The Czech love affair with beer »
Posted By gamahuche 3 months, 3 weeks ago in Health & FitnessPRAGUE — It's a ritual for Czechs to walk to the corner pub or nearby restaurant — whose tables mushroom out onto the sidewalks — on hot summer days to drink beer.
Czechs and the millions of tourists who flock to Prague every year seemingly agree that there is something special about the local brews. The Czechs are the largest per capita beer consumers in the world, downing 1.58 billion liters last year. (That's 320 16-oz glasses of beer for every man, woman and child.)
“It's fresh, it's sparkling, it's refreshing,” said Lenka Fialova, while nursing a Pilsner Urquell, the most popular of all Czech lagers.
Given that it isn't just Czechs who like guzzling the national treasure, but visitors too, analysts at the Research Institute of Brewing and Malting are engaged in a comprehensive project to try to prove, once and for all, that Czech beer is the best — or at least the most "drinkable," according to Vera Honigova, the manager of R&D at the institute.
“We want to be the first who will set up a methodology to assess drinkability — how to recognize if one beer is more drinkable than the other,” she said.
Owned by the breweries but with additional financing from the Ministry of Agriculture, the Institute of Beer — as it is light-heartedly referred to sometimes — is pouring $780,000 into the research over the next five years.
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gamahuche
"I would rather be a square peg than fit in a pigeon hole" -
an essay which won me the "Lamb Essay Prize" at the Religious ...
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gamahucheComment removed: Spam
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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Too many links - and I didn't save..
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Let me try again!
In increments..
Prize English speaking authority is NOT the author of this article, who does a pretty good job within his remit, but Evan Rail, a former student of mine, excellent friend and author of the "Good Beer Guide: Prague and the Czech Republic", published in England by CAMRA - The Campaign for Real Ale. This contains all the crucial information about virtually every brewery, from huge to one-man operations hidden in the mountains. Since the scene changes virtually daily, however - mergers of mega-breweries/inception of brand new ones - he also writes a beer blog here: http://praguemonitor.com/beer/ -
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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Evan also writes in a variety of other publications, including, notably, the NY Times, e.g. http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/travel/30surf...
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The Czech Spa in this article is located virtually next to the Chodovar brewery, in a small town of the same name, close to Marianske Lazne - or Marienbad - one of our most famous spa towns, where, for example Goethe frequently hung his hat. -
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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This link will bring you to their English website
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http://www.chodovar.cz/id101en-hlavni-strana.htm -
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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http://www.chodovar.cz/id140en-nazor-lekare.htm
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Will then bring you to the actual scene - though the pics make it look a bit claustrophobic, which it is not at all!
However it is intense!
I had to lie down for a considerable time after the bath - but the sense of well-being permeated every pore.. -
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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These are minor detours compared with the simple fact that Czech culture is beer culture and if you miss it you miss a great deal of the flavour of the Czech lands..
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A great film to watch, for example is "Cutting it Short" which based on a short novel by Bohumil Hrabal, withn the sane title in English.
This is a rather skimpy Wiki entry about him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohumil_Hrabal
but it does mention the salient points that he grew up in a brewery, was a GREAT writer, and that several of his books were filmed. -
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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There is the additional juicy detail that when Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright visited Prague they met with Hrabal for lunch at his favourite pub in Prague: The Golden Tiger.
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In order for this to take place 2 US Secret Service guys had to visit ahead of time, tap a fresh barrel, drink from it and seal it! Apart from meeting with Hrabal, Vaclav Havel was also present - and was the Czech President at that time, as were also the members of a family with whom Clinton had stayed in Prague during his Rhodes Scholarship days.
http://www.uzlatehotygra.cz/hoste_e.htm -
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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I do, I do.
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But its definitely a hobby and I'm not at all interested in consuming vast quantitiies.
During my youth in London I spent considerable substantial amounts of time with bookies, which required considerable pub time too.
But these days I like to explore all the infinite varieties available and also sharing notes with Evan.
I am somewhat interested in the fact that the brewery in the town where I live is closing shortly. It already belongs to some international cartel and they're simply ceasing production here. Its no terrible loss. Apparently after 5 beers the intestines cry halt and the beer is lost..
I'm just very tentatively thinking about what a brilliant small brewery it would make, with accommodation and a large beer hall..
Nicely situated on a quiet corner, with a duckpond, on the edge of a small town, which happens to be one of the most historic in the Czech lands - and one of the most touristed.
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pokydoke3 months, 3 weeks ago
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Unfortunately we don't get much Czech beer in these parts, just Pilsner Urquell in bottles. It would seem that the Czechs prefer draft beer and I couldn't agree more. My friends and I often travel to a pub about 30 miles from here because they have over 80 beers and ales on tap. They even have a Belgian Chimay on tap, mmmn.
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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I remember we had a very nice chat about your experiences - and something also about how VERY different Prague and the Czech lands have become. I was back just once during Communist times, in 1973, which was one of the darkest periods, when total control had been re-established after the optimism and then horrific suppression of 1968.
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When I returned in '92 there was still not so much change, but it gathered pace..
I remember in that year staying in a hotel in Ceske Budejovice - the latter word being Budweis in German, whence, of course Budweiser. There was a political conference in progress and the delegates were having breakfast, which included a couple of beers, andthey then headed into the Conference hall with as many beers as they could insert between their fingers..
This specific behaviour is less prevalent these days but our politicans can still behave extremely uncouthly - and frequently corruptly - -
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jimdoze3 months, 3 weeks ago
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What made beer so cherished was probably due to health reasons. In periods of plagues, water was probably the least safe beverage. Unbeknownst to people at that time, beer, because of the cooking process was sterilized. Thus, beer became a standard beverage, drunk by all.
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pokydoke3 months, 3 weeks ago
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Europe in general drank mostly fermented beverages because they lacked the parasites and pollutants that water did. In early America the people drank hard cider as opposed to water for the same reason. Johnny Appleseed planted root stock so that farmers could all have their own orchards. Most towns had a central cider mill and families would put up four to five fifty gallon casks of cider each year. We still make hard cider around here, we put it up in freshly emptied bourbon barrels from KY. The fermenting cider sits in the barrel for about 6 to 8 months then we bottle, good stuff.
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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Friday night is pub-night in the Czech lands.
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Some groups of guys [mostly - women might make their own groups too]meet together EVERY Friday over multiple decades.
One friend of mine who was gone for a long time in the US and in Australia returned some 30 years later and found "his"group still meeting at the same pub, with almost the identical composition.
The important point was this - apart from the participation in the "liquid bread" [one name that Czechs give to beer] - that pubs were very noisy, a hubbub of conversation, and therefore it was impossible for them to be effectively monitored by the authorities. Freedom of speech ruled for at least 1 evening per week. Of course the group had to know that all its members were trustworthy and this also was a factor in the unchanging composition of the groups.
I actually very seldom do Friday nights. I don't have a group here, though I was at the edge of one for a while - but then my link person left town. But in any case I'm quite aversive to smoke in enclosed spaces and I always go out with my partner so its a slightly different lifestyle.
Plus in general I prefer to approach beer from the quality point of view rather than from the quantity standpoint.
But once in a while a wild night of any kind is a salutary activity! -
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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Thirsty work this writing! Time to pour a dark yeasted Bernard - which means that a small dose of yeast is added to the bottle and it continues its work..
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Its also unpasteurised, which is a very important feature - a living beer, rather than an inert one..
Quite a good read here, re the Bernard dark:
http://thebrewclub.com/2009/06/24/two-dark-czech-l...
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