. Pretty interesting actually. The taste, well, let's say it doesn't suit everyone's palate. It turned out a bit more sour than I had expected. In fact, it reminded my of a Geuze. Behind the sourness the strawberries can still be felt. I liked it, but only to drink in smallish doses. I will brew it again next year, but I think I will add some candied sugar to balance it a bit more, and perhaps brew it with a bit of a heavier body. It is far, very far, from being perfect, but I'm still satisfied with the result. Fortunately, the baby turned out a lot better.

Na Zdraví!

My angel, may your future be brigther than our present

PS: As many of you know very well, having a baby isn't cheap. I need some financial help in order to continue my work in a proper way. For that purpuse I've placed on the right hand column, right below my mugshot, a button for donations. Those of you who haven't got a PayPal account can pay by credit card. I promise that all the proceedings will be used on beer and related stuff. Thanks.

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The missing piece

2009-06-29T09:08:00.000+02:00

I had really liked most of the craft beers I'd had so far from Denmark and Norway and I still wanted to know the ones from the other Scandivanian Kingdom, Sweden.

The only Swedish beers I had seen in my life were the ones sold at Ikea. But since everytime I go to that prison looking furniture megastore I end up in a bad mood and wanting to leave as fast as possible, I never bothered to stop and buy one (which might not be that bad, actually).

Now, thanks to Gnoff, a fellow beer enthusiast from Sweden, this "problem" has been solved. He brought me nine samples from his native land. He was also kind enough not to tell me much about the beers. He said I could find all the necessary information in Rate Beer. You already know my position when it comes to looking for information on the internet before tasting a beer I don't know, and since all the labels were in Swedish, it was almost like a blind tasting. Fantastic!

I started with the only "industrial" beer he brought. Guld Källan brewed by Tomp Beer & Spirits, or at least that is what I thought util I went to their webpage and realised that the company is actually a distributor of alcoholic beverages from different countries. So, I don't now who brewed it (if anyone does, please, let me know)
Anyway, I wasn't expecting much from the seemingly mass produced pale lager. It pours a watery gold, with an abundant head that doesn't last long and not much of a nose to speak of. There is some taste, though, and not bad. A bit malty with some bitterness, everything very well brought together. Not a beer that I would eagerly seek, but if I were in Sweden, thirsty and I found it at a shop, I would pick it without any problem. A funny detail, the word "starköl" means, if Google Translate doesn't lie, "strong beer" in Swedish. Quite a relative thing, the beer has only 4.8%ABV. As far as I know (and correct me if I'm wrong), Swedish beers tend to be a lot lighter than the ones we are used to. Silly laws.
The lightest of all the samples was Hantverks Bryggeriet Bonden Svensk Folilig Ale (try saying that three times in a row) with only 3.5%ABV (could that be the standard ABV for Swedish beers?). It pours intense gold, somewhat cloudy, with a small, yet compact head. Although it isn't very strong, the nose reminds of summer fruit, sweet organges and some mint. The taste is predominantly fruity, but very well contrasted by a yeasty acidity. Ideal to drink while grilling in summer or when getting back home after a hot day.
A high step up in the alcohol contents is Ekolmen Ekologiska Ale, with 4.7%ABV and brewed by Nynäshamns Ångbryggeri. As you can very well figure out, it is an organic beer. Both the malts (pale ale, cara munich and crystal) and the hops (challenger, fuggles and hellertau) come from organic farms. Environmental credentials notwithsanding, this is a very tasty beer. Reddish amber, crowned by a thick and spongy head. The nose is almost a mix of pale and weizen, maybe thanks to the hop mix. It's got a silky mouthfeel that fills the palate with fruit, spice and just the right bitterness. Even though I had it a bit colder than recommended on the label (11-13°), I enjoyed every single drop. A delicious beer to savour slowly or even for a session. I see it as a great pairing for something exotic, but not too spicy, or pasta with a tomato sauce with a lot of garlic and herbs.
If someone had given me Oppigårds Golden Ale de Oppigårds Bryggeri blind, I would have probably thought that this beer was an attempt at recreating a Czech ležák, but using C-hops intead of Saaz. It looks just like a good Czech pale lager and the maltiness both in aroma and taste follow the same pattern, the same could be said about the mouthfeel. Nothing surprising once you read the ingredients of this 5.2%ABV beer. It's brewed with pilsen and caramel malts, a very usual mix in Czech světlý. The difference, as I mentioned before, is in the hop mix (yeah and the fermentation, etc, I know), a salad of pacific gem for bitterness, EK Goldings for taste and EK Goldings and Cascade for aroma. The finish is full of all these hops and makes a nice contrast. A refreshing beer, very drinkable.
I started then with the beers from Nils Oskar, a renown and successful Swedish craft brewer with a rather large product line. It pours a crystaline ocre. The nose is mostly caramel with fruit, mineral and licorice notes (not as interesting as it sounds, believe me). It tastes mostly dry, not much of an identity or body, and the finish is all too short. Could go well with some smoked meats, otherwise it's kind of boring. As with the previous beer, this one also felt like a lager, it reminded me to your average Czech polotmavé. This one did turn out to be a lager, though. When I finished drinking it I had a look at the back label. My Swedish leaves a lot to be desired, but I don't think you need to be a linguist to figure out what "inspirerat av Märzen" means. In fact, "Kalasöl" means "beer fest" in Swedish. Perhaps if they had used only one kind of hops, instead of the four they did, this beer would have had a bit more of an identity. The feeling it left me was of a beer made because they had to, rather than because they wanted to.
It was followed by India Ale (5,2%ABV). No mystery here with which style inspired this beer. I've had quite a few IPA's lately and I've come to the conclusion that it is the "fruitier" ones that I like better. I find them more interesting than the very hoppy ones. Unfortunately, Nils Oskar's is neither one, nor the other. Pours amber, with a mild bouquet where caramel rules. The taste is missing something, it teases but never gets there and leaves you wanting more, and not in a good sense. Only at the end it seems to gather the courage to say something, but it doesn't quite satisfy.
I decided to give good old Nils a break and chose Arboga Majbock (7%ABV), brewed by Three Towns Independent Brewery. It pours a clear intense gold, with hardly any visible carbonation and a generous head. The nose is dry herbal, sage perhaps, with a caramel and apples background. So far so good. Then comes the first sip and my palate is punched by an etilic fist that leaves an aftertaste akin to cheap vodka. As the glass empties the alcohol integrates better, but the damage is done. I wonder if I didn't have this beer too young. The 2009 written on the label seems to imply so.
I still had one from Nils Oskar, Rökporter. This was the only beer I had references about. Evan Rail had reviewed it in his blog. Unfortunately, the post is lost, but I do remember he liked it. Regardless of the references, I really wanted to drink this beer. I am a big fan of smoked beers. Rökporter is very dark. You can already feel the smokiness in the bouquet, though it is a bit less "hammy" than your average Rauchbier from Bamberg. The taste is a wonder of balance. One of the things I've always liked about old reggae bands is they way that, despite the technological limitations of their record studios, they managaed to make every instrument heard on the records. That is exactly what happens with this beer. It's dry, there is chocolate and there is the smokiness that now tastes more "woody", everything is felt at the same time, but not on top of each other. The finish is mild, with sweet coffee and some sourness to make it even more interesting. A delicious beer, the kind that you regret finishing if you don't have another one at hand.
I still have one left, MB Porter årgång 2008 (vintage 2008), from Mariestads Bryggeri, a brand that belongs to the Spendrups group. I've decided I won't open it now. I want to age it, unless someone tells me it's not worth it.

The overall impression is a bit mixed, there were a couple beers that I liked a lot, and others that I didn't like at all. If I had to, unfairly, compare them with their Danish and Norwegian pairs, the Swedish ones are a step or two behind. Anyway, thanks again to Gnoff for giving me the possibility of tasting beers that otherwise I would never have.

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That's it, I've had enough.

2009-06-24T16:13:00.004+02:00

Last year, when I tasted the then relatively new Estrella Damm Inèdit I gave it a possitive review. Although I didn't think the beer was anything to write home about, I liked it, and I liked the idea behind it even more.

My heart started changing when the idiocies of Ferrán Adriá started. But I still had a soft spot for this beer and I even kind of stood up for it when The Beer Nut trashed it in his blog.

Today that is something I regret doing.

A few days ago, in the unfortunately very inactive discussion forum of Cerveceros Digitales, someone opened a new thread titled Estrella Damm Inèdit.

The message contains the same old and tired bollocks about how unique this beer is, how Ferrán Adriá and his Sommeliers (cool name for a pop band) created it because they felt a beer that could pair with the best gastronomy with the utmost respect was needed. Something that really irritates me. We all already know that all beers that are properly made can be a perfect and very respectful pairing for any kind of food, regardless of how cheap or expensive, simple or sophisticated it might happen to be, and they don't need the blessing of any celebrity chef.

At first I thought monix37, the person who left the message, was a shill from the brewery. It wouldn't be the first, nor the last time something like that happens. So I replied in a proper manner. But it turns out I was wrong. In the user's profile I found a link to an e-shop that sells gourmet products, Inèdit among them. And that's when the last straw dropped.

Until then I had paid no attention to the price of this beer. The bottle I tasted had been sent to me by my friend Delirium and since I can't buy it in Prague, the price was something of little relevance to me. But when I saw it...

€6.95!!! for a 750ml bottle.

I don't think I need to tell you that I've got no problem with paying that and more for beer as long as it's worth it. Inèdit isn't, not even by chance.

It isn't bad, and stripped of its marketing it could still be considered a valid attempt by a major Spanish industrial brewer at offering something different and, if you want, more interesting than their competitors. But €7 for it, is way, way too much.

A same size bottle of Westmalle Triple costs about €6 in specialised shops in Spain, and this beer's 9.5%ABV gives it a lot more chops to pair with food than Inedit's 4.8%. Not to mention that, differences in quality apart (and they are big), Westmalle is a lot more expensive to brew.

On the other hand, this beer could be a bit too much to handle for many. No problem then, they can buy Hoegaarden that not only is it very easy to find, but also costs €1.5, or less, for a 330ml bottle and is, in my opinion, a better drink.

You see now what they've just made me do? I am recommending a product from InBev. Damm you, Ferrán Adriá! Damm your beer and your Sommeliers! I hope you'll all burn in hell!

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News, truths and bollocks from Heineken

2009-06-22T16:33:00.004+02:00

Those of you who know Czech and want to know a bit more about Czech beer should certainly visit Pivovary.info. Not only thre is an updated list of all the breweries in the Czech Republic regardless of size, but also, on their home page, you will find the section "Monitoring pivních zpráv" (monitoring beer news).

It is here where they other day I came across an interview with Jiří Daněk, one of the managers of Heineken.CZ.

Mr Daněk says that Heineken won't buy Staropramen (at least not for now). Currently the company is restructuring. They want to finish with the consolitadion of all their breweries under one company, Krušovice.

When asked what effect is that going to have in the plans of the Dutch brewing concern to become #2 in the Czech market, Daněk admits that, although buying a brewing group would have been easier and faster, there is also the possibility of increasing the market share of the brands they now have.

I must agree with this. When Heineken bought Drinks Union last year their market share increased considerably, and was then only two percentage points below that of Staropramen's. Krušovice, the group's flagship brand, has been sort of revitalised with a redesing of the logo and a new advertising strategy. Investment in marketing also seems to have increased for both Starobrno and Zlatopramen. It is also left to be seen what effect the inminent withdrawal of AB-InBev will have on the Staropramen group marketwise.

The interviewer follows up with a very good question: "What other acquisition, besides Pivovary Staropramen, would be interesting for you? What would you say if K Brewing offered you their breweries? Many believe that K Brewing has been buying breweries on Heineken's behalf."

The answer is short and a tad worrying: Basically "No comments". We all know what this answer often means. Of course, it's still left to be seen what good can do a giant like Heineken buying six smallish regional breweries with a combined volume of less than 700 thousand hl a year.

The interesting thing here is that at no time they mention the group PMS (Pivovary Moravsko a Slezsko), the onwers of Litovel, Holba and Zubr (hardly the finest in Czech brewing) that has an interesting market share of, if I remember well, around 6%, or the still state owned Budvar, that has 13%.

The other day it was announced on the press the closing of two breweries belonging to Heineken, Kutná Hora and Hostan (Pivovar Znojmo). This didn't surprised anyone, really. Hostan had been already for quite some time on "life support", and Kutná Hora was the smallest brewery that belonged to the Drinks Union group. Daněk's explanation for this is as sincere as it is heartless, "it is clear that the profitability of a brewery that makes millions of hectolitres a year is different than that of one that makes 60 thousand". That's it, the decision of closing down two breweries with hundreds of years of history came from some accountant. The brands, promised Daněk, will keep on being brewed elsewhere, but, why bother?. It also seems that the future of Pivovar Louny isn't all that clear; Heineken hasn't decided yet what they will do with it.

Of course, being that this is an interview with a manager of a big multinational company, corporate bollocks are almost mandatory:

"Heineken nevaří žádná europiva" (Heineken doesn't brew any europivo) - Jiří Daněk, June, 2009.

Yeah, right, and I'm a Trappist monk.

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PS: If you want to read the full interview, you can find it here

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Notice

2009-06-21T12:23:00.002+02:00

Some months ago I got my own domain and the URL of this blog changed from pivni-filosof.blogspot.com to www.pivni-filosof.com.

Back then I didn't consider this worth mentioning because Blogger would automatically redirect traffic to the new address without any intermediate step. However, I noticed that since a few days ago whenever someone clicks on or tipes the old address they are met by a kind of warning screen that could scare a few people before they accept going to the new address.

That's why I would like to ask those of you who've been kind enough to link my blog from your websites to update the address. And also, if there is anyone who subscribed to the feeds before March this year, you will probably need to do it again if you haven't received any updates.

Thanks and Na Zdraví!

And we could all win

2009-06-17T15:47:00.004+02:00

A couple of months ago I wrote Evan Rail to see if he was free to have a bite. His answer was something like: "What if I buy you lunch at a nice place where you can have an unusual beer?". Since turning down such offer would have been impolite, I just asked him when and where we should meet.

The moment he told me to meet him by Tančicí Dům (The Dancing House), one of my favourite buildings in Prague, I knew we would be going to Céleste, the restaurant that had just opened on the building's top floor.
Evan was researching for an article he would write for the New York Times and a visit to this upscale restaurant was part of the assignment. After having a couple of beers at the bar that Céleste runs on the ground floor, we were told that we could go upstairs to the dining room. There we were greeted by the restaurant's Manager, who knew Evan and recognised me from the blog. We picked a table by one of the windows (this restaurant must have the best views in Prague) and we set to enjoy our lunch, which we paired with more beer.
Céleste has already been reviewed here and here and much better than I could do, so I won't go into much detail about the food. I will only tell you that it was great, pretty expensive, but worth every Koruna paid by the NYT. The place is also gorgeous, I must add.

Not surprisingly, though, that unusual beer Evan had promised wasn't mentioned in any of the reviews. Professional restaurant reviewers rarely mention beer and when they do, it's not much more than an afterthought. So, I thought I will fill the information gap they left.

The brew in question is none other than Kout na Šumavě 12°, possibly the best pale lager in this country if not the world. Although it isn't all that unusual from the stylistic point of view, back then, Céleste was only the second regular outlet in Prague for this beer.
While we were sipping Kouts before going upstaris to eat, we had a very interesting chat with Edvard, the bar manager.

When they were finishing putting the restaurant and bar together, Edvard realised that he didn't want to offer the same old stuff beerwise. He contacted Evan, who recommended Kout. Edvard then went to U Slovanské Lipy to see what the beer was like. He liked it, a lot, and reached an agreement with Lipy's owner, who also happens to be the brewery's distributor for Prague.

We already have two winners in this transaction. The small regional brewery that gets more exposure in Prague for their excellent beers, and the client that can drink something of better quality.

The restaurant also wins, of course, and big time.

The wholesale price for Pilsner Urquell in kegs is 20CZK/0.5l; Kout's is 15CZK (or 14CZK, whatever). Since legally speaking they are both in the same category, the restaurant can charge for Kout the same they would charge for Pilsner Urquell and keep a clean concience. This gives them a 25% (or 30%) increase in the profit margin for the beer.

Oh! But things don't end there. Edvard told us how happy he was with that beer. He likes it a lot and the clients seem to like it a lot, too because they are selling three times more than they had forcast before opening!

If this hasn't sunk in, let me illustrate with some figures:

The beer is sold only in 0.3l glasses at 45CZK at the bar and 65CZK at the restaurant. Yeah, it is expensive, but this is a posh place, so you won't have a session (and I've also seen more outrageous prices at lesser places).

For that measure the wholesale price of Pilsner Urquell is 12CZK and Kout's is 9CZK. The profit for each glass (not counting other costs) would be 33CZK for PU and 36 for Kout (53CZK/56CZK at the restaurant).

Let's say that the people of Céleste forcast they would sell 100 glasses of beer over a given period. If they were working with PU the profit would be 3,300CZK. But they are working with Kout, which is selling three times more than planned. The profit for the same period is then 10,800CZK. Get it? That's right. That is what selling good quality beer can do to your balance.

How come then that a beer like Kout na Šumavě 12° at a place like Céleste is something so out of the ordinary? Why do most restaurants and cafés still offer the same old three or four brands or, worse, rubbish like Stella Artois or Heineken?

It's because that is what people want!. Screams a restauranteur.

Though a bit relative, it can still be considered a valid point if we leave out the imported brands. However, it can only be applied to hospody that live off selling beer. What beer is stocked isn't a decision factor when it comes to choosing a mid range or ethnic restaurant, pizzeria or café. At those places the people who want beer will usually drink whatever is offered. Working with a regional beer will not necessarily mean fewer clients; in fact, it could even mean that more people will end up going, I mean beer enthusiasts.

It's the bribes! Whispers someone out there.

It's well known that the big breweries pay sometimes generous bribes in order to get a pub to switch to their brands. But once again we are talking about places that shift beer in large volumes. Breweries will not pay hundreds of thousands of Crowns (I've heard about two million in one case) to a restaurant that will sell only a couple of kegs a week.

Well, but what about the freebies: glasses, the taps, sign at the door, etc?. Says another restauranteur with a bit of an attitude.

If we are speaking about a top of the range restaurant, where I will pay about 1000CZK or more for a meal (drinks not included), where the mark-up for a bottle of wine is 500-600% over the retail price, and the owner doesn't want to invest a few thousands in taps, then that isn't a place I would like to go.

If it's the other places what we mean, that's another thing, then. Fortunately, the regional breweries (at least some of them) have wised up and, if asked nicely, they would be more than willing to lend some taps and even put a lit sign. And why having only beer on tap to begin with? There are many beers out there that are great in bottle. And the bottles allow for more flexibility when it comes to putting together a beer list, and they can also be stored longer than the barrels.

So, all of you restaurant managers and owners that read this blog. You are out of excuses. Open your minds a little, think outside the box. It might be that you don't care about the breweries, beer or even the quality you offer your clients, for that matter, but you must care about your profits...

If you need consulting on this feel free to contact me. I'll be more than happy to help you, for no cost (well, perhaps a lunch).

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Céleste - Restaurant & Bar
Dancing House - Tančicí Dům
Rašinovo Nabřeži 80
Praha 2

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Staropramen's future

2009-06-15T11:02:00.002+02:00

Well, in the end it seems that Heineken won't be Pivovary Staropramen a.s.'s new onwer, so forget everything I said here (actually, I think you have forgotten already, but just in case).

According to news reports, AB-InBev has put up for sale (or at least is very seriously considering doing so) their business units in Central Europe, the Czech one included, because they don't consider them strategically important and they need as much cash as possible to pay debt incurred when buying AB.

It looks like 11 breweries in 6 countries will be sold as one package and, though there isn't anything official yet, the private equity firm CVC Partners are the ones who have shown the biggest interest.

If this goes through, what will be the future of Staropramen? Several people have told me about how well the beer is being exported, it is rather well positioned in England, for example. That is, I'm sure, thanks to belonging to the biggest brewing group in the world. With them out of the picture, will the brand from Smíchov be able to keep that presence in those markets?

And what will mean for the brand domestically speaking? I've got no figures to back this claim, but I am of the idea that Staropramen has lost market. The reasons are several, the huge drop in quality (it is undrinkable now), the growth of the regional breweries and of the several spread in the country that belong to Heineken.cz. Staropramen does have a strong position in Prague, there is no doubt about it, out of the Capital, though, things change considerably. And when was the last time you saw a hospoda selling Ostravar out of the Ostrava area? If it wasn't that Braník is the second best selling bottled beer in the country, I don't know what would be of the company.

Anyway, the likely new owners seem to be an even more fundamentalist strain of accountants than the current ones, so an improvement in quality is something we should not hope for. However, the possibility of the insulting Stella Artois leaving this market is, by itself, a small reason to celebrate.

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A bit of madness

2009-06-11T15:31:00.003+02:00

Yesterday I bottled the beer I brewed in honour of the birth of my daughter, which should happen in about a week. When I asked for help to design the recipe quite a few people wrote with some ideas. In the end, I didn't go for any of the suggestions, though I must say that it was Velky Al's that in some way inspired the recipe of "Porteña - Literally Red Weizen", as I've decided to call this wheat beer with mint and strawberries.

I had absolutely no clue about how I would brew that, and if it hadn't been for Jake, from Nothern Table, I would have sure made quite a few mistakes (more than the ones I'm sure I made, but well...). Thanks Jake!

I wanted to brew something light, I used 1.5kg of 60% wheat and 40% pilsen malts for 7l of water.
The mashing was the typical you would do for a weizen (or at least I think so). Things changed a bit at the boling. I used 10g of Saaz hops in pellets (50% less than what I normally use) and added 12g of fresh mint. I added the hops with this schedule: 20% at the beginning, 40% at 30 minutes and the rest by the end. I added all the mint at once with the second hopping. The hydrometre marked 8.5 in the balling scale, quite light, a bit more than I would have liked, actually.The yeasts I used are the same Pivovarský Dům and Primátor use for their respective wheat beers. Fermentation started really quickly and didn't have any problem.
When fermentation was finished it was time to add the strawberries. They are in season now and I found a stand by a metro station with very tasty Czech strawberries. I pureed them and put them in the secondary fermenter. Very carefully, and trying to leave as much sediment behind as possible, I poured the young beer on top of it.
A couple of hours later, what I first thought were the solids from the strawberries floating on top of the liquour turned out to be the froth of the yeasts doing their job. I let them working for almost two weeks, always wathching out for anything funny growing on the surface, where there were some solids.
Before bottling I very carefully took as many as the solids as possible and trasferred the beer to another container so I could work with less sediment.

I tasted a bit of the beer and found it quite interesting. A bit sour, I was expecting that, and a surprising spiciness that tickled my tongue and that I hope will remain. I will have to wait a couple more weeks for it to be ready. By then, the baby should be already at home and I will wet her head with the beer.

The possibilities are two, that it will turn out fantastically good, or that it will turn out fantastically repulsive. Either way, I had a lot of fun making it and I am already preparing the next recipe, which I'll brew with all the grain I have left. It'll be a rauch with honey, pepperming and rosemary.

As soon as I open the first bottle, I will let you know.

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What we learnt at Klášter

2009-06-08T10:37:00.004+02:00

A couple of weeks ago Bohemian Beer Tours organised a very successful visit to Pivovar Klášter. When I wrote my post about it I promised I would tell you some of the things we learnt at the brewery, so here it goes...

Pivovar Klášter was established in 1570 by Jiří Labounský on the grounds formerly occupied by a Cistercian monastery that was destroyed during the Hussite Wars. The brewery is pretty much on the same spot now, it was only moved next door in 1830 when the owner was Kristián z Valdštejn.
According to what we were told, they use the same recipe of 1570, something I have my doubts about. Back then, most beers were top fermented wheat. However, there are historical records that show that bottom fermented barley beers, though not as common as today, weren't unkown in these lands. I guess we will have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

What is indeed certain is that they still use the same water. It comes from their own underground sources and it has been certified as appropriate to be consumed by new born babies. Isn't it wonderful to live in a country where high quality mineral water is used to make beer instead of just bottling it and give it to babies?

As expected, Klášter beers are brewed using a triple decoction mashing. This process, together with the boiling takes eight hours. Saaz hops in pellets and blossoms are used. Each batch is of 210hl and, after the boling and cooling, it goes to the fermenters.
Pivovar Klášter is located on the top of a hill in which there are 12km of underground tunnels and corridors. Most of them date from the 12th century and were dug by the monks that lived in the monastery. The rest are from the 17th century and were dug for the brewery. The oldest one is today used for the restaurant Skála. It was dug to accommodate the monks while they built the monastery, which took 38 years and it has a kind of gothic church feel to it.

We went down to the underground tunnels to see the fermenting room. Despite the low temperatures I could smell the yeasts doing their job as we got close. Man, I love that smell! It is the parfume of life, the culminating point of the alchemy that the brewing process is. As it is traditional, open fermenters are used, each with a capacity of 210hl. Most lagers I know, at least the quality ones, ferment for 7 days. Not Klášter's, they ferment for as many days as they have balling degrees, 10 to 12.
Done with this, the young beer goes even deeper into the guts of the hill to the lagering cellars. This is a very important part of the process. One of the reasons many of the macro lagers are so bad is that they don't spend enough time lagering. It seems that most of them don't spend more than two weeks, actually. Why? Ask the accountants that run those breweries.

Fortunately, that's not Klášter's case. The beers lager for from 40 days for desítka (that's five more days than Pilsner Urquell) to up to 60 days for dvanactká. Yeah, 210hl of cash flow doing nothing productive for up to two months, or at least that is the way an accountant would see it.

We close this part of the visit by drinking Klášter 11°, the brewery's best selling product, tapped straight from the lagering tank. I think that every true beer lover should, at least once in their life, drink a good lager tapped straight from the tanks. It is something so full of energy, it's almost like drinking a living organism. Needless to say, the beer blew the minds of quite a few and it wasn't very easy to make everyone go back to the surface.
Beers are sold unpasteurised. Before bottling they go through a double microfiltering process that, unlike pasteurisation, it doesn't completely "kill" the beer, but puts it "in a coma".

The second part of the visit, the meeting the group from Boston University Executive MBA Program wanted to have with someone from the brewery's management, was held at the beautiful Skála restaurant. Fortunately, Mr Kábrt, the Business Director, was kind enough to change his schedule so he could be with us. The meeting was very interesting.

As of 1st January 2009, Pivovar Klášter has new owners, K Brewery Trade. This company with Czech capital came pretty much out of nowhere a couple of years ago and started to either buy or invest in several regional breweries. Now they own six and are co-owners in another four. Their slogan is "Navrát k tradici" (Back to Tradition).

One of the first changes the new owners made at Klášter was to start a moratorium on exports. These represented 40% of the sales of the brewery, but K Brewing want to focus on the domestic market, which, according to them, is more lucrative.

The interview left me with the impression that the people from the brewery are quite happy with their new "bosses". It seems that K Brewing gives their breweries pretty much free hand to brew what and how they like it.

This doesn't mean that they are absentee owners, as is the case with several regional breweries owned by foreign companies. K Brewing has consolidated the purchasing system. This is a very important detail. The combined volume for 2008 of the six breweries the company owns was 812 thousand hl, if we add to that the 664 thousand hl of the four breweries they co-own we reach a total of almost 1,5 million hl, 200 thousand more than Budvar. Three words, Economies of Scale, for ten regional breweries.

And it seems they are taking things seriously. K Brewing already has a distribution centre in Prague and the other day I read that Pivovar Jihlava, one of their breweries, will start selling their beers the tanková way. Is this perhaps a "pilot test" that if successful will be extended to the rest of the breweries? Might we see someday a K Brewing hospoda in Prague?

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Recommendation

2009-06-07T11:00:00.002+02:00

For those, few, of you that still refuse to believe that beer can be perfectly compared with wine in terms of sophisticaton and, to a certain extent, mystique, I recommend you read this post in Ron Pattison's blog titled Barrel Aged Russian Stout. If you still haven't clicked on the link then, let me tell you that it is about Imperial Stouts that used to be brew on a one batch a year basis, matured in casked and then aged at least a year in bottles. There is a part mentions how weather conditions affect the cuality of eatch of the batches, just as it happens with wines. What are you waiting for? I am not going to reproduce the whole article!

Actually, Pattison's blog should be a mandatory read for all beer lovers out there. Believe me, it is fascinating.

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Welcome back

2009-06-04T15:11:00.004+02:00

After a two year absence Pivovar Herold has started brewing a wheat beer again.

In August last year the brewery changed owners. For almost a decade Pivovar Březnice had been owned by a company of American origin that focused mostly on the export market, giving little if any attention to the domestic one. The sharp fall in the value of the US Dollar against the Czech Koruna resulted in prices becoming uncompetitive and the yanks decided to pack their bags. Now the new owners are trying to recover the market that Herold lost. The return of Herold Pseničné was possible thanks to the head brewer who was able to talk his new bosses into allowing him to brew it again.

I had tasted the beer just before it was discontinued, it was only once, I think, and I don't remember much about it, so I was really looking forward to drinking it again. Instead of reviewing it alone, I decided to do a comparative tasating with the other industrially produced domestic wheat beer, Primátor Weizen. Both bottled, both while sitting on my terrace.
I started with Náchod's, with which I am very familiar and is know one of my favourite beers. It is brewed with a single decoction mashing, which makes it a bit of a rarity. According to Czech beer guru Honza Šuran, the only two beers of this kind that are brewed using this mashing method are Primátor's and Pivovarský Dům's.
What else can I say about Primátor Weizenbier, only that it tastes better every day. It has a perfect balance of sweetness, bitterness and sourness that makes it very refreshing and tasty.

When Evan Rail published his review of Herold Wheat, Javier left a comment saying that he thought Primátor Weizen was better than German wheat beers. His opinion only managed to garner the incredulity of another reader, Elf. Well, I agree with Javier. I think Primátor Weizenbier is a better beer than the famous Bavarian ones (Schneider, Paulaner, Erdinger, etc) and it's on the same level, if not a bit higher, that most of the ones coming from smaller breweries that I've tasted. But this isn't adoptive nationalism on my part. Two German beer enthusiast with whom I spent an afternoon the other day agreed with this view. But of course, at the end of the day, it all comes down to personal tastes.

With Primátor having vanished from the glass, it was Herold's turn. It pours a bit paler and it's less aromatic, it isn't as rich, either. The flavours are milder and it lacks much of the spice and citrus notes that are so present in its competitor. At the same time, I found the malt a bit too dominant. It's not bad at all, I didn't dislike it. It is very easy to drink and it could be a great option for those who want to start discovering the world of wheat beers. And actually, qualitatively speaking, it could compete on equal footing with many of the Bavarian weizen, and even come on top of several of them. But as is the case with those from the neighbouring country, Herold Wheat is no match for Primátor Weizen.
Tastes aside, I think it's great that we can now choose between two industrial Czech wheat beers. There is no doubt that the popularity of this style is growing. Primátor Weizen sells really well at those places that serve it. There also seem to be more micros that offer wheat beer (many of them wonderful), which are really popular in the summer months. Will we ever see the day when any of the best known names in Czech beer has a go at brewing a weizen?

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What? You didn't have enough?

2009-06-02T17:27:00.002+02:00

If you either missed both of the beer orgies that took place last week, or for some reason you were left wanting more, don't worry, two more beer events are coming, both very closely related. Their scale is a lot smaller than those that have just finished, but that doesn't make them any less interesting.

The first one is on Tuesday, June 9 at 5PM at Pivovarský Klub. It isn't a festival proper, but a session of beer and cheese pairings. The beer, of course, will be provided by the temple in Karlín, the cheese, but Cheesy a chain of really good shops specialised in, what else, cheese.

Reservations only by phone at:

+420 222 315 777
Pivovarský Klub
Křižíkova 17°, Praha 8 - Karlín

The second event will take place a few days later at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and its called "Objevte svět piva – pšeničná piva" (Discover the beer world - Wheat beers). It is organised by the beer portal Svět Piva, the same people that put together last year's Christmas Beer Festival.

The festival starts on Friday, June 12 and goes through the 14th. Just like last year's one, it will be divided in several sessions with a maximum capacity of 200 attendants. The sessions are as follows:

- Friday 12/6: 6-10PM
- Saturday 13/6: 1-5 and 6-10PM
- Sunday 14/6: 1-5PM

Admission price is 150CZK and includes, among other things, a beer sample. Tickets can be reserved here or bought at the places listed here.

As the title suggests, the beers will all be wheat and there will bee samples of domestic "pšenky", together with Belgian and German ones, including oddballs like Berliner Weisse or Gose, which people will be able to pair with a cheese selection and food prepared by Essensia Restaurant

Hotel Mandarin Oriental
Nebovidská 459/1
Praha 1
(entrance by Hellichova)

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Czech Beer Festival 2009, a balance

2009-06-01T09:43:00.004+02:00

The Czech Beer Festival 2009 finished yesterday. I only went once after all, the first day. I had planned to go during the weekend, but the was way too crappy to go all the way to Letňany. So these conclusions are based mostly on comments and e-mails I received and the conversations I had with people that were at the event.

As in eveything there were posstive things and negative things, let's see:

The possitive:

- The beer list, much larger than last year, it was impressive.
- Including micros. It showed that this year the organisers worked with people who know about beer.
- The food offer. Also larger than last year. I liked the idea of each tent having their own menus. Quality, though, wasn't all that uniform and prices... well, I will get to them later.
- The service. Once it did start working after the embarrasing first 90 minutes it was very good, though, as someone commented, it would have been nice to see how they coped with a full tent.

The negative:

- The venue. Horrible. No atmosphere, far from the centre, ugly. I'm sure the organisers had very good reasons to choose it (price?), but I do believe they should consider holding the festival at a nicer place next year.
- The price of much of the food. 80CZK for a bowl of soup?!? That is a rip off.
- The weather during much of the festival. The organisers aren't to blame here, but the rain didn't help and the mud and the puddles made the venue still uglier.

The question:

Why doesn't the festival have official sponsorship?

Prague Food Festival has among many of its sponsors the City of Prague and Czech Tourism. Fancy food can have official support, but beer can't. I would really like to know if this is due to a fault from the organisers or some snobbery on the part of the authorities. Otherwise, I can't understand it. Beer is the national drink and is deeply rooted in Czech culture. A beer festival might not have the culinary sophisticaton of the high end restaurants that took part in the Prague Food Festival, but which do you think is more likely to bring in foreign tourist?

I would also like to know how many people attended this year. The festival was better promoted this time, entrance was free and quite a bit of expectation had built up. I would bet that a lot more than the 25 thousand of last year, but then again, I was only once.

The balance for the second edition of Czech Beer Festival is, I think, possitive. I only have one small piece of advice to give the organisers. Stop comparing your festival with Oktoberfest, find your own identity. Stricktly beerwise, the Czech festival is far superior than the Bavarian; the atmosphere, well, that's another thing. The one in Munich has almost 200 years of history and is a major event in the Europena tourist calendar. This one in Prague isn't yet, though, with a few teaks here and there, it could certainly become so.

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Observing

2009-05-28T17:32:00.006+02:00

The alternative beer festival at Zlý Časy has so far been great. It might not have the scale, promotion or attendance of Český Pivní Festival, but from the stricktly beer point of view, it has been impressive.

Every day, sometimes more than once a day, there is something new, something that has never been seen before in Prague, and quite often, of dreamlike quality. Take for example pseničné pivo from the brand new Pivovar Matuška (the personal project of Martin Matuška, the brewer at Pivovar Strahov), perhaps the best Czech wheat beer I've had (it might have a permanent tap at after the festival), with a delicious complexity of flavours, or Kopřivnice Uhlo, with an almost Belgian-like character that reminded me of a dubbel, even though it is a dark lager. And I could go on and on.

But one of the things that has been the most fun is watching the faces of some people when they order a beer. During lunch time and in the early afternoon the clients of Zlý Časy can be roughly divided in two groups, those who come for solid pub grup in big portions and at affordable prices, and those who come mostly for the beer. In the first group there are those who wash down their lunch with beer and usually simply order "pivo", what they get is a glass of Kácov 10%. Not this week, though. The almost permanent desítka has stepped aside during the festival, so when someone orders "pivo", the server's response is "which one?".

"Desítka", the patron will say.

"No, there is no desítka today", the server will answer.

"So, what do you have?", the patron will ask somewhat confused. The server will show the blackboard where the beers of the day are listed. It is really funny the face that many put when reading the list full of seemingly exotic names (even though the names are of breweries that are far more "Czech" than Gambrinus or Pilsner Urquell). Some will accept the servers suggestion, others will order the lighter beer on tap, but everyone surprised and very satisfied with the quality of what they are drinking. And that is what counts at the end of the day.
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Note: I've been at the festival at Zlý Časy almost every day, but only once at the big one in Letňany. That's not because I have anything against the latter, regardless the embarrasing ogranisation mess that left me such a bad taste the opening day (things seem to be going really well now, almost everyone I've spoken to had only good things to say about the event). It's because Nusle is a lot closer to the centre than Letňany and I don't have to wait until 3PM to sit down and have something to eat and drink, not to mention the how many new beers I have tasted, the friends that I run into each day, etc, etc.

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A false start

2009-05-25T09:59:00.004+02:00

I didn't have it planned, but almost at the last minute I decided to attend the opening day of Český Pivní Festival 2009.

When I arrived a few minutes after the opening of the opening day of last year's edition, there were a couple of things that weren't working all that well, small and understandable organisation problems. However, the most important thing, the beer, was flowing from the very start.

It wasn't like that this year. I arrived almost at 4PM (the festival had started at 3). The grounds were the huge, warehouse sized tents had been set were coverend in water (there had been a pretty big storm around 3). I met Evan Rail and Velký Al in tent #6, the one with Kout and the micros. After greeting them Evan asked me if I noticed something wrong. "No beer", I answered. It was almost 4 and they weren't serving beer yet! At a beer festival! Someone from the organisation approached us to apologise, explaining that due to some technical problems they wouldn't start serving beer for another half an hour, then he suggested we go to tent #3.
There we went. The few people that had arrived at the festival seemed to be all there. There were long lines at the taps and the beer was being tapped very, very slowly. Table service, not a chance. At least we were able to buy some tolars (they were selling them in little bags of five units, pretty clever).
Very thristy and a bit frutrated we decided to go back to tent 6. Beer was already being tapped. Only Konrad, of all, the least interesting. I couldn't wait any longer and went to the next door tent. Things were working fine here. With a Primátor Stout in my hand I went back to my friends, only to go with them back again to tent 5.

Things now were looking a bit more festivally. People was slowly arriving. Table service was excellent. The waitresses, all of them very friendly, would show up as soon as a glass was empty to see if we wanted another beer. I stayed with Primator's "non lagers", Stout, EPA and Weizen (what a great idea it was to include them). All of them were in great shape. Almost too good, I would say, specially EPA and Weizen (I could see many people drinking the latter at the neighbouring tables).

We returned to tent 6. It was pretty populated already. Table service was already working properly and all the beers were flowing. The craft of the day was Rampušak, de Pivovar Dobruška, a very nice pale 12, unfiltered and with a lot of life in each sip.

I left a bit after 7, still not liking the choice of venue. Compared with last years, where there were trees, green and life, this one looked like a factory or a distribution centre for a supermarket chain. The atmosphere outside the tents wasn't too different to that, either.
While I was walking the metro station I noticed that all tents were opened and there were plenty of people in each one. The festival was working at full steam already. Comments I received and read during the weekend were all very possitive. Still, the bad taste that the beginning left still lingered. Organisation errors like those are unforgivable. I hope nothing like that happens, I hope the festival is a success.

Oh! Before going to the middle of nowhere that is Letňany, I had stopped by Zlý Časy to check out the parallel festival they are organising. 11 beers craft beers on tap each day (well, when I arrived, there were only 8, we had to wait until the storm passed for the taps in the patio to be set up). I had three, all of them really, really good. Do not miss it, no true beer lover should miss this festival. Actually, if you have to choose between the big one in Letňany and this small one in Nusle, choose the latter.
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First success

2009-05-21T10:43:00.004+02:00

The other day I did the first tour of my project Bohemian Beer Tours and it was a great success.

It wasn't any of the tours I offer as standard. It was something special in many ways. The client was a group from Boston University Executive MBA that was in Prague doing research on beer tourism in the Czech Republic.

They had contacted me a couple of months before because they needed some "local expert" to give them information and feedback on their plan. Since I was then preparing the Bohemian Beer Tours project, I thought I would offer them to arrange a brewery visit.
The group was 30 people. Fortunately, they already had transportation arranged. The trip had to be in the afternoon and getting to the brewery shouldn't take much longer than one hour. The group not only wanted to visit thesite as any other tour group would do, but also wanted to meet someone from the brewery's management and ask them technical questions about the brewing process and about the brewery as a company, its plans, challenges, etc.

It wasn't very easy to arrange something like that. Fortunately, the people of Pivovar Klášter accepted the proposal and things couldn't have turned out any better.

I was told that the only member of the management that would be available on that day would be the head brewer Mr Vladimír Pelanta. Great was my surprise when one of the people waiting for us at the entrance of the brewery was Mr Ctírad Kábrt, the Business Director, who had changed his appointments so he could join us.

The tour of the brewery itself wasn't too much out of the ordinary. Ms. Lenká Nosková guided us through the facilities, starting at the room with the mashing tuns and coppers and then going down to the underground corridors where the brewery is fermented and lagered.
After that, and after drinking some beers tapped straight from a lagering tank, we went to the brewery's restaurant, Skála, that is located in one of the tunnels that was carved in the 12th century to accommodate the monks that built the now disappeared monastery. The restaurant only opens Fridays and Saturdays, but I was able to get Mr. Raitr, the person in charge of it, to open it for us to have there the meeting with the management.
We had a snack (smoked ham roasted on a spit) and a couple of beers and the Q&A session with Messrs Pelanta and Kábrt started. As I did during the tour, I translated all questions and answers and I must say I did one hell of a job! In fact, I believe thanks to my translation the representatives of the brewery, Nosková, Pelanta and Kábrt, felt more relaxed and were able to tell us more interesting bits than they could have if they had to do it in English. (All that information is reserved for a future post).

I am so happy with the way things turned out! The group from Boston University were very, very satisfied, everyone agreed that this was the best activity of the many they had during their stay in Prague, and they were also very happy with the amount of very useful information the got from Pivovar Klášter as well as from me.

The first trip of Bohemian Beer Tours was an overall great success.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank the people from Pivovar Klášter, who were so great and accommodating. Without them it would have been impossible for things to turn out so well. And I would recommend all of you to visit this brewery, it's got a pretty interesting history and it's something quite unique. And if you need some more information about how to visit this and other breweries, you know where to go.

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Parallel

2009-05-18T10:22:00.003+02:00

Český Pivní Festival 2009 kicks off this friday and the beer list is very, very interesting (to see it go to this page and click on the logos). I can't think of a better excuse to make there, but...

- What if I can't be bothered with going to Letňany?
- What if I don't want to be "forced" to drink the beers only in half litre measures, specially the stronger ones?
- What if I want a still wider range of craft beers?

The answer to all these questions can be found at Zlý Časy.

As I said the other day, this hospoda in Nusle has great ambitions and, paralel to the festival in Letňany, they have decided to organise their own festival that will also take place between May 22 and 31. The difference here is that only beers from 30 micros from all over the country will be draught from 11 taps. The beers will change as the barrels empty, which gives the perfect reason to go more than once.

The list of pivovary for Třicet mini během deseti dní (30 micros in 10 days) is the following:

- Avar Hlučín
- Slezan
- Qásek Ostrava
- Zabřeh Ostrava
- Hukvaldy
- Kozlovice
- Kopřivnice
- Rambousek
- Medlešice
- Bělěč Car
- Zamecký Pivovar Chše
- Veklý Ribník (Střibro)
- Železna Ruda
- Dobřany
- Purkmistr
- Lotr
- Joe's Garage
- Pivovarský Dvůr Chýně
- Pivovarský Dvůr Dražič Lipan
- Berounský Medvěd
- Zvíkov
- Broumy
- Valášek Vsetín
- Vyšší Brod
- Svatý Jan
- Strahov
- Novoměstský pivovar
- Moritz Olomouc
- Svatovaclavský Pivovar Olomouc
- U Krále Jčminka Prostějov
- Lipník nad Bečvou
- Žamberský Kanec
- Kocour Varsdorf
- Kozlíček Horní Dubenky
- Rampušak Drouška
- Tambor Dvůr Králové
- Rychnov nad Kněžnou
- Excelent Rýmařov

If some of those names sound a bit exotic, they are. Several of the breweries have never been seen in Prague. This festival looks like a "ticksters" paradise.

Zlý Časy
Čestmírova 390/5
140 00 Praha-Nusle

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When will they learn to shut up?

2009-05-15T19:24:00.004+02:00

The world famous Spanish chef Ferrán Adriá has been quite busy lately promoting Inèdit, the beer that, together with his team of sommeliers, he has created (or is endorsing, depending on whom you ask).

A few days ago the cook was in New York for the official presentation of the beer to the American market. As expected he spoke about the virtues of the new product and, as it seems common among many celebrity chefs around the world, showed how little he knows about beer and its world.

Adriá said that his beer is "special and unique". As if there weren't already other Witt beers in the world, because that is what Inèdit is, no more, no less.

In the same report it is said that Inèdit is the first beer created to pair with high end gastronomy. First of all, there are countless beers that, despite not having been created with that aim, can perfectly pair with the most exclusive foods, ask many Belgian and Danish chefs if you don't believe me. There are also the microbreweries in Northern Italy, many of which are also top of the range restaurants and the beers there are brewed with the food these restaurants serve in mind. Of course, it is possible that someone as busy as Adriá has not heard about these examples, as he doesn't seem to have heard of a Garret Oliver, Susan Nowak, Ben McFarland y Will Beckett, etc. etc. etc..

Oh! And someone should tell Adriá that beer does not need "glamour". Beer has shown many times over that all it needs to enter the world of high gastronomy is products of good quality backed by people who know about the drink. And that is exactly what the industry is lacking, people who know about beer. Unfortunately, Adriá is not one of them.

Inèdit is a pretty good beer for Spanish standards, and is in a way revolutionary for that market. Not so much for the beer itself, that is nothing new under the sun, but because of its marketing strategy, which might not be much of a novelty in global terms.

It seems that "the best chef in the world", his team and the brewery Estrella Damm are not aware that there are many, many people that know about beer (and their numbers are growing). With this and other statements not only they are insulting our intelligence, but they are also making big fools of themselves. Because anyone who knows at least a bit about beer can realise in a second that what these people are saying is just a big pile of bollocks with no connection with reality.

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Notes from two abbeys

2009-05-14T13:48:00.003+02:00

Some of you might have come to think that I don't drink Belgian beers. After all, they have barely been mentioned in this blog. But I do drink them. I just choose not to publish my views on them. That's for two reasons, on the one hand, because if I were to post reviews of all the beers I drink, this blog will become a diary of my tasting notes (more than it already is) and doing that would also take time that I need to write posts that I find more interesting. And on the other hand, because most of those beers have been commented and discussed in countless blogs and forums and, frankly, I don't think I have anything new to bring to the table. Really, how necessary is it another blog post on how good Orval is? Not much, methinks.

But I've recently come accross two Belgian brews which I'd never heard about before, nor in forums neither in blogs, at least not recently (yeah, yeah, I'm sure I can find them in Rate Beer or Beer Advocate, but you already know I never go there). They are Maredsous Bruin (8%ABV) and Floreffe Tripel (7,5%ABV).

Both are Abbey Beers. Maredsous is brewed under the supervision of the monastic community of the same name, according to Benedictine traditions (or so the bottle says). Floreffe is brewed by Brasserie Lefebvre. Though there doesn't seem to be any monastic involvement, the beer does have a historical link with the namesake monastery, now a school.
I arrive at the mass at Maerdsous. The officiating abbot is wearing a spongy cap of slightly tanned colour and a very dark amber robe. He starts the sermon in a low voice and dull tone that soon becomes a monotonous drone. My mind starts to wander, only decorum is keeping me awake. When the sermon ends I am bored out of my skull. What a waste of time! The only thing that the good Abbot Bruin of Maredsous has managed to stir in me is the question whether a really bad beer isn't sometimes better than a very boring one.
A few days later I find myself at the Floreffe abbey. The officiating monk is wearing a compact white cap and an almost orange robe. Like his colleague (or competitor or enemy, you never know with these religious orders), he starts his homily with a dull voice. I take a deep breath, getting ready for the worst. Then suddenly something, a word? a phrase? a change in the tone of voice?, catches my interest. I start paying attention to what this monk is telling me. It is nothing new, nothing I haven't heard before, sometimes even with fancier words. But many times it isn't what it's said, but how it is said, and this friar says it so well. When the sermon ends I feel very glad I have attended it. It was nothing life changing, mind you, nor has it converted me (my sincretist beer faith is too strong), but it is something I would like to listen to again in the future. Sometimes it is the simple and reassuring words what you need.

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With good rythm

2009-05-13T16:27:00.004+02:00

When I first heard about Pivovar Tambor, in Dvůr Králové n.L. I didn't pay too much attention to it. I thought it was another brewpub like the many others that have opened in the last couple of years.

I was wrong (I must learn to pay more attention to local beer news, I think). I turns out that Tambor is a micro-industrial brewery. And it seems that its owners are no fools and have planned things quite well. Their aim is to be brewing 6000hl p.a. within a year. The current capacity is just below 8000hl, and the good news is that they have more than enough space to expand it and are willing to do so if business demands it.

The brewery's product line isn't anything groundbreaking. Currently they brew four beers, all of them lagers; three of them, the 10°, the 11° y the 12°, are pale. The remaining is an amber of 13° Balling that is still lagering its first batch. They are also preparing kvasnicové versions and if ordered, the beers can also be sold unfiltered.

The reason of such conservative portfolio is that the owners know their market very well. They have already secured deals with several hospody in Dvůr Králové and they know that the patrons haven't got very sophisticated palates and are more than likely to reject anything that strays too much out of the stuff they are used to drinking, more so when it is from a new brand. The brewery is looking for clients in Prague and it seems they have already agreed with a couple of hospody, which will tap the new beers at least occassionally.
I've been able to taste two of them. The 11° and the 12°. They are impossible to tell apart visually. Both are very, very pale gold, with compact bright white head and no visible carbonation (as it should be with a well brewed and well tapped lager).

The 11° has an intense grassy aroma, very fresh. It's got a pretty hoppy taste, quite a lot of Saaz there, with just enough malt to avoid becoming boring. What a great session beer this is! Light bodied, smooth, it goes down easier than mineral water and the finish lingers long enough to have us have another sip. While I was drinking it I could almost feel myself sitting in a beer garden knocking down pint after pint, after pint of this Tambor while having a good time with friends (Oh! If only Prague's beer gardens had decent beer!).

The 12° is very similar to the previous one. Fuller bodied, a little maltier. It might lack some personality (a bit more fruit notes would give it more character), but it's still a very well brewed lager and more than adecuate to drink with lunch.

I really want to have a go at the other two, but more than that I want Pivovar Tambor to be sucessfull. In this day and age it is really nice to see someone taking a risk and offering quality. May the drums keep rolling!

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