An Out of Prague Pilgrimage

I was in Prague last week for a few days.

When I mentioned to a friend that I was going to be in Amsterdam for a conference in the middle of November, he pointed out that I may as well make use of the whole being in Europe anyway thing and hop over to Prague. Naturally I agreed entirely, and so did my best friends, one that lives in Slovakia and the other in Boston.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time in the last few months trying to decide what breweries and pubs I definitely wanted to get to, and often it came down to a choice of 2 for an out of town excursion, Únětice or Hostomice. I even considered the possibly of doing both in a single day, then looked at the logistics of public transport and train connections...um, yeah, no. It is a mere 60km, or 37 miles, from one to the other, but it would take 4 hours by public transport and train, so no. The deciding factor was the fact that Hostomice has a brewery tap in Prague itself, so we got the metro to Dejvická and bus 355 to Únětice, Na Parcelách, wandered down the hill a wee bit and stumbled into the cavernous, and practically empty on a Wednesday night brewery beer hall.

We didn't care that it was empty, only that it was open. Also need to give a shout out to the ticket inspector that we met on the way. For those who remember Prague ticket inspectors of the Noughties, you will understand the cognitive dissonance of a younger guy who was polite, helpful, and when my Czech ran out, spoke good English. My best mate that came up from Slovakia speaks very good Slovak, but as the Czech Republic and Slovakia drift further apart in terms of shared tv channels and the like, it seems fewer and fewer young Czechs readily understand Slovak. Anyway, having checked our main tickets on the metro, he then got on the bus out to Únětice, for which we had got the required additional ticket. I seem to recall him nodding appreciatively when we told him we were going to the brewery.

Any way, back to the brewery beer hall - sorry but terms like "taproom" or "pub" just don't do justice to central European beer halls, even though they serve the same purpose. I fully expected to sit down and order a half litre of 10° pale lager, yet my heart leapt when I saw the magic word "tuplák", which in Germany would be called a maß. My first beer in Únětice would be a litre of their desítka, and I knew right then that many of my favourite US made Czech style lagers would struggle for my attention when I got home.

If I remember rightly from a conversation with Evan Rail, recently the venerable 10° has been overtaken as the most commonly drunk Czech pale lager, usurped by it's stronger brother the 12°. My mate that lives in Slovakia and I though are devotees of the old school and love desítka, Únětice's is as classic a classic as you could ask for, and I may have wondered out loud more than once why it is that US made 10° lagers for all their trumpeting of authenticity and faithfulness to Bohemian beer just consistently fall a little short of the real thing, and that includes those that take the time to do decoction mashing, etc, etc. Maybe it's a sitz im leben thing, I really can't tell, and maybe it is ostalgic (not a typo) revelry on my part, maybe it's the firm 30+ IBUs that are crammed into the best Czech desítky? 

I am sure I followed the tuplák with another, this time with the filtered 10.7°, and then eventually the 12°, I wasn't taking notes, and clearly as the only 2 pictures I took are on this post, I was doing a shoddy job of thinking about blog content. That just wasn't the point of the visit, we were there to enjoy absolutely world class beer in supreme company. I do regret though not taking a picture of the game pâté that was a revelation, various forms of meat products and Czech bread were to be a feature of the trip.

Anyway, if you're ever in Prague, take the time to make the trip out to Únětice for some of the best beer on the planet and if meaty snacks with rye bread are your thing, that too.

Year of Czech...Snacks

I wish I could remember where I read it, I thought it might be Vinepair, but I can't find the article there. Apparently 2023 is to be the "year of Czech beer" in the context of the writer discussing Schilling's very respectable polotmavý ležák, Augustin.

That phrase "year of Czech beer" had me conflicted however. On the one hand, yes I would love to see more traditional Bohemian style beers, whether světlé, polotmavé, or tmavé, at whatever strength category is in order, lehké (8° or less), výčepní (8°-10°), ležák (11°-12°), speciální (13°+), or porter if it's dark and over 18°. On the other hand, I dread the market being swamped with second rate brews, trading on the popularity/trendiness of Czech beer, a pale lager hopped with Saaz does not a Bohemian pilsner make, neither yet does adding a slug of Carafa to your "pilsner" recipe make a tmavé.

Inevitably, along with screeds about how Czech beer is the IT beer of 2023 will come the "hanger-on" content around what foods pair with what beers, how the Lukr tap is "traditional" (retro-revival is far more accurate), and the mythological dumping of beer by the good citizens of Pilsen that is claimed to be the catalyst for the advent of Pilsner Urquell.

What I would love to see though in all the inevitable content, is an appreciation of broader Czech pub culture and the kind of things you are likely to see or get in a Czech boozer - preferably one outside of Prague 1, 2, and the posh bits of 3. In particular it would thrill my heart to walk into a brewpub that is showcasing a triple decoction světlý ležák, hopped to the nines with Saaz, open fermented, extensive horizontal lagering, and be able to order an "utopenec" or "drowned man". 

Utopenci (plural here, hence change in spelling) are pickled sausages, served with a slice or two of rye bread, some of the onions from the pickling liquor, and a good dollop of mustard. They were one of my absolute favourite bar snacks when I lived in Czechia, usually fished out of a great jar behind the bar, and served with little ceremony. In my unhumble opinion you need to get out of Prague altogether to find truly great utopenci, from memory the ones I had in Velké Hamry were superb. In a fit of ostalgia (not a typo) last year I decided to make my own...

The method itself is pure simplicity, split some spicy sausages, in this case Hungarian style smoked paprika sausages from Wegmans, slice a couple of onions and Hungarian wax peppers, layering them in a clean container with an airtight lid. For the brine I made a mixture of white vinegar, salt, a tiny bit of sugar, along with a bay leaf, a few allspice berries, and some black peppercorns, boiled it for a few minutes then let it cool to blood temperature. Once the brine had cooled, pour it over the sausages, onions, and peppers, and seal up your container, then put it in the fridge for a couple of weeks to mature. Some recipes include thinly sliced chili peppers, but I didn't have any, so I didn't use them. The great thing about peasant snacks is recipes are wonderfully flexible depending on what is in your cupboard.

Another gastronomic treasure to be found in many a Czech pub is nakládaný hermelín, which really means "marinated heremlín", "hermelín" is a soft cheese in the mold of brie. Evan Rail best described it in his article for Vinepair as "a type of gooey, marinated soft cheese that serves as a popular beer snack in the atmospheric beer halls of Prague". Again, this is something that Mrs V and I make fairly often, even though, as the article notes, here in central Virginia we have to replace the hermelín with brie.

As you can see from the picture, the brie is split in half, and a paste of garlic and paprika, add a little cayenne if you like a touch of heat, is smeared on the revealed cheese. The halves are then put back together and stacked in a sterile glass jar with onions and wax peppers, lots of onions - I think we used 4 large ones in this batch. Added to jar are a couple of bay leaves, some allspice berries, and black peppercorns - are you seeing a flavour theme here yet? The jar is then filled with oil, the blandest, most neutral oil you can find, and left to sit in the fridge for 10 days to 2 weeks. What comes out of the jar is an unctuous, pungent cheese that spreads easily on a slab of rye bread, best enjoyed with a half litre of whatever style of Bohemian beer is your fancy that day.

Bread...the staff of life, and Czech bread, chleb, in particular is something I loved. The standard loaf in Czechia is a dense, brown rye bread, that sticks to your ribs, and goes with absolutely everything. I never understood expats who didn't like it, and I even knew one who had his friends from the UK bring British bread over when they came to visit. Anyway, Czech bread looks kind of like this version I baked last year:

Another of my favourite pub snacks in Czechia is half a loaf of this kind of bread, sliced most of the way through, served warm, and with a pot of škvarková pomazánka, basically an egg, gherkin, and mustard spread that includes "škvarký" - the cooked, unrenderable bits left over from making lard from belly pork. This video shows the process far better than I can explain it, suffice to say it is fecking delicious, spread on the warm bread...I need to make more lard soon...

As I said earlier, if I were to walk into a taproom showcasing Czech beers and any of these snack were also available, I'd be in heaven. The best foods to pair with Czech beer are Czech foods, they go hand in hand so perfectly.

Snack Time!

"Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps please".

Sure that might be something of a cliché, but it does illustrate that few things go together like beer and snacks. Here I am strictly speaking about snacks rather than some little pretentious morsel, usually in a tower, with a smear of cat's piss jus or some such silliness on the side of a square white plate the size of the City of London. Beer and snacks are just perfectly natural bedfellows, like bacon and egg or fish and chips, everyone I know gets the munchies when they've had a few pints, and on Saturday in honour of Session Beer Day I drank mostly Williams Brothers Scottish Session Ale.

In the pubs I frequent here in Charlottesville, snacks either don't seem to be part of the menu or are a mere dollar cheaper than a sandwich or main course. If I am at Beer Run and get the munchies I will often have their Hogwaller sandwich, which consists of ham AND bacon AND cheese, with a side of potato salad. If the venue happens to be McGrady's then a Philly Cheesesteak wrap with tater tots is in order. While they are both delicious, they are sometimes just too big for my purposes. So this got me thinking about the beer snacks I loved in the Czech Republic, and here are a few of my favourites.

Let's start off with Nakládaný Hermelín, possibly my favourite cheese dish on earth other than just eating straight up extra mature cheddar. Hermelín itself is a soft cheese similar to Camembert or Brie, though normally sold as small wheels of about 4 or 5 inches in diameter. To make nakládaný Hermelín you simply slice a wheel in half, lengthwise, and then marinade it in oil, garlic, onions, peppers and various spices. It takes about 3 days to be ready, though I know some people who wear you have to wait 2 weeks for the full flavour to develop. Once it is ready, spread it on some nice thick cut rye bread and have a pint of the best Pilsner you can find.

The one delicacy that I loved most when living in the Czech Republic was called Škvarková pomazánka. Škvarky are basically bits of fried bacon, though usually they come with a healthy dose of lard as well. Whip it all up with some eggs, onions and mustard and hey presto you have a lard and bacon spread which is utterly delicious on toasted rye bread, and serve with a pint of the finest Pilsner you can find.

Inevitably when you get home, having had many pints of finest Pilsner you can find, you might still have the munchies, and this is where topinky come into their own. Quite simply, take old bread - most Czech bread is rye bread - and fry it in oil. Once it is nicely fried up, rub cloves of garlic on the bread and enjoy. Personally I think this is best done at home rather than in the pub mainly because you don't want to be breathing garlic fumes over your friends, and it is definitely not recommended if you are out on the pull.

So what are your beer snacks of choice?