To recover from an intense holiday period back home in Belgium, I booked myself a short trip on my own in early January to the Czech Republic’s second largest city, Brno. For a bit longer than 48 hours, I wandered through the streets of this lovely town, which clearly had been under the Habsburg influence for many years, judging on the architecture of many buildings in the old town. I thought of it like a little Vienna even. Temperatures were south of zero, but the air was crisp, clean and ideal for walking around the city. Being in the homeland of the most widespread beer style in the world, I did some additional research to hopefully find something else than pilsners and other lagers. And luckily, beer aficionados are to be found everywhere, if only you look well enough!
In the late afternoon of my first day in the city, I made a quick stop at Brno’s most famous lager bar Výčep na stojáka. There they serve a classic Czech lager, brewed by brewery Beskydský pivovárek from the Beskidy mountains near the border with Poland and Slovakia. So what makes a lager typically Czech, you ask? Well, I’m not gonna dive too deep into the technicalities, but Czech lagers typically contain slightly elevated levels of diacetyl, which makes the beer creamy and filling. For most brewers, high diacetyl in beer is a proof of poor brewing and many beer geeks will put a beer aside, as soon as they perceive the typical butter or butterscotch aroma of diacetyl. In Central Europe however, diacetyl is not considered persona non grata that much and it is allowed in slight quantities. The specimen I drank was nicely creamy, unfiltered and a great afternoon break after a long walk through the January cold.
But my next stop was anything but traditionally Czech. Situated behind the main buildings of the Masaryk University, there is the lively, gentrified neighbourhood Veveří with nicely renovated streets and parks and also quite a few bars and restaurants. My research brought me to the JBM Brew Lab Pub, a small little pub with a chalk board and an improvised merchandising stand with t-shirts and beer bottles from… Belgium. Everywhere you can find fans of the sour warriors of Brouwerij Alvinne, it seems. I was the only person in the bar and after ordering a tasting set of 5 tiny beers, I struck up a conversation with the bartender. We got talking and he told me different stories, amongst which a tale about how he ended up at a very niche and rather primitive sounding beer festival for spontaneous fermentations in Lithuania, where the rituals resemble those of tribal pantheistic religions. We also talked about how Czechs are quite conservative beer drinkers and how it is really hard to get them away from the lagers and try a different flavour. Price is one reason, but the tradition and pride most Czechs take in their (we have to be honest) great lagers is the real problem. That’s also one of the reasons why craft beer places outside of the capital Prague have a hard time staying above the water. But at JBM, things seem to be going in the right direction.
So the beer then. In my tasting set of 5 beers, I had 3 Czechs and 2 Estonian beers (both from Pohjala). The Antošův ležák was a decent enough lager, but the other 2 Czechs were really nice. Date:l from the Ostrava-based brewery Pivovar HoppyDog was a wonderful sour delight. It was a pretty light winter ale brewed with dates and salt from the Himalayas. Before aging the beer in oak barrels, they added some lactose and after some aging, the result was a silky soft, fruity drink which is comparable to a really nice wine. The other Czech beer was the very nice West Coast IPA Lollihop of brewery Sibeeria from Prague. With its nice aromas of the Citra and Mosaic hops, this well-balanced beer has a light body and is very easy to drink. It really is a great example in its style, thanks to the intense grapefruit aromas and lingering hoppy bitterness. Yum!
So it’s safe to say that there is something else to drink in the Czech Republic than lager. You only have to look for it really well. And when you’re at it in Brno, hop in at JBM’s, if you had enough of the lagers for a while. Na zdraví.
JBM Brew Lab Pub
Grohova 113/17 602 00 Brno-střed Czech Republic
