More Cream from the Cat

Last night I was at Pivovarsky Dum for the tasting session with Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf, where they presented 6 of their beers, most of which I had tried in Plzen at the Slunce ve Skle festival. However, I was looking forward to trying their 12 degree lager and Scottish Ale as well as re-trying their stout, which I had at Slunce ve Skle but by that point the note book was in my pocket and I was focusing on drinking.

The first offering was their unfiltered and unpasteurized 12 degree lager, which is a pale golden colour, Mrs Velkyal noted that it looked like sunflower honey, with a nice slightly off-white head. On the nose there was a touch of smokiness that put me in mind of the wonderful Schlenkerla Helles lager, as well as some cidery notes. Again like the Schlenkerla, the lager has a nice, crisp clean flavour, and the the first few mouthfuls are refreshing, although I found the body a bit thin for my tastes, even watery after a while. I found this to be quite bitter, with a low level of sweetness in the background.

I was really looking forward to the Scottish Ale as it would be a taste of home. The beer itself was brewed by a Scotsman who came over to make it. It pours a light brown, which put me in mind of McEwan's 70/- and had a smallish head which was a slightly darker ivory. There was very little on the nose, Mrs Velkyal commented that she didn't like what she could smell, and I thought it smelled like cigarettes. However, it tasted quite good, with a light caramel flavour, the only problem from my perspective was that is was a touch too bitter for a Scottish Ale and I would have liked to see more body and a fuller sweetness in the beer.

The highlight of the night for me was the stout. This stout is jet black and comes with a fantastic foamy brown head. The nose is full of roasted coffee and made me think of a fine Italian espresso, just wonderful. In the mouth it is smooth with the coffee notes balanced by a nice touch of chocolate and even a certain creaminess. The body was a little on the light side, which I actually found helped the drinkability of this beer. With a touch more sweetness than bitterness this is a beer I could merrily drink lots of - and the sooner it is a regular on the taps of Prague the better.

One of the things I really enjoyed about last night was comparing beers with Mrs Velkyal, it is said that women have better palates than men and so to get her input was interesting - for example with the stout, where I was enjoying the roasted coffee she thougt it teetered on the edge of burnt rather than roast. It was also a pleasure to finally meet Evan Rail, as well as seeing Honza from the brewery itself again. So a few hours with people who love their beer made it a throughly pleasant evening.

Sticky Toffee and Christmas Stout

I decided over the weekend to continue my beer in food experimentation, as well as to jump of the beer hacking bandwagon, as suggested by Evan Rail. Thus it was that on Friday afternoon I decided to make a "Christmas Stout" and even some beer toffee. My original plan involved buying 4 bottles of Kelt, Czech stout made by InBev's subsidiary here, Pražské Pivovary - probably better known as the maker of Staropramen - for the beer hacking and a bottle of Hobgoblin for the beer toffee.

My plans were immediately put to the test by the fact that when Mrs Velkyal and I went to the Cider Club to buy the Hobgoblin, I ended up spending all the spare change I had in my pocket on 2 bottles of Hobgoblin, a bottle of Black Wych stout and a bottle of Wych Craft, not to mention Mrs Velkyal's raspberry flavoured cider. At least I had the Hobgoblin, which immediately went into the little cellar in preparation for making toffee. Buying the Kelt was no problem whatsoever as my local Billa sells it.

Saturday morning arrived and I changed my plan - instead of taking up one of my carboys with 2 litres of stout, I decided to use a spare 1 litre bottle I had knocking about and keep two bottles of Kelt for something else, such as drinking them. Here are my ingredients for my Christmas Stout:

• 2 500ml bottles Kelt stout
• 1 stick cinnamon
• 1 handful of cloves
• 1 tablespoon light brown sugar, dissolved in a drop of boiling water

The method is very simple:

1. Put the sugar, cinnamon and cloves in the bottle
2. Use a funnel to pour the stout into the bottle
3. Let the head dissipate before capping and forgetting about it for 2 months.

So yes, there is now a litre of stout infusing with the classic flavours of Christmas and hopefully preparing a lovely treat for December.

The beer toffee however was more problematic. My first problem was when the time came I was loath to use a bottle of Hobgoblin as the liquid for my toffee. Thankfully though I have Mrs Velkyal, who reminded me that in the fridge was an extra bottle of Primator English Pale Ale. The recipe I intended to use was pulled from the Wikihow website, which has loads of interesting projects, and was simplicity itself:

• 125ml water
• 400g sugar
• pinch cream of tartar

So my thinking was to use a 330ml bottle of beer, and increase the sugar accordingly - giving me 1kg of sugar, and a slightly bigger pinch of cream of tartar.

The sugar dissolved nicely into the beer, however I think the pan I was using was too small as I couldn't keep the mixture on a rolling boil for fear of the sticky goo overflowing and making a right mess of the cooker. The original recipe calls for 20 minutes worth of boiling and then putting the mix in a greased tin to set, at the moment I think I have created a beer caramel sauce which will go quite nicely on top of ice cream. If there are any toffee makers out there, I would appreciate some advice on what went wrong - I have a feeling that the size of the pan played a major role, but our big pan was full of a curried cream of roast butternut squash soup I had made on Saturday.

So 1 unknown quantity in the beer hacking, and something of a dismal failure on the beer toffee front, however, I will not be deterred.

Update: As you can see I have added pictures the weekend's fun - couldn't do it yesterday as I forgot the transfer cable at home.

Beer Hero of the Week

Having raved about their beers earlier in the week, I think there can be no better Beer Hero of the Week than a company that not only makes wonderful beers, but also flies in the face of the mass market and produces ales in the Czech Republic.

So ladies, and gentlemen, I give you my Beer Hero of the Week:

Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf.

A Week on the Wagon

Every so often I feel the need to not drink for a little while, usually a week or so. I do this because in the last 18 months I have gone from being Much-Too-Velky Al to my present incarnation of just Velky Al. Compared to this time 2 years ago I am about 50lbs lighter (that's almost 23kg for our metric friends), and I have no ambition to go back to the state I was in then. It was also around this time that I got fed up with drinking vast qualities of industrial lager, so I adopted a new healthy eating regime, took a bit more exercise and for 6 straight months didn't touch beer at all.

My first beer after the 6 months were up was a Samuel Adams Boston Lager, which I had in Columbia, South Carolina after flying there with Mrs Velkyal to spend 5 weeks visiting her family in the States. It was nectar, not just because I hadn't had a beer in so long, not just because the flight had been long and boring - and our bags were delayed because of the terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport - it also happened to be a damned fine pint.

So this week in the wake of Slunce ve Skle I decided to take another of my weeks off and not drink again until Monday's tasting of Kocour ales at Pivovarský Dům. I think these weeks off also help to heighten my appreciation of the beers I drink, and make me want to value each beer rather than chucking some swill down my throat on a Friday night to get drunk. That is, I think, my paradox - I drink far less than I used to, but drink far better than I ever have.

Yes I am looking forward to having some IPA on Monday, and when you live in the Czech Republic any opportunity to have IPA must be grasped, but I have enjoyed my week on the wagon.

Eye, Nose and Throat Specialists

In a couple of weeks I am going to Bicester in Oxfordshire as Mrs Velkyal has a conference to attend in Oxford, and I fancied a jolly. Being a good and dutiful husband I having been looking for restaurants and the like to eat in during the days when we are in Oxford itself, the reason we are staying in Bicester is that my brother lives there and we can combine the conference with seeing some family. Being a good and dutiful drinker of beers, I have have been looking for pubs that serve real ales and traditional British food, this is also good for Mrs Velkyal as she can discover the delights of steak and ale pie, chicken in a basket and fish n' chips - honestly this is for her benefit and not to satisfy my cravings for British food.

Anyway, back on track - in the course of my searchings I have been reading a lot about the brewers in Oxfordshire and the surrounding counties, several of which I have made mental notes to try when I am there. One of the brewers I came across was Everards, who brew in Leicestershire but have a single pub in the centre of Oxford. One thing that I found particularly interesting about Everards is that they created the Cyclops Tasting Notes, which you can see below - this one describing Everards Tiger Best Bitter.


Although I have been drinking beer for nearly 15 years now, it is only in the last 3 that I have started to drink craft beers and I have to admit that sometimes I try a beer and wonder what am I supposed to be smelling and tasting - while it may taste great to me, is it what the brewer intended? That is really a secondary question, because if it tastes great then I don't give two hoots what the brewer wanted to do, what he did was good.

Being something of an anorak - I guess hunting out pubs wherever you go is the beer drinker's equivalent of standing on the platform of Crewe railway station on a wet Wednesday in October videoing trains coming and going (I have seen it done!) - I love the fact that Cyclops lists the primary malts and hops which have gone into the beer. It is more than knowing what I am drinking, it is learning to recognise the flavours of the ingredients in the beer, thus making me more knowledgable. As I am a number 5 according to the Enneagram of Personality, this is hardly surprising - I am just thankful it is beer and brewing I am fascinated with rather than the glue on the back of a stamp.

From the Cyclops description of the Tiger Best Bitter I am looking forward to hunting down the Royal Blenheim and having a swift pint. I would love to see Czech brewers adopting this system as a way of educating drinkers here.

Sunshine in a Glass - Part 3, nebo The Cat with the Cream

Beers from the Czech lands have been synonymous with bottom fermenting lagers for over 150 years. In common with most of Europe though, ales would have been the dominant form of beer prior to 1842 and Josef Groll’s Pilsner Urquell. Recent years however have seen a number of microbreweries experimenting with styles of beer more commonly associated with Britain and Ireland. The Primátor brewery in Náchod produces English Pale Ale, which is very well regarded, in particular by Mrs Velkyal. However a new brewery has come of the scene making a wider range of ales, including stout and IPA, that new brewery is so young they don’t even have a website up and running yet, Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf.

Whilst it is true that I like lager, I am by far a bigger fan of ales. There is more complexity, a wider range of styles and flavours to enjoy, so for a brewery to making ales in the Czech Republic is cause for hunting them out and trying them. I was very happy though to see that Kocour had their wonderful V3 Rauchmalt Special. This exceptional beer is dark brown with a creamy tan head, and the first impression I got on the nose was sausages barbecuing over an open fire – which actually was happening just a few feet away so I wandered off to find Mrs Velkyal on the over side of the courtyard to make sure. Many other rauch beers have an overwhelming flavour of ham, and V3 is no different, however the hamminess (is that a word?) is smoothed over by a sweet wine touch with also contributes to the full body of the beer.

While I was enjoying the V3, Mrs Velkyal decided to try Kocour’s American style Pale Ale - using Centennial hops - which is decidedly paler than the almost red Primátor product. I only sampled a mouthful or two of her beer and didn’t take any notes so I have to rely on Mrs Velkyal’s opinion which was simply “Primátor has competition”. I have to admit I love Mrs Velkyal’s approach to beer, it is much more down to earth than my near obsessive reading and experimenting, so when she enjoys a beer it must be worth further investigation – which will take place on Monday at the Kocour tasting session in Prague’s Pivovarský Dům.

At one point during the proceedings, Pivní Filosof and I got talking with Honza Kočka, the owner of Kocour, who told us that he is planning a rauch porter and other ales are in the pipeline. Excited? Me? Pivní Filosof? Erm I think so. Honza also told us that once the American Pale Ale was done with they would be tapping their India Pale Ale. Cue encouraging Mrs Velkyal to drink more. With the APA was done, we moved on the to IPA, and what a taste explosion that was! The beer pours beautiful amber with very distinct orange tints although there was very little head. The nose was very hoppy, very hoppy indeed – lots of grass and floral notes. This is a good bitter IPA, which was almost like drinking a Seville orange – bitter and touched with sweetness as well. Usually Mrs Velkyal shies away from IPA as she is not a big fan of bitter beers, but she enjoyed this one very much, remarking that she had a Goldilocks moment with this IPA – finding one where the bitterness was “just right”.

The last of the Kocour ales on tap was their stout. As I have recorded elsewhere I am a big fan of this beer style, and Kocour’s is a very good example. This pours beautifully dark, with a dark beige head and masses of chocolatey coffee on the nose, and smooth in the mouth. Thick and filling as a good stout should be, this was a wonderful beer deserving of a far wider distribution. I got to this beer late on in the day and it is another one I am looking forward to properly evaluating on Monday, hopefully drawn out of Pivovarský Dům's hand pump.

Having only started production in the last year or so, the future augurs very well for Pivovar Koucour Varnsdorf. Here’s hoping that this is not only the beginning of a very successful business making great beers but also the beginning of drinkers in the Czech Republic having the opportunity to experience more than just lager.

Top Twenty Beer Consuming Countries in the World

Thanks to my very good friend Raimonda for sending me this, makes interesting reading and viewing.