John’s Grocery – The Blog

Tribune Media Services picked up this piece by Rick Steves, the popular travel writer and host of numerous PBS travel shows. He was in the Czech Republic in August and wrote a nice piece about beer in the Czech Republic.

Visit Rick Steve’s blog

Today was our last day in the Czech Republic. We were awoken by the door buzzer as a construction crew was going flat to flat trying to find out who parked their blue Skoda in the no parking spot out front. They needed to bring in their big crane and couldn’t get it through. We were driving a blue Skoda. To the other residents of Podvinny Mlyn 16, we are sorry for waking you up.

Our friend J.C. not only woke up this morning to the sound of the door buzzer, but also with a nasty cold so we decided to have a low-key day and forgo our hour and a half trip to Kunta Horna to see the bone church. Maybe next trip. Instead, Doug and I ventured back to the center of Prague to visit the Museum of Communism. We’ve been fascinated this whole trip with the personal stories people we’ve met have conveyed to us of their experiences living under the Communist regime. It was interesting to see an entire collection of items and stories about the 41 year Communist rule. We would highly recommend the museum to anyone who has an hour or two to spend in Prague’s center.

For lunch, we stopped at the Plzeňská Restaurace at the historic Obercnîm Domě. The restaurant was at time Pilsner’s Urquell’s largest beer hall in Prague. It has beautiful Art Nouveau architecture and traditional Czech food. It’s a bit pricy compared to the other traditional Czech meals we’ve had, but the ambiance is really nice and the food was great.

After the lunch, J.C. picked us up at a nearby metro station and took us about 30 minutes east to her weekend cottage in the Czech National Forest. A lot of Czechs keep a weekend or summer cottage which is handed down from generation to generation. The cottages are small and very rustic. Perfect to decompress after a busy week of working in the city.

Back in the city we prepared to fly home tomorrow and reflected on our experiences in the Czech Republic. For starters, we sampled 31 different beers totaling about 30 liters. Every beer we had, with the exception of an accidental non-alcoholic Radagast and a skunky bottled Budvar, has been excellent. Doug and I both agree that the B.B. Bürgerbraü strong dark lager was our all-around favorite. Straight from the lagering vessel in the cellars of the brewery, this beer had the most intensive malt flavor with wonderful smoked peat notes.

All along the way, we’ve been mapping out how we would plan the itinerary for the official May 2008 beer tour. The one thing we plan on adding that we didn’t get a chance to do on this expedition is a trip to a hop farm to see how hops are grown and harvested. We can say that this fact-finding mission has been a complete success. Our immersion in the Czech culture has taught us a lot that will come in great use when trying to lead a group of 20 beer enthusiasts around the Czech Republic.

See the last of our photos.

Na zdraví!

This morning we again awoke to the sun shining and left Český Krumlov and headed north 30 minutes to České Budějovice. Today, our objective was the Budějovický Měšťanský Pivovar (aka Samson Brewery) who brews B.B. Bürgerbräu. Unfortunately, the only map we had of the city didn’t have any street names (much like the streets themselves), so we ended up getting quite turned around in the city center trying to find the brewery. Eventually, we found a nice person who directed us to the brewery when Doug looked really lost and said “Sampson Pivovar?”.

The Samson brewery is the real “Original Budweiser”. The brewery is the city’s original community brewery who has the documents to prove that they predate Budweiser Budvar by ten years with a founding date of 1795. The brewery has been undergoing a good deal of renovation during the past ten years and more planned for the future.

As we talked with people from the brewery, we got this general feeling that they feel like the underdog against the bigger breweries. They have a capacity of 400,000 hectoliters but are currently only producing 150,000 and having to battle the bigger breweries like Pilsner Urquell and Budvar for each liter. Like some of the smaller breweries we’ve visited, they don’t have the cash required to buy on-premise accounts. Our host told us that a new restaurant down the block recently opened and Budvar paid the restaurant owner $70,000 to be the exclusive brewery for the restaurant. The small breweries just can’t compete in the big boy’s game.

On of the effects of Samson’s claim to be the original Budweiser is a ton of litigation with Budvar and Anheuser-Busch over the use of the term “Budweiser” or “Budweiss”. This has led the brewery to develop several different brands. They have three current brands, B.B. Bürgerbräu, 1795, and Samson. B.B. Bürgerbräu used to be known in the United States as Crystal until Miller Brewering sued them on cause that the beer might be confused with a Peruvian brand they owned by the name of Crystil. Um, yeah. B.B. Bürgerbräu is leagues better than Budvar. We sampled it straight from the closed stainless fermentation casks and found to be very malty with a dry crispness. The real treat was sampling their new strong dark beer they are brewing for the Nordic markets. The brew lagers for three months and has an incredible malty sweetness with a notable smoked peat flavor like you would find in some Scotch ales. We are crossing our fingers they can get it to America soon.

We left České Budějovice after a quick lunch of Indian food with our host from the brewery and headed back to Prague for a relaxing evening with our friend J.C..Tomorrow, we’ll be enjoying our last day in the Czech Republic visiting the center of Prague.

Check out today’s photos.