John’s Grocery - The Blog

We made it. After a six hour layover in Frankfurt to catch a flight into Prague, we have arrived out of our friend’s residence in a residential neighborhood of Prague. A relatively quick taxi ride through the back streets of the city revealed a city that still has two faces almost twenty years after the fall of Communism. At one turn you can find a city with clean office, residential and beautiful historical buildings. You then turn down another road and see the grungy decaying legacy of the Communists.

Despite our bodies not having a clue what time it was, we still managed to muster enough energy to walk over to a restaurant with our friend J.C. and have a couple beers and good Czech food. I couldn’t tell you what exactly either Doug or I ate, but I do know my meal involved chicken and rich cream sauce with some scalloped potatoes. Doug ate something breaded, perhaps pork. It was a long day of travel so anything that wasn’t served wrapped in plastic was a welcome site.

There are quite a few beer enthusiasts out there, who don’t feel that Czech beer is anything special. Sure, they recognize that Pilsner-style lager is the most popular beer style the world over and that the style originated in the Bohemian city of Plzen. But is that something to get excited over when Belgium boasts the most distinctive styles of beer. You don’t hear about too many American beer geeks getting excited about finding a bottle of Czech beer from some unknown regional producer, but you tell them we just received a shipment of new Belgian farmhouse ales and their eyes light up like its Christmas.

So, what is so special about Czech beer? Well, for starters it is very dear to our hearts. Doug and I are descendants of Czech immigrants who immigrated to the United States with the desire to settle in Iowa in 1868. So, just like a kolache, a decent pastry by all standards and worthy of a festival or two, Czech beer connects us to our past. Pilsner, and Pilsner-style beer (we have to acknowledge the significance of the Pilsner appellation), is also just a very quaffable beer.

Well-made Pilsners and Pilsner-style lagers have a legendary crispness that makes them so easy to drink while also having a full body and tons of flavor. There is a reason that the enormous brewery boom of the late 19th century in America was led by German and Czech immigrants where they made the tasty lager beer of their homeland and sold it by the wagon-load to their fellow thirsty immigrants. What happened to the those great American breweries is another posting.

One of our goals with this trip to the “beer fatherland” is to try and find some unique Czech brews that are a bit off the beaten path. Perhaps we’ll find some new and exciting high gravity lagers or maybe even a rare ale. Who knows. It’s an adventure.

In mid-March 2007 Doug “the bier guy” and his brother Mike will be traveling to back to the homeland. Unlike their 1999 Drunken European Vacation, this trip is a bit more business in nature. First, they will be investigating some new exciting Czech beer import potentials from smaller breweries in Bohemia. Second, they will be gathering information to prepare for a trip in 2008 where they will lead a contingent of fellow Czech beer lovers from Iowa with help from the National Czech-Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids.

Some of the exciting places they hope to visit include a beer spa where they will get to literally bath in a tub full of beer. It’s not like they couldn’t facilitate that kind of craziness now with the vast quantities of beer at their disposal, but there is a certain cool factor to consider at the thought of a place that specializes in that type of craziness. Another stop will be Klášterní pivovar Želiv. Situated in the heart of Bohemia, this abbey brewery claims to make Trappist-style ales. We just have to visit the monks and sample their brews to see if they are worthy to sit on our sacred shelves near the real Trappist ales like Rochefort and Orval.

We also have plans to make a pilgrimage to České Budějovice to visit with BB Bürgerbräu and perhaps that other brewery in that historic brewing city. We are also excited to be making a trip to the Sahm glass factory to see how all those beer glasses we sell are manufactured.

Come back and visit this blog between March 18 and March 29 to see where we’ve been and where we’ll be next.