This is fourth year in a row Millstream has won a medal and the first for the John’s Generations White Ale. All of us at John’s are really excited that what started our 9 years ago as a little brewing project to celebrate our 50th anniversary has turned into such a success.

Relevant links:

• Great American Beer Festival
• Millstream Brewing
• More information about John’s Generations White Ale

Check out photos from the event.

If you missed out on the Iowa City Brewfest, there is still time to get tickets for the annual Brewnost at the National Czech and Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids. See the details here.

For starters, the perpetrator of the crime was either a complete novice at committing a robbery or was just really off his “A” game. He visited the store twice during the evening before he decided to demand money from the clerk and was even kind enough to purchase items during each visit. He was even nice enough to use his EBT card for one of the transactions. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology this was all recorded digitally in video and electronic receipts. When the robber finally got up the nerve to demand money from the clerk, our clerk said “NO!”. Looking at the video he seemed a little shocked at her response and instead of walking off with a big bag of loot he swiped a small bag of change off the counter.

The Iowa City Police didn’t have much of a problem tracking him down after showing his photo from our video footage to people at the Shelter House a few blocks north of the store. He was arrested within a few hours and charged with a Class B felony. What can future criminals learned from this incident?

• One, notice the cameras all around the place you are going to rob. There’s a good chance they are real and working.
• Two, don’t use a credit or debit card before you commit the crime. If it was stolen, you’ll just draw more attention to yourself. If it’s yours, think to yourself if you’ve really thought this whole life of crime thing through.
• Three, don’t tell a mother of a two year-old what to do. She is an expert at saying “no” and doesn’t like taking guff from anybody.
• Leave the gun at home.

Iowa City Press-Citizen coverage of the incident

Daily Iowan coverage of the incident

Currently, the only labels from the brewery that are available in Iowa are: Fat Tire Amber Ale, 1554 Brussels Style Black Ale, and the Mothership Wit.

Check out photos of the rollout

Visit Rick Steve’s blog

• Wednesday, May 21 Depart for Prague.
• Thursday, May 22 Arrive in Prague – Go to Plzeň, the Capital City of Beer, for a welcome dinner – overnight in Plzeň.
• Friday, May 23 Tour Pilsner Urquell Brewery & Museum. Time on your own to visit the historic sites of Plzeň. Dinner and overnight in Plzeň
• Saturday, May 24 Travel to The Chodovar Family Brewery in Chudová Planá, the oldest brewery in Western Bohemia. Try the optional spa treatments including soaking in a beer bath. Dinner and return to Plzeň for overnight.
• Sunday, May 25 Travel to Březnice to tour the Herold Březnice Castle Brewery and the Březnice Castle. Dinner. Overnight in Březnice.
• Monday, May 26 Travel to České Budĕjovice to tour the Samson Brewery and the world-famous Budvar Brewery. Dinner. Overnight in Český Krumlov.
• Tuesday, May 27 Free day to enjoy the sights and tour the castle of Český Krumlov. Optional visit to nearby Hluboka Castle. Overnight in Český Krumlov.
• Wednesday, May 28 Travel to Jaroslav Svoboda’s glass studio in the village of Karlov outside of ŽĎĂR nad Sázavou. Then on to visit the Želiv Monastery Brewery in Humpolec Želiv.
• Thursday, May 29 Travel to Prague. Optional city tour. On your own for sightseeing and shopping.
• Friday, May 30 Optional guided tour of The Musaion, folk museum. Farewell dinner.
• Saturday, May 31 Depart.

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!

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.

We did make a stop at the tourist information center where Doug picked up a pamphlet on an armory museum he would like to see. He asked the clerk where it was and she mapped it out on a map of the town. After lunch we decided to go find the museum as on the pamphlet it said it was open to 5 PM. After walking on the rough cobblestone for a quite a while we just could not find the museum. We went up and down twist streets, with our feet hurting more with each step and we could not find it. We went back to the information center and asked another clerk where the museum was and he pointed at the back of the pamphlet. The museum is in Prague. Today just wasn’t our day. At least we saw the sun all day. The first time the entire trip.

Tomorrow morning, after procuring another recharge card for our cell phone, we will be heading back to České Budějovice for our last brewery tour. Hopefully, we’ll get a straight answer from the Sampson brewery on who is the really the original Budweiser. Hint, it is not Budweiser Budvar.

View photos from today’s “sorry, we are closed” adventures.

We arrived in Želiv and easily found the monastery. The monastery dates back to 1149 which would make it the second oldest brewery in the world if it weren’t for the Communist-takeover in 1948. Much like an American microbrewery, much of the equipment in Želiv’s brewhouse is handmade. The fermenters and kettles are only two years old and they are producing three micro-brewed beers. They have a very limited capacity and are happy selling to local patrons and a couple specialty restaurants in Prague. Father Richard has been in talks with one the American importers we do a lot of business with and we are hopeful they can work out a deal for a very limited distribution in the States.

As a working Abbey with 7 priests in residence and 26 priests in the parish, the beers they produce are truly Abbey ales. The members of the Abbey are not in the Trappist order, but rather the Premonstrian order. Their flagship ale, Gottschalk, is named after Father Gottschalk who founded the abbey in 1149. We sampled it straight out of the secondary fermenter in its unfiltered glory. It is a dubbel with a rich chocolate character a significant hop bite. The brewmaster, who we chatted with through Father Richard, said they used a combination of Saaz and some other rare type of Czech hops whose name did not translate into anything Doug nor I was familiar with. Nonetheless, it was an awesome beer. The second beer we tried was a mixture of Gottschalk and Slovakian mead called Castulus. This drink had a bizarre aroma and made the Gottschalk even more drinkable while lending it a bit of sweetness and a thinner mouthfeel. Their third beer, which we did not sample, is a brew infused with sour-cherry.

After a quick lunch of soup and spaghetti with father Richard and his fellow priests and novices, we were given an incredible tour of the monastery. When you get up close and personal with the Czech and Slovak people, it is just incredible to imagine the tyranny they faced under the Communist regime. In 1948, the Communists gathered-up priests from around Czechoslovakia and imprisoned them here at the abbey for two years. Then, in 1950, they turned the monastery into a psychiatric facility. During the next 41 years, the Communists would destroy much of the original furniture and other religious artifacts in the buildings. Some very important pieces were smuggled out of the abbey and kept safely hidden by locals in their homes. Finally, in 1991 the psychiatric hospital was closed and the monastery was returned to the church.

Surprisingly, some areas of the monastery were left unharmed. Our tour of the building included the library, rectory, and several other significant rooms which had frescos that looked like they were recently conserved, but haven’t been touched since the 17th century. Other areas, like the main church, are undergoing extensive reconstruction with the help of the European Union. By the beginning of the next decade, this monastery will be one of Bohemia’s crown jewels.

Father Richard offered us their guest room in the cloister so we decided to spend the night with the brothers. After a few hours of kicking back in the abbey to “rest and reflect”, we attended the 52nd birthday of one of the priests in a nearby parish of the abbey. It has been a tradition for the past ten years on his birthday to have a smoked pig and Father Richard promised it would be very tasty. A lot of the priests at the abbey are Slovakian so instead of offering us the traditional Czech before-dinner shot of Becherovka, they gave us Slivovice (sp?) which is a pear brandy. It does not taste like Christmas and we’ll leave it at that. It was a very interesting night being surrounded by Czech and Slovak priests, brothers and the abbot of the monastery. Father Richard was kind enough to share many stories with us including the following:

When we woke up this morning, we knew we would be going to a monastery to sample some beer, but we had no idea we would end up being immersed this deeply in Czech/Slovak culture. Tomorrow, we will be driving south to Český Krumlov for a day of sightseeing.

View photos from today’s spiritual adventures.