LOL - Love Our Lager

Recently I have been on a lager jag. Generally speaking I am not much of one for writing posts describing the aromas, flavours and lacing of a beer - though I do have a liking for beers that leave a trail of lace somewhat akin to a white fishnet stocking. I will from time to time put tasting notes into Ratebeer, but I am far from religious with that. Anyway back to my theme for today, lager, which, as I said, I have been drinking a fair bit of lately.

I like lager, nay, I love the stuff. I wasn't much of a fan when I was spotty youth back in the west of Scotland, but when you live in central Europe for a decade, it gets into your system. Czech lager got so well into my system that if someone makes a pilsner and it doesn't match up to the beers I drank back in Prague then I am afraid I am not interested. Yes, I am a lager snob.

A good pilsner is one of the beer world's great contradictions. Utterly simple ingredients, generally speaking just pilsner malt, Saaz hops, water and yeast, yet it is exceedingly difficult to make a great pilsner. Brewing a proper pilsner takes confidence. Confidence to do a decoction mash (yes I know the argument that malts are more modified these days, thus rendering decoction redundant - personally I think that is tosh), confidence to use just Saaz hops, confidence to let "product" tie up your lagering tanks for at least 30 days, 90 if you are trying to recreate Budvar.

And yet, when you look at lists of the top 50 beers in the world, there is not a single lager. Seriously, go and have a look, not a single lager makes that list. No Pilsner, no Dortmunder, no Dunkel, no Schwarzbier, no Baltic Porter, no Vienna, nothing, not one. Reading through the comments of various lagers makes me wonder if people actually understand lager at all. Seeing someone describing a beer as a "good pils" and then give it a score of 2.8/5 makes me wonder what this person wants from an exceptional pilsner (probably 8% abv and a trillion IBUs says my cynical side). Of course, the Baltic Porter gets more love than many a lager style, but that's likely because it is a strong beer.

I have heard in many a watering hole a comment along the lines of "I used to drink lager, but now I like only craft beer". Lager has become shorthand for the pale lagers churned out by the likes of AB InBev and the other multinationals, beers that have very little in the way of character. It really bugs my head when I hear that kind of comment from people who really should know better, after all are they not claiming to have a greater understanding of beer than the average Joe?

The world of lager is huge and full of interesting ingredients and flavours, and is, I fear, painfully overlooked by many in the craft beer world, in favour of the extreme beer that will rape your tongue and render you senseless to the pleasures of classic beers. That is one of the underlying reasons behind a website project I am working on at the moment focussing purely on the history, styles and tastes of lager beer around the world.

Making good lager is a labour of love, perhaps we should requite that love and celebrate lager more often.

Old Friends: Devils Backbone Vienna Lager

I am going to make an assumption with this post, namely that you have been reading Fuggled for a while and thus it will come as no surprise to you that I am a devotee of lager. There is just something about most lager styles that I find appealing, given a choice between some trendy glitter bomb juicy IPA and a pint of Miller Lite, I am likely to take the Miller Lite more often than not.

When Mrs V and I made the move from Prague to central Virginia we knew that finding a good local lager was high on our list of priorities. For a while we bounced around Blue Mountain's Classic Lager, Starr Hill's Jomo Lager, and the beer that is today's Old Friend, Devils Backbone Vienna Lager. Eventually Vienna Lager won the day and became my standard lager in the fridge. I really can't think why I stopped keeping a six pack of it in the fridge, probably something to do with the well made contract brewed lagers that I could buy at Trader Joe's.

Being a central European style lager, it seemed only right to pour it into my half litre mug from the lovely Purkmistr in Plzeň that I got at the first Slunce ve Skle festival a decade ago. What a glorious deep copper beer with orange edges and half inch of off-white head that leaves a fine tracery of lacing down the glass.

I had forgotten just how much I loved the aroma of Vienna Lager, laden with a smell that I can only describe as like large amounts of honey spread on freshly toasted bread. Floating around in the background is a lovely floral hoppiness that reminded me of walking in the Czech mountains in the height of summer, side note I have always loved the Czech word for flowers, 'kytičky'.

Anyway, before I lapse into a Bohemian revelry, we should actually drink the beer, that is after all the whole point of this most wonderful of liquids. Teacakes, that's what I get, teacakes freshly taken out of the oven, spread with more honey, and then snaffled with all the delight of an illicit, though simple, pleasure. There is a light citrusy bitterness to the beer that gives the beer a balance that makes it thoroughly moreish.

That thing I mentioned earlier about there being something about most lagers that I find appealing, it is the clean bite that comes with a well made, properly lagered beer. The best way I can think of to describe the perception I am thinking of is that it is a tight snap that leaves the palate waiting for more. Drinkability, that is ultimately what love about lager styles, I find them more drinkable than many of their top fermented cousins.

With it being Friday, I might just swing by the shop and pick up a 6 pack of Vienna Lager to enjoy this evening once the boys have gone down for the night...every prospect pleases.

Pilsner? Really?

Pilsner is one of the few beer styles to have a clearly defined birthday, the first ever glass of this golden lager was served in Plzeň on November 11th 1842 and soon gave birth to a multitude of imitations around the world. In the Czech lands however, Pilsner style beers eventually came to mean the vast majority of beer from Bohemia and Moravia. Thus any brewer which makes a “pilsner” lager will be judged next to the standards set by Josef Groll and subsequent makers of golden lager in the Czech lands.

When I received a bottle of BrewDog’s 77 Lager along with the production versions of Zeitgeist and Chaos Theory I knew I wanted to compare it to a couple of Czech lagers, in this case Budvar and Žamberecký Kanec. I choose Budvar because of the major Czech lager brewers they still use all malt and whole hops, rather than the somewhat ambiguous ingredient in Pilsner Urquell, “hop products”, Kanec because it is a small artisan brewer, and the BrewDog label calls 77 Lager a “artisan rebel lager”.

In an effort to be as fair minded as possible I decided to do the tasting blind, and so had Mrs Velkyal bring me each glass of beer individually without telling me what was what, here are my thoughts on each beer:

Beer A

• Sight – pale golden, firm white head
  
• Smell – quite malty, touch of smoke, a bit grainy – like Weetabix
  
• Taste – nicely balanced, light caramel
  
• Sweet – 2/5
  
• Bitter – 2/5
  

I thought this beer was medium bodied, and had slight touches of banana, however it was refreshing.

Beer B

• Sight – golden with a white head
  
• Smell – not much going one, some grass and citrus notes
  
• Taste – gentle sweetness up front, but delicately bitter aftertaste
  
• Sweet – 2/5
  
• Bitter – 1/5
  

Again a pleasantly refreshing beer.

Beer C

• Sight – light amber with a smallish head
  
• Smell – heavy on the citrus, grapefruit in particular – American C hops?
  
• Taste – citrus in your face with malty undertones
  
• Sweet - 1.5/5
  
• Bitter – 3/5
  

This was clearly not a pilsner style lager, more like an IPA. As Mrs Velkyal commented on smelling it “no Czech beer smells like that”.

From the tasting I guessed that the beers were as follows:

• A – Kanec
  
• B – Budvar
  
• C – BrewDog 99 Lager (not really a guess after smelling it)
  

I identified all three correctly, and while I enjoyed them all in their own right when it comes to being a Czech style pilsner lager, the BrewDog version was never in the running. It simply isn’t a pilsner beer despite claims to the contrary on the label. Of the other two, I enjoyed them very much, and they are both in the Bohemian tradition, but the one I would choose to drink regularly is the Budvar, which has long been my favourite mass produced Czech lager and thus my first task in Charlottesville is to find a regular supply of Czechvar as our American friends call it.

For a comparison of 77 Lager with German style pilsners, see Adeptus' thoughts over on The Bitten Bullet.

Mmmmm.....Lager.

You know me by now, unless this is your first visit to Fuggled, in which case welcome, I am a lager drinker, nay a lover of lager. Whether it is a Bohemian Pilsner, Schwarzbier, Vienna or Baltic Porter, the lager 'family' of beers is the one I like to spend as much drinking time as possible with. That's not to say that warm fermented beers aren't wonderful as well, but just that beer that takes its own sweet time to be ready is my preferred tipple. Given a bank of taps pouring pale ales in various states of Indianess, stouts, porters, brown ales and wheat beers, if there is a solitary good lager available then I will gladly ignore everything else, even if it is super rare, super strong and aged in gorilla snot barrels.

Without being mean, any brewer can chuck more hops into the kettle, or add spices to secondary and get something that is at least drinkable, but it takes a master brewer to have the confidence to brew a great lager, such as Devils Backbone Vienna Lager, Victory Prima Pils, or Kout na Šumavě 18° (it also takes a master brewer to do the whole extra hops and spice thing well without turning the beer into a flavour mess). We can argue all day about the merits or otherwise of decoction mashing, for the record I think it makes a better beer though I know at least one of my favourite lagers is done with infusion mashing, but one thing is clear, lager is a labour of love, and if a brewery does it properly then it ties up capital and equipment for a very long time.

Take Budvar for example. I remember reading that each batch of their flagship 12° lager takes 102 days to make, from start to finish. Primary fermentation lasts 12 days and then the beer sits in the lagering tanks for 90 days, that's three months, 12 weeks (1 week for each degree of Plato as used to be the norm), just sitting around. Would most people recognise a difference if they brought it out after 60 days? Probably not, but some traditions are worth keeping regardless of what science tells us with numbers.

Brewing, any brewing, is not just about the numbers. Sure your pilsner might have a starting gravity of 1.048 (12° Plato), you might even have gone crazy and hopped it to 40 IBUs but it might still suck because there is too much alcohol from the yeast over attenuating and making it thin in the body (more alcohol is not always a good thing). Perhaps you used some high alpha hops for bittering rather than Saaz all the way through. Perhaps you didn't wait for the lager to tell you when it was ready and just pulled it from the tanks after 28 days regardless. Lager, in  my thoroughly unhumble opinion is not something to be taken lightly, and one of the reasons I brew them so infrequently is simply because I want to do them justice and I don't really have the equipment to do so.

This is one of the reasons I enjoy living in this part of Virginia, I have access to great local lager whenever I want it, made by brewers who do it properly and rightly win awards as a result.

Lazarus Lager

Unless you've been living under a rock, as opposed to on this rock, you will know that I am rather partial to lager. My "go to" beer of late has been Devils Backbone's lovely Vienna Lager, I have also been availing myself of various American made pilsner style lagers, some decent, some not. Despite the fulminations of some in the beer world, Britain has a decent history of brewing lager style beers. The very first cold fermented beers in Britain are reputed to have been brewed in Scotland, as early as 1835. Unfortunately, being in the days before refrigeration, the yeast didn't survive more than a few brews, and although the 19th century saw several more attempts at brewing lager it wasn't until the early 20th century that British brewers started to make a more concerted effort to make lager.

In the 1930s, the London brewery Barclay Perkins, located in the Anchor Brewery in Southwark, employed one Arthur Henius, a Dane, to head up their lager brewing operations. During that time, Barclay Perkins produced three lager styles, two pales and a dark. Where am I going with all this historical information? Well, quite simply, last Thursday saw the culmination of a project between myself, Jason Oliver at Devils Backbone and Ron Pattinson of Shut Up About Barclay Perkins.

When we heard that Ron was coming over to the States, and would be just a couple of hours away in Washington DC, we decided that it would be good to try and arrange a brewday with Ron, and to brew a historical beer. Previously Jason had used a recipe from one of Ron's books as inspiration for his 1904 Ramsey's Stout, and with an interest in brewing forgotten beers it was natural to try and arrange something. The seemingly now tradition thread of emails ensued, unfortuantely Nathan Zeender from DC couldn't make it down for the brewday, though was involved in the email chain.

We went round several ideas of beers to recreate, and eventually came to the notion of brewing a British lager. From there it was a short step to deciding on a British dark lager, and it just so happened that in Ron's possession was a recipe from 1934 for Barclay Perkins' Dark Lager. It had to be done.

The recipe was fairly simple, the malts being lager, pale and caramel, added to the mash late on was roasted barley, in order to get colour without the harsh roasted flavour you associate with that grain. I was surprised when I saw the recipe that it was hopped only with Saaz, surprised but delighted!

Naturally we wanted to be as authentic as possible, and so various salts and minerals were added to Devils Backbone's insanely soft water to mimic as close as possible the hard water of London (when we brewed the pilsner last year I learnt that their water is softer than Plzeň!). From reviewing the brewing log's technical details Jason decided that it would be more authentic to do a temperature control mash rather than a decoction. At the end of the day we had 10 hectolitres of 14.25º Plato, dark brown wort, which had about 25 IBUs of Saaz goodness and should be ready for drinking some time in July I imagine.

It seems to have become traditional that these brewdays inevitably involve sampling various beers. Ron bought with him a bottle of the new East India Porter from Pretty Things, a recreation of a 19th century porter made with extra hops to survive the sea journey to India (sound familiar? cough, splutter, black IPA my arse cough). Keeping with the theme of historical beers, Ron also brought along a bottle of the first in the Fuller's Past Masters series, which you can see in the picture, and was a lovely beer. So lovely in fact, I wish I could find it in the States.

We had a really good day, it was a pleasure to meet Ron in person, and as ever to go brewing at Devils Backbone.

Square Pegs Round Holes

Back in the death throes of the 20th century, when I moved from Blighty to the Czech Republic, beer came in a few very broad categories, lager, old man ale and Guinness. Lager was pale, vaguely tasteless and often drunk straight from the bottle. Old man ale was everything else that wasn't Guinness. Generally speaking I was an old man ale and Guinness drinker, depending on my mood. Lager was something I didn't really drink, unless it was Czech, my first Gambrinus was had in an All Bar One in Birmingham, Polish, drinking Hevelius Kaper with my girlfriend at the time's father is one of my earliest foreign beer memories, or German, usually Becks. Pretty much all I knew of lager back then was that anything from Central Europe was, by definition, better than the cans of Tennent's Lager that we used to indulge in as teenagers.

Moving to Prague, and staying for 10 years, shaped my drinking life far more though than those early years of surreptitious cans of Tennent's or even my first legal pint of Guinness. It was in the Czech Republic that I learnt that lager came in a range of colours, světlý, polotmavý and tmavý, pale, amber and dark, and even in strengths, lehké, výčepní, Ležák and Speciál - 'light' (sub 8° Plato), 'tap' (8-10.99°), 'lager' (11-12.99°) and 'special' (13°+) respectively. Essentially, for the duration of my life in Prague there was no such thing as beer style, just beers of varying colours and strengths. Often even phrases such as výčepní and ležák were irrelevant, because you ordered your beer by the number of degrees Plato, thus you ordered a 'desítka' (10°), 'dvanáctka' (12°) and so on. Most pubs would carry a grand total of three beers, a 'desítka' a 'dvanáctka' and a 'tmavý', and when you simply asked for a 'pivo' it was invariably 'desítka' that was soon in front of you. If you didn't fancy a 'světlý' or a 'tmavý' and the pub didn't have a polotmavý, a fairly regular occurrence back then, you would ask for a 'řezané pivo' or 'řežák', a half and half mixture of a pale lager and dark lager, both of which should have the same Plato. Apropos of nothing, the longer I lived in Prague, the more often I would have a 'řežák' when I was out and about.

The reason I mention all this is that when people ask me my favourite beer 'style' I hesitate for a moment, not because I can't decide between a Czech pale lager and a dry Irish stout, but because in my mind there is no such thing as a 'Czech pale lager' or a 'Bohemian Pilsner', but rather there are desítky that I love, dvanáctky I can drink until the cows come home and Speciály that rock my boat like the Minch in winter. This is, for me, one of the big failings of websites such as RateBeer and BeerAdvocate in trying to shoehorn the various Czech beers in an essentially Anglo-American taxonomy.

When we had our celebration of Czechoslovak independence back in October someone brought a six pack of Lagunitas Pils. When one of our Czech guests drank it, he grimaced and simply pronounced 'this is not Czech', and went back to drinking Port City's Downright Pilsner, which reminded him of the great beers from home. He didn't care for style, for numbers, only that it tasted right.

Book Review: Vienna Lager

 A few months ago I bought "Historic German and Austrian Beers for the Home Brewer" by Andreas Krennmair and have thoroughly enjoyed dipping and and out of the book for inspiration and plans for the upcoming winter lager brewing season. It was on the basis of having enjoyed it so much that I ordered his latest book, "Vienna Lager", from Amazon within moments of him announcing it's release on Twitter.

Today, I'm publishing my new book "Vienna Lager".https://t.co/atvDZqfq4x #beerhistory

— Andreas Krennmair (@der_ak) July 9, 2020

A few days later it dropped through the door (figuratively speaking), and just last night I finished it. Sure it is not a weighty tomb, but I have read it in snatches as life allows, even so, a month is pretty good going by my standards these days.

What we have here is the life and story not just of the Vienna Lager style, but also a deep dive into the life of it's creator, Anton Dreher - he who went wandering around British breweries with Gabriel Sedlmayr, filching samples with Bondesque contraptions as they went. Scion of a family of innkeepers and brewers, Dreher built the largest brewing company on mainland Europe in the 19th century, at its height boasting 4 breweries, one each in Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, and Italy.

Andreas then follows Vienna Lager on its journey from its Austrian homeland to the New World, as it became an established part of the German brewing world in both the US and Mexico, and thence onward to its acceptance within craft beer.

While being focused on Dreher and Vienna Lager in particular, the book gives the reader an insight into the massive changes wrought on the European brewing industry in the second half of the 19th century. Not only are we talking about the introduction of three of the most influential beer styles, but also the introduction of English malting techniques that allowed maltsters to create consistent pale malt, and thus the world was set on the path of pale lager domination.

Andreas' book is full of fascinating technical detail, the kind of thing that very much appeals to the technical writer in me. At the same time he succeeds to keeping the technical details accessible and not overwhelming. An added bonus for homebrewers, and possibly commercial brewers looking to re-create history, is a selection of recipes for Vienna lager through the ages, naturally the early ones of just Vienna malt and Saaz hops appeal to me most of all, and perhaps this winter will finally see me take the plunge into decoction mashing.

What Andreas has done here is write the definitive guide to Dreher and his Vienna Lager, and made a valuable contribution to knowledge of the development of pale lager in general. It is an excellent read, go and buy it, now.

Top Ten Virginian Beers - 2017

This weekend is the 6th annual Virginia Craft Brewers Fest in Charlottesville, actually in the city itself rather than down at Devils Backbone as in previous years. As in each of the previous 6 years of the festival, I spent time earlier this year judging the Virginia Craft Beer Cup, in which a beer that I designed won a silver medal. As usual I won't be attending the festival itself as I will be in western Virginia with Mrs V at a fiddle camp - basically she has music workshops all day and I find a cosy chair, beer, and a book to while away the day.

In years past I have presented a list of the 10 best Virginia beers I have drunk in the past 12 months, and I see no reason to change it this year...

1. Port City Brewing - Porter (7.2%). I am fairly sure there are regular readers of this blog who will be sending me emails to make sure I am ok because number 1 on my list this year is not a sessionable pale lager. Fear not, I am fine. I was reminded of what a simply magnificent beer Port City's Porter is when I did a comparative porter tasting last December, describing it as 'rich' and 'unctuous'. During the winter and spring it was a regular in my my fridge and given half an hour to get to a decent temperature never failed to impress. If there is a better porter in America right now I would be surprised.
2. Devils Backbone Brewing - Czech 10 (4.3%). I was desperately trying to avoid recency bias with this choice as the beer was only released last Friday. I failed. The highest praise I can give this beer is that if I were poured a pint of it in a pub in the Czech Republic I would love it, rave about, drag my friends to the pub to drink it. Obscenely easy to drink, packed with the flavours and aromas of Saaz hops, and so well made that had it been allowed in the Czech lager category at the Virginia Craft Brewers Cup this year it would have blown all other competition out of the water. Proof, yet again, that corporate structure has no impact on beer quality.
3. Alewerks Brewing - Weekend Lager (4.8%). This Munich style helles was a new one for me back in June when I wrote about a slew of this style that I tried (would the plural of 'helles' be 'heli'?). I enjoyed the beer, but there was something odd about the bottle I drank, so when I saw it on tap a few days later I tried again and it was delicious, I may have had several more. A wonderful competition of cracker graininess and lemongrass hops make it something to sit and enjoy on a sunny patio. Marvellous.
4. South Street Brewery - My Personal Helles (5.2%). Probably the single most regular beer I have drunk in the last 12 months, and it hasn't even been on tap at the brewpub for about 4 months (seriously guys, sort it out!). It is a lovely beer, with a superb balance of malt and noble hops, finishing with soft, clean bite that makes the first pint go quickly, and the second, and maybe even a third, fourth, fifth....
5. Champion Brewing - Shower Beer (4.5%). Yes, yes, yes, another pale lager. It's what I like and it's my list. Another example of a Czech style lager being made in Virginia that would be perfectly welcome back in Bohemia, bursting with the hay and lemon character that I associate with Saaz hops. A great beer for rounding off a day's hiking.
6. Three Notch'd Brewing - Ghost of the 43rd (5.2%). A fairly common, and frankly welcome sight in the bars of central Virginia. Ghost is one of the nicest American pale ales I have ever had, up there for me with Sierra Nevada's iconic Pale Ale. Loads of hops and enough bitterness to remind you that you are drinking beer (I seriously have issues with beer that has little to no bitterness), Ghost quite often disappears as soon as you see it.
7. Devils Backbone Brewing - Excel Lager (2.6%). That is not a typo. Earlier this year, Devils Backbone brewed a 7° pale lager that was the equal of many a far stronger pale lager being brewed in this country. Beautifully balanced, not thin in the slightest, and oh so refreshing after a morning climbing to one the highest points in this part of the Blue Ridge. As I said in my post on the beer at the time, this beer showed Jason and so as true masters of the craft of brewing beer.
8. South Street Brewery - Virginia Lager (5.0%). Despite being a wee bit stronger, South Street's Virginia Lager kind of reminds me of a less bitter Pilsner Urquell, with a similar malt profile and clean hop bite in the finish. While it lacks the additional Saaz characteristics that Pilsner Urquell has, it is a nice pintable beer that in the absence of My Personal Helles has seen me drink plenty in the last couple of months. One of the few South Street beers available bottled, it is always a good option when out and about.
9. Three Notch'd Brewing - Oats McGoats (5.5%). This winter will be difficult since Three Notch'd have discontinued this wonderful oatmeal stout. Seriously, it is one of the best oatmeal stouts I have ever had, and so while every one and his mate runs around like headless chickens after the latest fruited murky IPA, those of us who like a grown up beer see our favourites cut from under us. Rich chocolate enveloped in a silky smooth body made this a beer that will live long in the memory, and if it should come out as a special something to fill every available growler with.
10. Devils Backbone Brewing - Schwartzbier (5.1%). Recently rebranded as just plain old 'Black Lager', but forever in my mind 'Schwartzbier', this is a beer that I drink quite a bit of. Wonderfully roasty, yet smooth and clean, Black Lager reminds more than anything of a bottom fermented stout, which is you know anything of my drinking history is probably why I like it so much. I have to admit I don't see the point of the rebrand, but there we go, as long as the beer stays the same I am a happy camper.

I say this every year, but it bears repeating, this is a purely subjective list based exclusively on the beers I have enjoyed most in the last 12 months. I don't have any time for the daft purity dick waving that goes on as to who is 'craft' and who is not, and yes the list is skewed to my local breweries, but that's just the way it is. If you see these beers out in the wild, try them, you won't be disappointed.

More Than Lite

Take a quick scan through this list and tell me what each of these beer styles has in common:

• Schwarzbier
• American Light
• Vienna
• Baltic Porter
• Pilsner
• Munich Helles
• Märzen

I am sure that if you know your onions, so to speak, when it comes to types of beer then you read that list and got the connection straight off the bat. Still scratching your head? Well ok then, let me put you out of your misery, they are all lager beer styles, as in bottom fermented and then cold conditioned beers.

This tiny little exercise highlights a semantic problem that we have in the independent beer world, the total abuse of the word 'lager' to refer to any pale, adjunct laden, quality control obsessed, beer put out by the large multinational brewers like ABInBev or Carlsberg. All we do when we use the word 'lager' in this way is show a contemptuous disregard for a family of beers that are as diverse, interesting, and worthwhile as their top fermented cousins.

I have written several times before about my love of the lagered arts, but it seems at times as though the use of the term 'lager' as a lazy shorthand for beers being mass produced by multinationals is on the rise, and that bothers me greatly. When I worked in the Starr Hill tasting room, we had a guy come in and ask what 'bocks and doppelbocks' we had on tap and that he didn't 'like lager at all', and that was 'passionate about real beer'. Hmm, well. While being all outward sweetness and light I was thinking 'get the fuck out of my bar you pompous twat' on the inside. I wish I could say that was a very rare occurrence but sadly the level of ignorance about lager is staggering, especially when you consider the hoopla around beer these days.

So let's see an end to this kind of lazy lager language, especially from beer writers, bloggers, and other semi-pro talking heads. Let's highlight lager style beers being made by independent brewers and not dismiss them with nonsense like 'not bad for a lager'. Let's remind breweries that just because they don't have the wherewithal to make lager doesn't mean the fans of lagers are afraid of tasting something. I've said it before, let's have more lagerboy pride.

It's Real!

I noticed on Friday that Ratebeer has finally caught up with the real world and accepted that Polotmavý, which is Czech for 'half dark', is a distinct beer 'style' from Vienna lagers or the more generic 'amber lager'. They describe the 'style' as follows:

'This is the amber lager style of the Czech Republic. The character that the brewery usually aims for with this style is a hybrid between the dark lager and the pale pilsner. The result has a richer malt character than the American Dark/Amber Lager/Vienna style and more hop than the Oktoberfest/Marzen style'.

While I understand what they are trying to say here, let me just clear something up, Polotmavý is not a 'hybrid' of pale lager and tmavý, which is dark lager, it is a descendent of Vienna lager. For a better idea of these beers, this is what Evan Rail says about it in the 'Good Beer Guide - Prague and the Czech Republic':

'Unlike Pilsner-style brews, which usually require extremely soft water, half-darks can be made with a higher carbonate content and can include caramel and dark malt to various degrees, as well as Pilsner malt. Extremely clear and reddish-amber in colour, they are perhaps closest to the Vienna lager invented in the 19th Century by Anton Dreher'.

Something that is important to remember with Czech brewing though is that what we in the Anglo-American centric beer world call a style, such as polotmavý, is really just a definition of the general colour of the beer. Most examples range from a rich amber to a garnet red, as such you'll see beers marketed as 'jantar' and 'granát' respectively. Remembering that fact is important, because under the current Czech brewing laws there are 4 categories of beer based on strength, each of which can be Polotmavý:

• Stolní pivo or 'table beer', up to 6° Plato OG (up to 1.024 and rarer than hen's teeth)
• Výčepní pivo or 'tap beer' between 7° to 10° (1.028-1.040)
• Ležák or 'lager' 11° and 12° (1.044-1.048)
• Speciální pivo or 'special beer' 13° and higher (1.052+)

Another thing to be aware of is that Polotmavý is not the same as a řezané, which is a blend of dark and pale beers, both should be the same gravity, to make a Czech lager equivalent of the black and tan.

As for how a Polotmavý will taste, again let me quote Evan (admittedly for the Ležák variant but applicable across the board really):

'a lightly toasted taste and some serious malt complexity followed by a balanced hop finish'.

As with most Czech beers, the hops in question are likely to be Saaz, so expect lots of that wonderful lemony, hay, grassy thing that is so characteristic of the most noble of noble hops.

To mark Polotmavý's acceptance on Ratebeer, I cracked open some of my homebrew version, which I call Dark Island Granát, on Friday afternoon, when Mrs V got home from work....

Is it 'to style' (such a bullshit phrase)? I like to think so, is it dangerously moreish to drink? Oh yes.

2025 Homebrew Project

I mentioned in a recent post that I decided to make 2024 the year when I finally started making homebrew lagers properly. As such, I bought a chest freezer to be my fermentation and lagering chamber, I got to grips with rudimentary decoction mashing, and I learnt an awful lot about the importance of getting your beer off the trub if you don't want your lager to have a soapy character. As a result of all this, some of the best beers I have ever made were lagers I brewed last year, brews that looked like this:

Overall, last year I brewed 2 batches each of pale kellerbier and Vienna lager, and single batch each of a German pilsner and a 14° Světlý Speciál. Mostly I used a single decoction approach, where the decoction raises the temperature from a saccharification rest to mash out, and they were my favourite brewdays.

Now that lager brewing is a regular part of my homebrew world, I have decided that I want to make my main brewing project for this year to be starting to develop a house lager that will be brewed to the same recipe multiple times a year. I already have a house best bitter that I brew several times each year with a nailed down recipe, and now I want to do the same with a lager.

Where to start though. Being a "house" lager, it could be something a little stronger than I normally drink in the pub - after all, I will be drinking it at home, and if I ever get it in my head to drive home from home, well I need help then. At the same time, in 2023 I wrote a post about how the notion of a "house" beverage being the highest expression of those making it, so I wanted to make my perfect lager.

It would have been all too easy for me to just say that my perfect beer is a Czech style 10° pale lager, but that wouldn't be a fully honest reflection of my tastes. Yes I love Saaz, but I love Tettnang, Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, and Perle just as much. I also love styles like Vienna lager, Helles, and Dunkel, oh and I have made a personal commitment to use my local maltster's, Murphy & Rude, products as much as possible.

So when it come to recipe development, I worked backwards from a starting gravity of 11° and knowing I wanted between 25 and 30 IBUs to the iteration of the beer I brewed on Sunday:

• 88% Virginia Pils
• 12% Vienna
• 20.2 IBUs of Hallertauer Mittelfrüh at 60 minutes
• 7.5 IBUs of Hallertauer Mittelfrüh at 15 minutes
• 0.7 IBU of Hallertauer Mittelfrüh at 1 minute
• Saflager W-34/70

Beyond the 11° starting gravity, which I hit bang on, this should give me a beer which is 4.2% abv with a colour of 3.7 SRM, putting it in the straw end of the spectrum, though I am not sure how the brewing software accounts for the Maillard reactions of a decoction mash.

My plan is to brew variants of this beer on the first weekend of each quarter this year, and for 2025 at least to swap out the yeast strain for each brew before tinkering with grain and hops next year in order to really nail down my recipe. Hopefully I will be able to source some TUM-35 for one of those brewdays, but I am planning to at least try S-189 in one of the batches, and maybe the fabled Pilsner Urquell H strain as well.

Each batch will be lagered for 4 weeks before being slowly carbed for a couple of weeks ahead of tapping, which may mean I need another CO2 bottle and regulator to do that in the chest freezer.

My gut feeling is that this batch will be good, but my goal is to have a house lager that I can brew as consistently as I do with my house best bitter.

The Coming Darkness

One of the many things I love about lager is its sheer variety. Now, if you are the kind of poor, misguided soul that thinks lager is some wan, piss coloured, fizzy liquid then you need to give your head a wobble and do some learning.

In recent years in particular I have been thrilled to see a steadily increasing range of lager styles available to the discerning drinker on this side of the Pond. Naturally I am most thrilled by the number of Czech style lagers that are being brewed.

While I have been known to grumble (what? me?) about the fact that many allegedly Czech style pale lagers tend more toward světlý speciál rather than světlý ležák, I am just happy to have some Czech-ish to drink. More recently it has been the dark Czech lagers that are becoming more common, and having designed what I believe to be the first authentic tmavé to be brewed in Virginia, it is a trend I keep a thoroughly interested eye on.

It was with this interested eye that I liked a picture on Instagram from Jeff Alworth of a tmavé called Tmavá Sova, which translates as "Black Owl". Naturally I approve mightily of getting the grammar right, so of course I went to take a look at the website of the makers, Matchless Brewing from Washington State and I think they make the kind of beers I like. My only beef, and thus the genesis of the this post, was the description for Tmavá Sova, which defines tmavé as being:

"a re-emerging style from the Czech Republic".

Forgive me if I am being a little touchy here, but there is no way on Odin's green Midgard that tmavé is a "re-emerging style" for the simple reason it never really went away. That's not to say that the style makes a huge proportion of beer sales in Czechia, but as far back as I can remember most breweries have at least one dark lager in their range.

When I first moved to Prague, back in the 20th century, I was a dedicated Guinness drinker and gravitated quite naturally to dark lagers such as Herold Bohemian Black Lager, a beer well regarded by Michael Jackson. Of course there is the legendary U Fleků 13° dark lager with roots back to the 19th century, when dark beers in Bohemia were still top fermented.

While it is true that there are exceedingly few Czech dark lagers actually from Czechia that make it to this side of the pond, I can think of all of 1 that is easy-ish to find, Budvar's lovely version of the style, that should not be taken as a sign of a style dying in its heartland. Pretty much every regional and local brewery in Czechia has at least one dark lager offering. Often that beer is a 14° plato beer, the type that was the inspiration behind Morana, though as is common with all Czech beers, gravities for different colours can be all over the map, Kozel Černý is a desítka for example.

Now, I know this will come as a shock to some, but there is more to beer than craft breweries making styles of beer which are little known in a brewery's sitz im leben. If I remember rightly tmavé represents about 5% of Czech beer production, which in 2018 was about 18.1 million barrels. As such somewhere just slightly north of 900,000 barrels of tmavé was brewed that year, just shy of the total production of New Belgium Brewing.

So, where am I going with all this? Simply put, just because something is new to you doesn't mean it is new, or re-discovered, or re-emerging. Tmavé is not like Grodziskie, Broyhan, or even Kulmbacher that needs to be resurrected, it is alive, well, and even evolving in its heartland.

On a less snarky note, I would love to try Tmavá Sova, and I applaud any brewery that takes a gamble on a less well-known style of beer, especially if it happens to be a lager style from central Europe. As I said at the beginning, lager is not some just wan, piss-coloured, fizzy drink for the masses, but rather a noble family of beers that have their roots in central Europe and make up some of the best beers you will ever drink, so explore, go find a brewery that is making the same kind of decisions as Matchless, and discover what real lager can be.

Fuggled Beer of the Year

So 9, erm 8, has become 3, but as ever there can be only one Fuggled Beer of the Year, a prize entirely devoid of monetary value or media hype. Our illustrious finalists therefore are:

• Pale: Coat Czech 12° - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville, VA
• BOAB: Sommerbier - Bierkeller, Columbia, SC
• Dark: Pro Seam Please - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville, VA

Ah...the glories of Czech style pale lager, the second best thing to actual Czech pale lager. When a brewery makes an absolute banger of a Czech style pale lager, they are always going to appear in my end of year review. This especially true when said Czech style pale lager is either a 10° or 12° - side note, it has started to seriously annoy me when breweries bring out a "Czech" or "Bohemian" pilsner with a starting gravity of 14° or above. For as long as Bohemians have been drinking pale lager, it has predominantly been 12° or below. Any way, I could wax lyrical for days when it comes to Selvedge Brewing's stunning Coat Czech that came out in the middle of spring this year. Absolutely reeking with Saaz hops, with a rock solid bitterness that scrapes the palate clean with every mouthful - again a reminder of our friend Mr Swiveller's maxim that "it can't be tasted in a sip". I think from the day the final půllitr flowed out of the Lukr taps, I have been bugging Selvedge about when it would be re-brewed, and I know when it is back I will drink lots of it, again.

There is part of me that wishes Bierkeller were closer to me than a 6 hour drive, but then I also love the fact that on the few times a year that Mrs V and I get to Columbia to visit family I have a place to go where I feel resolutely at home. I commented on some social media outlet recently that despite being British, I really only became comfortable in drinking spaces when I moved to Prague in 1999. Prior to that, I had been a guilty drinker, being a practicing Christian who liked a pint meant sneaking off to the pub for a couple of jars of Guinness or Caffrey's whilst hoping nobody you knew saw you, especially given you were studying theology with a view to being a minister of some kind. In Prague nobody knew me, nobody cared, and so I could find who I wanted to be - hence becoming an indifferent agnostic who feels most comfortable in central European beer halls. Any way back to the beer. Every time I sit in the beer hall at Bierkeller, usually with a maß in hand, I feel at ease, knowing that Scott and co get it, they know and value Central European beer culture and see no need to mess with perfection. Long may it continue.

I remember a former girlfriend of mine in Czechia telling me that Czechs consider dark beer as being "woman's beer" because it is sweeter, and er reputedly enhances the size of the bosom. Whether or not there is any truth in that folklore I don't know, what I do know is that I love a good Czech style dark lager, assuming of course that Pro Seam Please is a Czech style dark lager...Wait, what? Is there heresy about? No, not really, just the inherent complexity that is central Europe and the inability of stylistas to accept that reality. As I mentioned in the previous post, Pro Seam Please was inspired by the Fabián Tmavý 14° from the imperious Pivovar Hostomice, just an hour or so from Prague, so obviously it's a Czech style dark lager, right? Right? Well, according to Hostomice's own website, their 14° tmavé is "Tmavé speciální pivo bavorského typu" - that's "special dark beer in the Bavarian style", aka Munich Dunkel. Whatever you want to call it, it's a great beer and in common with Coat Czech, I am looking forward to its return.

So there we have it, three beers that would stand up to any competition in the lager brewing heartlands of Europe, from a pair of breweries that I would love to see do some kind of collaboration brew together such is their shared love of all things Central European (hint, hint). As it is, I can only choose one brew to be the Fuggled Beer of the Year, an award, as mentioned, bereft of monetary value - well, other than the cash I have spend on said beers throughout the year. For the first time in Fuggled Review of the Year history, we have a brewery holding on to that crown, though with a different beer. Where last year it was Tabolcloth, this year the winner is Selvedge and Coat Czech 12° pale lager. There is a very good reason why I recently sang Josh and Selvedge's praises in an article by Evan Rail on Vinepair, they are simply knocking it out of the park and Coat Czech is a home run.

Stand Up For Lager

If you follow pretty much any of my social media accounts, you will know that I am a devotee of lager. I love the stuff, absolutely love it. That's not to take anything away fro, or cast aspersions at, their top fermented cousins, but given the choice, I will always choose a well brewed lager beer. Just to give you an idea of my love for the lagering arts, here's a quick selection of my favourite posts on the subject:

• Lagerboy Pride!
• Mmmmm.....Lager.
• Little Lager Land
• LOL - Love Our Lager
• Love Lager Lament

This morning as I had my coffee and watched YouTube videos, having dispatched Mrs V to work and the Malé Aličky to daycare, a video was recommended to me by the Craft Beer Channel about lagers...here it is:



What a fantastic video! Thank goodness for people out there telling the truth about the various lager styles. If I were in the UK you bet I'd be trying to get along to the lager festival mentioned in the video, and if you are in the UK, do try and get along.

A Thoroughly Good Egg(enberg)

When you say the word "Eggenberg" to me, two breweries cross my mind. Firstly, and probably obviously, is the Brauerei Schloss Eggenberg in Austria, but also Pivovar Eggenberg in Český Krumlov, where I remember having a decent feed and a reasonable dark lager many moons ago, and where took a picture of a Budweiser Urquell sign.

For today's post though I am not heading back to Czechia, but rather about 70 miles south to Vorchdorf and the Austrian, dare I say more internationally renowned, Eggenberg. If you have any interest in strong lagers then chances are that you have tried the magisterial Samichlaus or the beguiling Urbock 23°. Today though we are going to the other end of the spectrum.

Hopfenkönig is Schloss Eggenberg's pilsner style lager, and as you can see from the picture it is very pale, and comes in a half litre can!! Side note, half litres need to be the norm for any lager under about 5.5%, and the more European lager makers send over beer in cans, or participate in B United's cold shipping program, the better.

As is now traditional in my pub drinking I took no notes. On this particular day there was a chill bite to the breeze so my mate Dave and I ventured to a table inside Kardinal Hall...the first time I had drunk inside a pub in almost 10 months. The potted highlights though of the beer were dry and crackery like a German pilsner but with more of a hop presence, approaching maybe even Czech hop levels. I am not sure if "Austrian Pilsner" is a definable, or accepted, variant on the pale lager branch of the beer world, but I would drink a lot of that style if it were.

This got me thinking about Austrian beer in general. From memory, I think I have had a grand total of 4 Austrian beers, this, Samichlaus, Urbock 23°, and Edelweiss, a very refreshing wheat beer that I wrote about back in the Prague days. Austria has a population just shy of 9 million, and those fine people are only just behind the Czechs to the north when it comes to per capita beer consumption. Austrian brewing holds a very important place in the history of lager development with Anton Dreher's creation of Vienna lager in 1841 being the palest lager on earth prior to Josef Groll coming up with the eponymous pale lager of Plzeň. The village of Horn in norther Austria was famed for its "horner bier" a white ale made with malted oats, and likely akin to Berliner Weisse, that was a favourite tipple of Mozart. Yet with all this brewing history, Austrian beer just doesn't seem to make it across the ocean, or even up the road to Bohemia if memory serves.

For all that, I am glad that Hopfenkönig is available at Kardinal Hall, and likely at Beer Run if I fancy doing a more in depth analysis of this delicious beer, it is a serious contender for the Fuggled pale beer of 2021 already. Taking a broader view, if you know of any other Austrian beers available in central VA that are worth a try, let me know, especially if you have a source for Trumer Pils!

Lagerboy Pride!

If you have been following Fuggled for a while now, you will doubtless know that I am a devotee of the lager arts.

Whether pale, amber, dark or pitch black, most of my favourite beers will have been cold fermented and then lagered before packaging. I am quite happily what some breweries like to disparagingly call a 'Lagerboy'. It therefore seriously pisses me off that 'lager' is used as shorthand for lowest common denominator beer.

Lager, as I have said many times before, is a labour of love from beginning to end, especially if a brewer is going to do a decoction mash, which makes the brewday longer. Then there is the lagering of the beer itself, tying up the brewer's capital for a long period of time, whether it be 4 weeks or 90 days - did you know that a batch of 12° Budvar takes 102 days to make, 12 days in primary fermentation followed by 3 months lagering? In a world that seems to love talking about beers being made with 'passion', it takes real passion and dedication to doing things properly and give your lager the time it needs to be ready.

I have said it before, and will continue to bang the drum, but a well made lager is, in my unhumble opinion, the height of the brewers' craft. Sure you can make your triple black IPA aged in soured gorilla snot barrels, but if a brewer is incapable of making a clean, crisp, refreshing and flavourful pale lager then are they really all that great, despite the ravings of those advocating the rating of beer?

Using the term 'lager' as a cover all for the lowest common denominator brews churned out by multinational breweries does a disservice to a family of beers as diverse and varied as ales. Whether drinking a Bohemian Pilsner packed with the flavours and aromas of Saaz, downing a pint of Schwarzbier with its clean roastiness, or supping gently on a powerful yet balanced Baltic Porter, there is little in life as satisfying as well made lager, where the brewer has nowhere to hide flaws.

So brewery marketing departments, cut it out with the lager hating, beer geeks, cut it out with phrases like 'it's good, for a pilsner'.

To paraphrase a cliche from self-help groups....my name is Velky Al, and I'm a Lagerboy.

Fuggled Review of the Year - Pale Lagers

My experience of pale lagers this year has been something of a mixed bag. The first six months of the year were in the Czech Republic, thus giving me access to endless amounts of quality pilsner style lager. The second half of the year has largely been one of disappointment in the American craft lager scene - seriously, almost every pale lager I have had here has been bland beyond description, with one exception.

My three contenders for the Fuggled Pale Lager of the year are:

• Kout na Šumavě 10°
• Blue Mountain Lager
• Zlatá Labuť 11°

The Blue Mountain Lager has been something of a life saver for me on those days when I really fancied a decent lager, how it didn't win any awards at the Great American Beer Fest is beyond me - perhaps the judges should spend more time in Germany and the Czech Republic before being allowed to judge lagers.

What can be said about Kout na Šumavě 10° that I haven't already said? Almost nothing to be honest, a 10 degree lager with more flavour and punch than many stronger beers is something to be savoured.

Discovering Zlatá Labuť 11° was one of my beer highlights of 2009 in general, it is quite simply a magnificent beer that deserves a far wider distribution than it has at the moment.

This is such a difficult decision, but for the second year running, the Fuggled Pale Lager of the year is:

1. Kout na Šumavě 10°

Kout is the beer I miss most from the Czech Republic and to my mind the finest expression of the Bohemian Pilsner style.

Brewery Hopping

Just after Mrs Velkyal and I tied the proverbial knot last year, one of our good friends left Prague. Originally from Texas, he and his girlfriend decided to head back to the US. Jay is now studying in Philadelphia, and so before school starts in earnest for him tomorrow, he came to spend the weekend in Charlottesville.

The first time we met was in Pivovar U Bulovky back in Prague, where we enjoyed lashings of good beer, and that night a live concert. Obviously on Saturday Mrs Velkyal brought Jay out to Starr Hill Brewery while I was working in the tasting room, where he got to enjoy the special barleywine that was on tap - a monster 10.7%ABV brew which had lots of earthy hop notes to cut through the sweetness of the malt, as well as the regular range of Starr Hill beers, which he agreed were certainly very nice.

The night before, we had popped into the South Street Brewery in the centre of Charlottesville and partook in the sampling flight of their beers, the highlights for me were the J.P. Cask Conditioned Pale Ale and the Hop Harvest Ale, which uses fresh hops from this year's harvest. Much of that night is something of a blur, but one fuelled by good beer and excellent company - the beer highlight for me was Samuel Smith's IPA, which we had in the Court Square Tavern, just off Charlottesville's Downtown Mall and a front runner for being my favourite pub in town.

Pretty much on a whim, we decided to spend our Sunday visiting the other couple of breweries close to the city, Devil's Backbone and Blue Mountain Brewery, both of which are in the same neck of the wooded mountains as Starr Hill and form integral parts of the Brew Ridge Trail. First up was Devil's Backbone, and all you can say when you see the building itself is "wow!", styled after a Swiss mountain chalet and built from mostly reclaimed materials, it is one impressive brewpub. This time Jay and I ordered a flight of samplers between us, but due to the barmaid mixing up which beers were which, my tasting notes got well scrambled and I gave up. The highlight though was their Eight Point IPA, a typical American interpretation of the style, and a very good one at that. Interestingly they have a beer called a Saazer Golden Ale, which is apparently made accroding to the pilsner method but then top-fermented. I was certainly intrigued but ultimately disappointed, with an IBU of 18 (I think) it didn't even come close to the 40 IBUs of Saaz hoppy goodness that Pilsner Urquell has, up the hops though and I think they could be on to a winner!

Back then into the car, with designated driver and all round fab soul, Mrs Velkyal in the hotseat, off to Blue Mountain Brewery it was. Again the obligatory flight of samples, although the lager was temporarily off so we would have to wait for that. An excellent Kolsch, a weizen excellent as both hefe and kristall (better with of course in my world), followed by an IPA which was a delight, then a Double IPA which was smooth beyond your wildest beery dreams, topped off with a nice imperial porter served on nitro - much to my bemusement, although excellent it was, I would love to try it on cask or CO2. Finally the lager was once more available and of course in the interests of science it needed tasting, I was not expecting much though.

In various posts lately I have lamented the inability of many American brewers to produce a good lager, sure Starr Hill's Jomo Lager is very nice, as is Samuel Adams Boston Lager, but most of the lagers I have tried have otherwise been bland, insipid or just plain bad. Blue Mountain Lager though bucks the trend, not just completely, but completely and utterly, as well as with style - this is a good, good lager. Full of flavour, a nice hoppy bite to fight with the malty body. Simply an excellent lager, and the beer I stuck to for the rest of our time in the brewery.

I have more friends coming to Charlottesville this coming weekend, I think more Blue Mountain Lager will be consumed with gusto!

Bridge to Nowhere

I spent about 5 hours on Saturday just walking around various parts of Prague. I am lucky in many ways in that I live right in the heart of the city, just a five minute walk from Vaclávské Náměstí, so I get to indulge my love of bumbling with a camera almost every weekend. Our intention was just to stroll around and take some pictures of random bits of pieces, after an hour or so of which we stumbled upon the new brewpub Pražský most na Valšů and being in need of a sit down, we ventured in to try their beer. As you can see from the picture at the head of this article, they also sell a couple of other brewers’ beer, in this case Malý Rohozec and Březňák. On the door was a note saying that they had special prices for their own beer, 30kč for a half litre and 22kč for a 0.3l - their normal prices are 45kč and 30kč respectively.

We decided to try out the svetlý ležák first, myself with a full half litre and Mrs Velkyal with a little one. Before describing the beer I want to say that I loved the décor of the place, the chairs are solid, and heavy, wood, and the lampshades look like a stylized version of the Charles Bridge, with a statue on the top. In short, the interior is fantastic. I held high hopes for the beer.

When eventually the beer came, the place was virtually empty yet the service was tardy, it was a light honey colour with a nice rocky head, which stayed for the duration of the drink. There were distinct smells of clove and flowers when I shoved my nose into the glass, Mrs Velkyal commented that it smelt metallic. When actually drinking the beer, the first taste was that of lemon, and a bitterness which caught the back of the throat, lingering through the aftertaste. The dominant taste though was distinctly tinny and it has a very slight body. While it is not a bad beer it is definitely not up there with the best microbrew lagers that the Czech Republic has to offer, though it is streets ahead of megaswill such as Gambrinus. In many ways it is the BBC Radio 2 of Czech beer, nothing offensive, but nothing memorable either.

I had noticed on the bar a bottle of dark lager, so I assumed that the second tap they had would be their own tmávé, however on asking it turned out to be the Rohozec Skalák dark lager, so I ordered a half litre of that, as Mrs Velkyal was still nursing her little one. When it arrived, again with the tardy service requiring that I went to the bar to order, it was a fabulous dark ruby with a tan head. On the nose there was again a touch of tinniness, though not as pronounced as with the light lager, and hints of sweet caramel. The caramel in the nose was reinforced with a nice toffee sweetness which also had the faintest trace of coffee. This beer has a nice body and is clean in the mouth, making it a nice easy dark lager to drink.

When I went to pay I decided to pick up a bottle of the house dark lager to try when we eventually made it home, at 35kč for a bottle of beer I was hoping for something really good.

Mrs Velkyal and I continued our wanderings, going up to the Vinohrady area of Prague following up a tip from Pivní Filosof that there is a shop selling Chodovar beers – one of my favourites in the Czech Republic. Sure enough we found the shop, which also sells a good selection of whiskies, rums, tequilas, wines from around the world and tucked on a corner of the sales counter were bottles of Chodovar 13° lager, their excellent tmávé and their wonderful skální ležák. So we bought a couple of bottles of Argentine malbec, another passion that Pivní Filosof and I share, and two bottles each of the 13° and skální ležák, with that done we headed home.

Once home I decided to pop open the dark lager from Pražský most na Valšů and complete my tasting. One of my bad habits is reading beer labels, and I must admit that reading the ingredient list for this one made me a touch nervous – why would a beer need ascorbic acid in it? For a dark beer it is rather light in colour, and the somewhat minimal head soon disappeared. The smell of this beer was overwhelmingly detergent, that sounds as disgusting as it smelt – Mrs Velkyal suggested that it was the glass, but I always wash, rinse and dry my beer glasses thoroughly. The beer itself tasted like burnt toast and had very little body and was syrupy and soapy, in keeping with the light lager there was again a metallic taste, except this time it was more noticeable and was clearly copper. It was so bad that I did something I have never done before, after about 5 sips of the beer I gave up and poured it down the sink – it was quite simply the worst beer I have had in the Czech Republic, yes even worse than Klášter. Really the only good thing about the beer was the label.

I can honestly say that Pražský most na Valšů will not become a regular haunt. The light lager is ok, but not worth paying 30kč for, the Rohozec is more expensive and while a decent pint, I can buy a bottle for less at Pivovarský klub. Plus I have a problem with a brewpub selling another brewer’s wares, it suggests a lack of confidence in their own product, and in the case of their dark lager, that lack is well placed.