Improvements

The first time I drank a beer from Platan, I don't remember which, I didn't like it, and the same happened the second and third times. Each at a different place, which I no longer remember.

Not long ago, and I also can't remember when or where, I noticed something had changed. It wasn't the same beer, it had improved considerable. What before seemed something made without much care, now had become a well brewed beer.

One day, at the place where I buy my case of Svijany, I realised that they also carry Platan 11%, so I decided to buy a couple of bottles to drink at home. The following day, while I was making dinner, I opened the bottle I had left in the fridge to share it with my wife and take my notes.

When pouring we have a light golden color beer that topped with a generous head and with low carbonation. It doesn't tell much to the eyes, really. The beer actually starts talking the nose. What it says is intense and rather interesting for a beer of its kind, I felt honey and something like cooked cream and cereals, all with a mild citrus and mint background. It goes in with the same honey notes, that actually never get to be too sweet, they have more like a cereal-like texture. I felt hardly any bitterness at the beginning, but little by little and with a lot of work the bitterness gains in intensity and dominate the finish with not very strong citrus notes. It's not a beer that blew my mind, I don't see it as ever becoming a favourite, but it is a good alternative to the hoppier Svijanský Ritýř that I usually drink.

Who was actually fascinated by Platan 11% was my wife. She isn't a big fan of very hoppy beers, and she liked this one a lot. So, it has become part of the usual rotation at home.

Personally, what I liked the most about this unpretentious beer is that it represents that overall improvement of Pivovar Protivín's game.

Na Zdraví!

For all tastes

So let's see. It's not far from Prague (about an hour and a half by car), yet far from the umbrella following herds. It's located in a beautiful place, a promontory overlooking the confluence of the Vltava and Otava rivers, surrounded by thick forests and with spectacular views of the cliffs by the rivers. It's ideal for a day trip with children or partner, the place is pretty quiet and romantic. If we add to all this the brewpub located at about 500m from the entrance of Zvíkov Castle, we can say we have an almost perfect trip.


Zvikovksý Hrad is full of history and legend. It's almost a fairy tale castle. There is a tall tower next to the gates, gardens, a fairly well preserved main structure and the rest in elegant ruins.

The castle was established in the 13th century by none other than Otakar II and, until Karlštejn was finished, it served as royal castle and depository of the crown jewels. After that, the it went through many hands until it started to fall into disrepair, so much so that part of the main building fell to the river. During the 19th century, after being "rediscovered", it was partially restored.

For those used to the splendor and opulence of some of the more famous Czech castles and palaces, the interiors of Zvíkov might seem a bit empty and spartan. The furnishing is scarce and, except for some frescoes and the impressive wood carved chapel, there are few works of art that can be seen. All this, though, give the castle a lot of atmosphere. Almost as much as the legends around it, like the one that claims that the crown jewels are still there, buried somewhere. Or what about those mysterious carvings on one of the walls of the black tower, the oldest part of the complex?

Last time I went it was one of those gloriously sunny autumn days. The gardens were carpeted with fallen leaves and invited you to sit down and relax, but also to roam around and look over the battlements to admire the magnificent view.

One of the best things about Zvíkov is that, unlike at every other castle and palace I've visited so far, there is no need to follow a guide. After paying an entrance fee of 50CZK you are given a laminated piece of paper with the history of the castle, and just walk around the rooms as you please while reading the information plaques found in each of them. Also, you can make as many photos as you like of anything you fancy. Brilliant.

And there is also Pivovarký Dvůr Zvíkovský Podhrady. Actually a complex that includes a brewery, restaurant, hotel and bakery.

The restaurant is pretty nice, with very hight ceilings and big windows that make it very luminous. It is dominated, as usually in brewpubs, by two copper kettles; but also by a massive grill above wich there is an equally massive chimney.

The prices of food and beer are a bit higher than at other brewpubs and breweries I've visited out of Prague. The price of a pint last time I went was 31.50CZK, which would be fine in Prague, yet here, in the middle of nowhere CZ it's a bit high. To give you an idea, at the restaurant of the Svijany brewery a pint will go for 17CZK, same price you will pay at Berounský Medvěd. Same can be said about the food. Though, to be fair, the place is a little more stylish than the above mentioned.

Money matters aside, Zvíkovské Pivo is VERY good. They usually offer three, Zlatá labuť 11%, an unfiltered golden lager with sweet green apple and herbal notes and a lovely bitter finish. Zlatá labuť 13% tmavé, which is one of my favourite Czech black beers. It's nose is full of coffee with sugar and the coffee is what dominates the palate followed by a finish full of caramel and herbal notes. Simply gorgeous. And Rarášek, a top fermented, maybe wheat beer, with mild banana, cinnammon and vanilla all supported by subtle ginger (which is said to be part of the recipe). A fantastic summer drink.

You can also buy bottles to take home. They are all very nice, but the price is outrageously high (100CZK for one) considering that they contain the same beers they have on tap. Except for the 26° Královská Zlatá labuť, a very strong lager brewed for almost a year and that comes in an elegant half litre bottle, together with small cordial like glasses, all packed in a good looking wooden case for the price of 1000CZK. I had a bit of it on tap once, and was not very impressed, but maybe is the kind of beer that expresses itself better after some time in a bottle.

Anyway, I really recommend you to go there and see it for yourself. The castle alone is well worth the trip. If we add to that the lovely beers, it's a nobrainer.

Wonderful month

What a great beer month April was! I tasted several completely new beers for me, some of them very, very good. Also, I found a new favourite place where to drink them in Zlý Časy, a pub I will sure visit very often.

So it was hard to decide which would the beer of this month. The new ones also had to compete with some old friends like X33, in its new batch, Tmavé 14° from U Bulovky and my dear Svijanský Rytíř in its bottled version (if you like hoppy golden lagers, this one is sure to please you).

So, allow me to make a round-up of the new beers. At least the ones that I liked the most. Starting with Vandorf Rauchweizen. I didn't know what to expect from this beer, but I loved that it wasn't trying to be a copy of Schenklerka Rauchweizen. It is a completely different beer, and a very recommendable one at that, though I would have liked the smoked notes a bit more intense.

Pivovarský Dům presented us with, not one, but three novelties (well, two and a half). The desítka, brewed on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the famous brewpub in Ječna. Something like their wonderful Ležák's little sister but with a personality of its own, lovely. The second one was the Original Stout. A very dark top fermented beer with a great body, as it should be. It had a very dry taste dominated by intense roasted cocoa, all supported by almost ethereal coffee and caramel notes. Superb. The second and a half was the much awaited Křižíkova 17°. The name is not capricious, it refers to the address of Pivovarský Klub, and was only tapped at the Temple in Karlín. It had been already two years since it had been last brewed. I was quite excited about it since it was the first beer I drank on that day when I went into the Klub for the first time. A rich golden beer with a compact head. In its aromas I felt tropical fruit, syrup to the point when it starts to become caramel and some cream. A lovely body and mouth-feel dominated by fruit and some vanilla notes. The finish is dry, bitter and long. It stays with you as if wanting to take you for a walk.

By the end of the month I was able to taste Dobřanský Dragoun, from Pivovar Modra Hvězda Dobřany. An amber brewed at 16°balling that would go down a bit too easily.
But of all of them, the one that really blew my mind was Kavové (coffee) Speciál from Harrach. A dark amber fermented at 13°balling. Its nose is dominated by black coffee, very strong and with a lot of sugar. The taste is, I could say, complex; a caleidoscope of fruit, citrus and herbs that never manage to overwhelm the bitter coffee notes, which is what remains in the finish. Simply and wonderfully delicious.

Of course, I can't forget the Italians, specially that wonder of craft brewing that is Chocarrubica. A beer that really fascinated me and that I would love to drink again some day.

But not everything was sunny. Pepřové Pivo from Opat could have been something innovative, maybe brilliant, but it was only halfway there. Pivovar Broumov comitted a sin common many Czech breweries that want to start using non traditional ingredients, timidity. I'm of the idea that if a consumer decides to order or buy a beer with honey, spices, fruit, herbs (as was the case with Černé s Puškvorcen -black with calamus- from Zábřeh), that is what they want to feel in their beer, and not just an aroma or a mild note. As attempts, they are always welcome, but they should be a bit more daring.

Which one then to choose as beer of the month? Well, I should certainly give the award to Chocarrubica. However, as the good adoptive nationalist that I am, I can't give it to an imported beer, so it goes to Harrach's Kavové Speciál.

Na Zdraví!

April was impressive in quality, but in terms of quantity it was a bit modest. I only had 21 different beers. Which brings the total for 2008 to 133.

The Session #15: seeing the light

A bit late, but better than never.
Boak and Bailey wanted to know what turned people into beers lovers, what was their moment of epiphany. I know i should have posted yesterday, but, didn't have time, sorry... I hope you don't mind....

It's pretty hard to say exactly when I became a beer lover. I've always liked beer, all my life. I remember my parents giving me a sip of theirs when I was very little, the doctor had told them it was fine.

But beer in Argentina meant pretty much only one thing: Quilmes. They are the ones who made people in Argentina start drinking beer, and that was pretty much all I drunk until the early 90's.

That was when the floodgates opened and all this imported beers started to show up everywhere. Most of them I have forgotten, and some of them make me feel embarrassed when I remember that I thought they were very good, Budweiser and Carlsberg come to mind. Soon they vanished and it was all back to Quilmes and, now Heineken, that had started brewing in Argentina. That was just for a short time, soon appeared Brahma (a Brazilian brand, the other half on InBev), as rubbish as Quilmes and a bit later, Isenbeck.

Isenbeck was probably the first step. They came boasting about the German Purity Law thing, which was something short of a revelation to all of us. Now I might find the purity law as something that makes no sense, but there and then, in a country where the most popular beer (in 1996 Quilmes had 76% market share and was already declining by then) was brewed using who knows what, something that told you what they used, and convinced you that it was the way beer should be made, was an eye opener. Needless to say, the difference in quality could be, and still can be easily felt.

Also during the 90's I travelled quite a bit. Everywhere I went I would try to taste as many different beers as possible. What always amazed me of some of the countries I visited was the variety. You went to a supermarket or bottle shop and you would find tens of different beers, while in Argentina just a handful (microbrewers where something most of us hadn't heard of back then). All of this wasn't done with a critical eye. I would like or not like a beer and that was it.

Six years ago, I moved here to Prague. I'd had some contact with Czech beers before, Budvar and Pilsner Urquell, and I loved them from the first sip. I always found them different than the mass produced stuff I drank everywhere else. At first those were the ones I would mostly drink, simply because they were the ones most widely available. At some point, two things happened, I found a pub that stocked Svijany and I started with a client that was next door to Pivní Galerie. Those two events made me start exploring smaller Czech regional breweries and I soon realised that in many cases their beers were more interesting than the better known ones. Which in turn made me pay closer attention to the brewpub phenomenon.
I'll never forget that first pint of Svijanský Rytíř that I had at the namesake pub. If I really had to say what got me started, I would say that it was that moment, though I think it was more an "evolutionary" process thanks to my natural beer curiosity.

If you want to read more beer epiphanies, don't miss Boak & Bailey's excelent round-up of The Session.

Mamma Mia!

To many the phrase "Quality Italian Beer" might be an oxymoron. The very small Italian beer market (30l/person/year) is dominated by mass produced eurolagers. However, at least in the regions of Piemonte and Lombardia, of eternal wine tradition, there seems to be a craft brewing revolution.

Evan rail was there not long ago and wrote a couple of post in his blog about it (check it here and here). He also brought me a couple of samples, for which I thank him from the bottom of my belly.

We tasted the first one together when he and his wife came to see our new house. Demon Hunter is called, brewed by Birrificio Montegiocco. It comes in a 750ml bottle, wrapped in elegant green paper. The presentation is flawless. According to what was written on the wrapping, the beer wants to be a Belgian style ale. Bottle fermented, brewed with water, barley and wheat malts, sugar and hops, and has a more than respectable 8.5%ABV.

In the glass we have a rich amber beer, almost brown actually, very cloudy and that doesn't make much of a head. Still, it looks pretty nice. In the nose I felt mostly syrup, fruit (peach?) and yeasts that provide some acidic notes. It starts very well when drinking it, there are some mellowy notes very well combined with the fruit, the finish is mostly acidic, almost expected from a beer that in my opinion aims at being a secular abbey beer. These not at all unpleasant acidic notes gain in intensity as the bottled is emptied and the sediments fall into the glass. The discordant note is given by a not very well integrated alcohol.

I didn't dislike Demon Hunter, but I wasn't crazy about it either. It's a nice attempt, but the expectations generated by the presentation and the high price are not quite met by the beer itself.

The second one, which I shared with my beloved, was Chocarrubica, from Birrificio Grado Plato (funny that no Plato graduation isn't seen anywhere). The label says that it is a dark ale brewed with carob and cocoa seeds, and that's pretty much it. It is also bottle fermented and has an ABV of 7%. When pouring it down we have a seriously black beer of very thick aspect, crowned by a very tanned spongy head. I was fascinated by its nose. There was some fruit that I could not identify, followed by roasted cocoa and nuts. You can feel perfectly each of those aromas. I really liked it a lot. And I liked it even more when drinking. Bitter cocoa is what predominates, followed by some tropical fruit and nuts, all supported by mild sweetness. The finish is long and dry, leaving a very interesting spicy aftertaste. A wonderful beer, among the most interesting I've ever tasted.

Like the Demon Hunter, comes in a 750ml bottle, and has a very stylish presentation. On both labels you can see the recommended temperatures for serving, 11°/13°C for Chocarrubica, 6°/8° for Demon Hunter (the latter also has recommended temperatures from keeping, 4°/6°C, something I had never seen on a beer before).

Both beers are perfect examples of the trends in Italian craft brewing. They aim at a gourmet market. According to what Evan told me, all beers come only in 750ml bottles. Many are sold at luxury restaurants as well as at specialist or deli shops. All beers are made with ingredients of the highest quality, and their goal is to compete with wines. Pretty ambitious.

Italian craft brewers have turned a disadvantage, the lack of beer tradition in their country, into and advantage, they haven't got any traditions to follow and respect, and they are coming out with very creative products. They are playing with ingredients (flowers instead of hops) and processes (oxidising) that few others would dare to use. And they seem to be doing quite well. Is maybe this the path craft brewers from Spain or Latin America should follow? At least in Argentina, most craft breweries seem happy to make beers according to well established styles. But recently a "yerba mate" beer has come out in Brazil, and two have Grape Beers have been announced in Argentina. If they become successful, will this be the signal needed by the very talented craft brewers from these countries in order to start expressing their creativity to the maximum?

Evan, thanks again for the beers. I hope you've enjoyed the bottle of Švestkové I gave you. Not the same, but didn't have anything else at hand....

Na Zdraví!

Short news

I've got little time, but I still wanted to post something before the month is over.

As I had promised myself I would do, I stopped by Zlý Časy. And, as it had been anticipated, they were tapping those three beauties from Zvíkov. While I was enjoying every drop of my pint of Rarášek (which was followed by a gorgeous pint of Tmavé 13°), the onwer told me that, taking advantage of the national holiday on Thursday and the de facto holiday on Friday, he will go to Karlovarksý Kraj on a tour of brewpubs, with the intention of bringing a few samples to tap at his hospoda. The excuse, the official opening of their patio on Saturday.

There will be beers from Sokolov, Chýše, Velký Ribník, Forman and maybe more, at least one sample from each. Most of these beers have never seen the light in Prague, and that is a very good excuse to make your way to Nusle this Saturday afternoon. Those who miss it, might not have a second chance, at least not anytime soon, since they want to sell everything that day. Unfortunately, I am going to be one of those who won't make it there, which makes me a bit sad. But things aren't so bad. For next week they have in the pipeline three beers from Herold (Golden Lager, Granát and Tmavé). And that is not too shabby.

So my friends, if you are in Prague on Saturday and fancy doing and drinking something different, take trams 11, 18 or 24 to Nám. Batrří Symku. The party begins at 2PM

Zlý Časy
Čestmírova 390/5
140 00 Praha-Nusle

Good times

A Pilsner Urquell sign is not likely to make me walk in, a Staropramen sign is enough to make me walk away. What I'm I doing then in Nusle, metres from Nám. Bratří Synků walking into a dive with both signs at the door? What I'm doing going down the dark stairway even after having seen a flag of Beck's, the German version of Stella Artois? The answer is easy. Zlý Časy (Evil Times) doesn't stock Staropramen anymore, they stopped doing it because they were tired of the pressure of InBev's local minion, and because they got tired of selling the subpar beers from Smíchov.

That is in itself good news, but not good enough to make me walk in. Now the phrase "Bohatý výběr piv" (wide assortment of beers) is. You will be excused to take the wide assortment bit with a pinch of salt, but in the Czech Republic there aren't many places where you will find more than two or three beers, usually from the same brewery or group. Here we have five to choose from, two or three of which rotating just like at Pivovarský Klub.

But before talking anymore about the beers, let me tell you about the place.

It is located in a dark cellar. The hall is rather small, no more than 10 tables. The decoration is like at many other neighbourhood hospody. Old advertising posters, bric-a-brac of all sorts (old radios and tellys, etc). Dark wood tables and chairs and benches on the walls. The atmosphere reminded me of "U Pětníka" (a pub in Prague 6 where I used to go too often for my own good at the times that Staropramen was still a decent beer). That made me feel very comfortable from the beginning. It brought (rather foggy) memories of the many good times I spent at that pub with friends.

The food is also typical hospoda. I've been there twice for lunch. On my first visit I ordered Svíčkova na smetaně, one of my favourites of česká klásika. This time, however, it was nothing to write home about. The roasted meat was dry and stringy and the cream and root vegetable sauce didn't have enough of those sweet and sour flavours that I so much like. On the second visit I ordered the guláš of the day. Here things improved. For starters, it was not served with the usual bread knedlíky, but with very tasty and house made bramboráčky. The meat was really tender and the sauce was spicy enough. Very good, really.

Of course both lunches were washed down with beer(s). On the first visit, apart from the regulars, Kácov 10° & 12°, they were tapping Opat Pepřové (pepper beer) and Vandorf Kocour Rauchweizen. The former, another attempt of Pivovar Broumov to come out with something new and original, but, just as with last month's medové, it fell short. It actually felt more pepper scented than flavoured. Fine to drink with the Svíčkova, but not so to have another pint. The latter, the Rauchweizen, was really good, on the sweet side and with a lot of banana notes. The smoked element was like some background music in the flavours and aromas. I liked it a lot. As far as I know, this beer was making its debut in Prague. Pivovar Vandorf Kocour is a new enterprise of Honza Kočka, the person responsible for the web page Svět Piva, the Beer Christmas Market and my finding this pretty cool hospoda. Honza also writes Pražské Pivnice (Prague's Beerhalls), a weekly column in the free daily 24.

On my second visit they were tapping Kácov 12° Kvasnicové, which I had already tasted at U Klokočníka. And actually, at Zlý Časy they tap it much better.

I mentioned that to the owner, who is also one of the waiters and a pretty friendly bloke, and he was glad to hear it. It was he who told me the reasons why they had stopped stocking Staropramen. He also told me that after they are done with the last few kegs of Pilsner Urquell they still have, he won't buy it anymore. He supports regional or micro breweries, and he wants to sell those beers only. In fact, on Monday (28/4) he will be receiving a delivery of three beers from Zvíkov: Zlatá Labuť 12°, Zlatá Labuť 13° Černé and Zvíkovský Rarášek, the last two were among my favourites of last year. Of course I will stop by there to enjoy them.

It made me really happy to see that there are people who support real Czech beer, and that want to offer their clients something different and, probably also, more risky. With Pivovar Bašta a couple of blocks from there and U Klokočníka y První Pivní Tramvaj (I promise a post about this one soon) a few tram stops away, Prague 4 is starting to become a nice beer destination in the Czech capital. I really hope more hospody will follow soon.

Are the times changing?

Zlý Časy
Čestmírova 390/5
140 00 Praha-Nusle