Plzen: a Czech beauty

HAPPY HOURS
Plzen’s liquid gold flows strong in town of its birth

Order a beer at a restaurant or bar in Plzen, Czech Republic, and unless you’ve requested an ale, porter or stout, you’ll probably be served the clear, golden brew behind some familiar brands: Pilsner.

And this is its ancestral home.

Mugs of frothy beer served in this cobblestone-studded city south-west of Prague may resemble others the world over, but a trip to the local brewery confirms these are no ordinary suds.

The faintly-bitter lager first produced in Plzen more than a century ago gave rise to a style of beer that has since circled the globe. Much of today’s lager-style beer, in fact, owes its flaxen colour and crisp flavour to a brewing process formulated in this small metropolis in the Czech Republic’s Bohemia region. Its name still reflects its origins: Pilsner, Pilsener, or sometimes just Pils.

The beer’s precise birthplace, the Pilsner Urquell brewery, stands on the city’s fringes, enclosed by an ornate 19th century double archway. Its copper kettle-lined confines have changed with the times, but visitors can still see hints of the past, including a network of underground tunnels once used to store huge casks of fermenting beer.

The Pilsner Urquell factory of today is a marvel of modern brewing, operating 24 hours a day and churning out 120,000 bottles of beer per hour. But it has its origins in a brewing tradition that stretches back to the late 1200s, when King Wenceslaus II granted brewing licenses to more than 250 city residents.

But the quality of Plzen’s beer was poor, according to the brewery. This prompted the citizen brewers of Plzen to combine forces and build a modern beer-making facility, which opened in 1842, the same one that operates to this day.

A young brewmaster and reputed ruffian, Josef Groll, took the helm and began making the beer that became known as Pilsner lager, fermenting barley malt, hops and water at a low heat, and adding yeast that collected at the bottom of the mixture.

Among the beer’s defining qualities were its shimmering appearance and subtle bitterness from locally grown hops. Other ingredients specific to the region included soft water drawn from 100m-deep wells and malt made from barley grown in the Czech regions of Bohemia and Moravia.

The brewing of Pilsner Urquell has remained largely unchanged since Groll’s time. Ground malt and water are boiled three times in copper kettles, a procedure carried out perhaps once or twice in the making of other beers. Caramelisation occurs at the bottom of the kettles, producing flavourful compounds. The concoction is boiled with hops before being fermented at a low temperature, pasteurised and packaged in bottles, cans, kegs and tanks.

Julie Johnson, editor of All About Beer magazine, noted that the beer’s name, Urquell, means “the original source” in German. “Pilsner beer is the ancestor of the kind of global international lager style that makes up 90-something per cent of the beer we drink today,” she said, pointing to brands such as Budweiser.

In a nod to the beer born in Plzen, American brewers of the 19th century created “something that was much softer for the American palate,” she said. “That, in turn, has swept the world.”

Pilsner, and pale ales that emerged around the same time, stood out because “they were light, they were beautiful to look at”, Johnson said.

The beers owed their attractive look to malt made from barley that had been heated evenly using an indirect source — then a revolutionary technique. Earlier malt may have been partly burned, producing beer with “a darker and roastier taste,” she said.

The malt’s consistent quality yielded exceptionally clear beer, and its emergence coincided with the spread of glassware that allowed drinkers to admire its appearance.

“So you had a beer that appealed to the eye as well as the nose and mouth,” Johnson said, “and people were just struck dumb by how lovely and beautiful it was.”

Visitors to the brewery can sample Pilsner Urquell’s after the guided tour that ends in one of the underground cellars used to store barrels of fermenting beer in the days before refrigeration.

One guide, Katerina Sedlackova, attested to the qualities of Plzen’s namesake beer, offering cups of the drink. “You should know that Pilsner Urquell is very healthy,” she said, referring to nutrients such as vitamin B. “If you drink a cup of beer a day, you should stay healthy.” AP

Travelling there? Check from this site, www.plzen.eu/en/home/index.html.

Pilsner Urquell, check this site, www.pilsner-urquell.com.

The brewery, check here, www.prazdroj.cz/en/.


From TODAY, Traveller
Thursday, 02-April-2009