First of all, not only is it delicious, but for the taste and quality, beer in the Czech Republic is incredibly cheap. You might be surprised to find that beer is often the cheapest drink on the menu in most restaurants – cheaper than a Coke, juice or a bottle of mineral water.
Well, actually, it might now be the second-cheapest drink on your menu, as the Ministry of Health passed an ordinance a couple of years back requiring restaurants to have at least one drink on their menus priced more cheaply than beer. This was to encourage Czechs to – at least sometimes – have something else to drink.
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It’s not just for Breakfast Anymore
That’s because the Czechs consume more beer per capita than any nation on earth – and when you work out the statistics, it comes out to a staggering number of beers per day for every man, woman and child in the country! If you then factor out: people who don’t drink beer (there are a few of those here), people who don’t drink alcohol at all, children (who, presumably consume no beer), the number is downright shocking. Some people even have a bit with breakfast – you definitely see construction workers having one on their morning breaks.
In fact, in the 1990s, the famous Pilsner Urquell (Plzeňský Prazdroj) brewery created and marketed a “pivo pro pracujici,” or a “beer for workers.” It was not a nonalcoholic beer but rather a beer with a very low alcohol content. It never took off - I suppose the workers prefer the real deal. And the artisan glass blowers at the Moser crystal factory consume a special nonalcoholic beer during their working hours spent next to hot glass-melting fires. |
Pilsner Urquell – the King of Czech Beers
Budweiser – Not the King of American Beers?
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So, you’ll be hard-pressed to come by a Bud in Prague, though a few places do serve it, such as U Medvídků. But if you take a trip to Southern Bohemia, you’ll start to see more Budweiser signs affixed to restaurant and pub façades as you approach České Budějovice. You also won’t find it in the U.S. – at least not under its Czech name. Look for Czechvar instead.
What About the Microbrew Trend?
Here’s the twist: When the big Czech brands began to be bought up by large international beverage companies like Anheuser-Busch InBev/Asahi Breweries in the case of Pilsner Urquell and Molson Coors in the case of Staropramen, the new owners set about standardizing the production processes of the old breweries. Meanwhile, many smaller local breweries which were kept in operation by the communist command economy began to struggle or shut down completely. Some noticed an ever so slight decrease in quality – or at least a very slight change in taste – in some of the larger brewers' brands. In a revolt, some of the brew masters in the older breweries jumped ship and restarted production anew in the smaller local breweries, bringing with them the old traditional brewing methods that used to be the norm at the likes of Pilsner Urquell.
Now the microbrews have proliferated, and you’ll sometimes find bottles of them in grocery stores, and many Prague restaurants serve them on tap now, too. And some pubs that are all about beer will have ten to 20 of them on tap on any given day and rotate the brands regularly.
Prague's Original Microbrew?
And I would be remiss if I did not mention U Fleků. It’s a microbrew of sorts that has been brewed in Prague since only a few years after Christopher Columbus set sail! And it’s still in the same spot! While the restaurant and beer garden are totally touristy now, it’s still worth a visit to try their dark and light lagers.