The inaugural pilgrimage to the Pilsner Urquell brewery in 1987 was an epochal day even though we were denied entry. I’ve tasted thousands of beers since, and always return to this one. This account is best accompanied by Antonín Dvořák’s Slavonic dances, which in my mind always will be synonymous with passages through the Czech countryside.
Previously:40 Years in Beer, Part Thirteen: In 1987, it was almost “impossible to find bad beer” in Czechoslovakia.
For as long as Barrie and I had been talking about visiting Czechoslovakia, we had considered only two firm itinerary prerequisites. The glorious city of Prague obviously landed at the top of the chart. Perhaps less easy to fathom at first glance was our interest in the city of Plzeň (or Pilsen in German), 65 miles southwest of Prague, with a present day population of 175,000.
As a recorded settlement, Plzeň’s history goes all the way back to the year 976. The city remained Catholic during the Hussite wars and became an increasingly important trading center on the route to Germany. In 1869, the founding of the Škoda Works kicked off an era of rapid industrialization, which made Plzeň one of the arsenals of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
All those Škoda automobiles we saw in Czechoslovakia? They were manufactured in Plzeň, but we weren’t gearheads, and preferred to take the train, not drive, because drunk driving isn’t good, and our plan for Plzeň involved drinking a great deal of Pilsner Urquell beer—or as it is known in Czechoslovakia, Plzeňský Prazdroj.
The very word “Pilsner,” as it has come to English speakers, is both an adjective and an appellation: “Beer from Pilsen,” using the German-language rendering of the city’s name. Obviously, beer has been brewed in Plzeň (Czech) for centuries, though the current brewery dates to 1842.
The story goes something like this.
Certain families in Plzeň had been granted brewing rights during medieval times. During the early 1800s, as modern brewing techniques were being harnessed to the scientific method elsewhere in nearby Vienna and Bavaria, it occurred to these brewing stakeholders that the spirit of the age, and the “higher tech” direction being traveled by beer and brewing science, suggested a pooling of resources to achieve better quality and competitiveness.
The Pilsner Urquell brewery was capitalized and born from this revelation, at an indisputably ideal juncture.
Modern malting processes were yielding consistent pale malts. The water...Read more
