Monday, February 9, 2009

A Welcome Break

I gave myself an extended weekend, took last Thursday and Friday off. I wasn't planning to get out of Prague or do anything special, I just decided to take a couple of days off and enjoy laying in my bed longer than normal.

The laying in bed plan was partly because on Wednesday night I had arranged to meet with the brewer of Everards in the UK, who was over in Prague for a few days with his wife. So Mrs Velkyal and I spent the evening at Pivovarský klub enjoying their company and various rather nice beers - my personal favourite was the American IPA made by Pivovarský dům.

During Wednesday night we arranged to meet up on the Thursday for a guided tour of some of Prague's brewpubs, which actually turned out to be just Pivovarský dvůr Chýně and U Medvídků, where we went up to the brewery part of the pub and sat dranking their excellent Oldgott Barrique, whilst watching a fresh batch being made - that was certainly fun! I also learnt that it is actually possible to talk for 9 hours straight about beer, and after we had gone our seperate ways I went to U Slovanské Lípy for some Kout na Šumavě lagers - as you can imagine, Friday was spent generally recovering at a very slow pace.

Drinking with a professional brewer is definitely something I would recommend, especially when you have heard people raving about a particular beer and then the professional highlights a couple of problems with the beer, and their possible causes, as happened in Chyně. Plus with Everard's being one of the larger regional breweries in the UK it was interesting to get a different view on the tie than I have heard from most people, a subject I have been mulling over and will no doubt come back to.

3 comments:

  1. Hey Al! Nice to hear that you finally made it out to Chyne. :) Looking forward to reading about it.

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  2. I have to admit I wasn't overly impressed. Poor service and beer which really didn't do anything for me.

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  3. We had very bad luck with Chýně the other day. Beers weren't in top form and the service was crap... though at least we got seriously undercharged. When that happens to me, I always let the service know immediately. This time they deserved it. I'll take you there again, this time I'll try to make sure that the Krčma is open.

    On a more pleasant note, it was great being able to meet and talk to Mark at such length. It was very interesting to see things from a different perspetive without putting up with marketing or PR bollocks. Many are those who malign industrial brewers, but they fail to understand that they are a business and not art.

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