It’s been a busy month or so since we got back from our travels — so busy we haven’t got round to mentioning all of the fascinating pubs and breweries we visited in Prague. So, a quick summary is in order.
Straight after U Fleku, we headed to the Novomeststky Pivovar, probably the second most touristy place in Prague. It was very empty, and had quite a dismal atmosphere as result. The beer was great, though — very yeasty — so much so that it smelled like rising rye bread. We completed our touristy trio by popping into the legendary U Medvidku. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get into the ‘pivovar’ bit, where you go to get the well-regarded Oldgott Barrique on tap. We settled for a bottle of the same in another section, which tasted a bit sour and watery. Not really worth the bother. The boring old Budvar on tap was great, though!
The two most interesting brewpubs took a bit more effort to get to. Although Klasterny Pivovar Strahov isn’t that far from the Castle, it is up a ruddy great hill. The beer and the food is a tad pricy by Czech standards, but we’d say it was worth paying the extra for. On tap was a tmavy and the ‘jantar’ (amber), which was one of our favourite beers of the holiday. It was almost like a British ale in its bitterness and fruitiness. Lovely stuff.
Out in the suburbs, Pivovar U Bulovky is worth the trip for a lively and cosy atmosphere (although there’s a very scary waitress) and great beer. Can’t really see the coach parties rocking up to this place, although we thought we spotted a few other beer geeks, notebooks and beer guides in hand. U Bulovky offer a good lezak and a lovely polotmavy (amber), as well as a changing range of other beers. The ‘ale’ was more interesting in the fact of its existence than its flavour though — definitely a few too many pear drops going on.
One other pub we have to mention is Baracnicka Rychta, up a side street in Mala Strana. It offers excellent beers from the Svijany brewery, the nutty “red” being the highlight. We ate a lot of nakladany hermelin there, and felt very contented with the world.
Apologies for the lack of appropriate accents. Life’s too short.
Life really is excellent when Budvar can be described as boring and great in the same sentence! I agree with the accents, although if you go back to the old Czech spellings you basically have Polish.
Oh yes – one of the many good things about the holiday was realising how good Budvar can be. It’s so ubiquitous in the UK, and rarely tastes of much here. While I wouldn’t rate it as one of my favourite beers of the trip, it’s always good to reappraise a beer you’d written off.
[...] nights later, having made a whistle-stop tour of as many pubs and breweries as we could, we’d got a better handle on Czech beer, so when we returned for one final pint of tankova [...]