Pivní Filosof - Beer Philosopher

A trend?

2010-02-08T07:30:00.000+01:00

Or is it too soon to speak about that?Last year beer sales fell everywhere, I think. The Czech Republic is no exception, where sales dropped by 5% overall (with 10% on exports). No surprise here.However, if we take a second to look at the numbers in more detail we will notice a couple of very interesting things.Plzeňský Prazdoj, the largest brewer in the country, reported a decrease of 4.4%.

Making the best of an invitation

2010-02-04T00:10:00.001+01:00

Though I talk about places that I visit while wandering around the city, restaurant reviewing is nor my area of expertise, neither the main topic of this blog. That's why I was quite surprised by the mail received from Restaurace Paprika a few days before Christmas.Paprika is a small Hungarian restaurant located in a back street of Holešovice. Its owner Holešovice wanted to invite me to taste the

A pisshead anecdote

2010-02-02T09:23:00.001+01:00

To a certain extent, Czech beer lovers aren't spoil for choice when it comes to style variety, but if it's good quality lagers what we are talking about, and session beers in particular, we really can't complain. Moreover, unlike what happens in most other countries, the "real beers" are often cheaper than those of the bigger brands. That's why it's sometimes hard to believe that there are still

Surprise from Barcelona

2010-01-29T12:06:00.004+01:00

Fortunately, Glops Fumada wasn't the only thing that my friend Ramón brought me on his last visit.When he wrote asking if there was any beer in particular I was interested in, I could have asked him for another sample from Guineu, their Montserrat was lovely and I have good reason to believe it isn't an exception among their product line. I could have also asked him to bring over a bottle from

Darker greys

2010-01-25T11:49:00.003+01:00

Some time ago I commented that what Heineken was doing in the Czech Republic was neither black, nor white, but rather of several shades of grey. Well, it seems those shades are getting a bit darker.Pivovar Kutná Hora wasn't the only brewery that Heineken closed last year. They also sealed the fate of Pivovar Znojmo, which stopped brewing last summer.After closing down the shop, the Dutch group

I just love winter

2010-01-23T14:22:00.002+01:00

The colder the better. OK, it's true that the amount of snow that fell the last two weekends was way more than necessary, and that clearing it from the driveway, walkway and part of the terrace, several times, was a pain in the ass. The reward, however, was priceless.I love winter, a few minutes outside and a světlý ležák gets to the right temperature.Na Zdraví!Travel to the Czech Republic and

Something tasty for the weekend

2010-01-22T10:19:00.004+01:00

This is the result of another culinary experiment that turned out to be great, tasty, rich and very caloric, what isn't there to love?: Baltic Porter RagoutIngredients: (Bailey, you are going to love this)500g of shoulder of pork (though mutton, lamb or even boar could be good)1/2l Baltic Porter (If you don't have anything in that style, plain Porter or Dopplebock should do fine)100g of smoked

Don't bother

2010-01-21T10:03:00.005+01:00

In his previous visit, my friend Ramón had brought me three samples from the Spanish micro Llúpols i Llevats, a.k.a. Glops. One of them, d'Hivern, an ale flavoured with honey and herbs, I quite liked. The other two, both lagers, well, let's just say they weren't good.That time Ramón didn't want to bring me Glops Fumada (smoked) because he had very wrongly assumed that I didn't like that kind of

Enriching conversations

2010-01-18T12:16:00.004+01:00

OK. I'm sure that for many of you this won't be anything new, but still I want to say it. Having a chat with someone who makes a living out of making beer, specially with true Brew Masters, is a fantastic experience, one I think I would still enjoy even without being the beer obsessed that I am.During this decade that I've been teaching languages to adults I've got to know pretty well many

A question of semantics?

2010-01-11T12:11:00.003+01:00

In today's blog post Alan once again rants against the use of the word "pairing" when speaking about beer and food combinations.I understand and, to a certain extent, I agree with his point of view. Those who know about beer, or who are experienced and curious drinkers don't really need to be instructed on which beer should be drank with this or that food. We are very well able to do that by

Heavyweights

2010-01-08T15:52:00.003+01:00

My old man had his 65th birthday a few days before he and my mum came to visit us for Christmas. When I sent him the greetings I promised we would have toast with something appropriate. The beer I had in mind was Mikeller Black, a 17.5%ABV that its creator had sent me a couple of months before. And so it was that I uncorked it after a pre-Christmas dinner . We had it in brandy glasses, perhaps

Historic detail

2010-01-04T12:16:00.004+01:00

While reading a book full of pretty interesting bits of Argentine History (pity it isn't them what schools teach, we would have learned our history a lot better if so) I came across some rather curious beer trivia.The economy in the Rio de la Plata region got started with a lot of hard work and smuggling (yeah, that's right, even from the very beginnings in Argentina, abiding to the law is the

PF 2010

2010-01-01T11:24:00.005+01:00

We had a veeeery quiet New Year's party yesterday. At home, sitting watching the telly (there was some really good live music on ČT2) drinking some beers, eating very little (I had prepared a really wicked guláš for dinner, but we went to visit a very good friend of us who stuffed us with some really wicked roasted goose, so we weren't hungry. Doesn't matter, the guláš will be today's lunch).We

Who is this guy?

2009-12-29T10:34:00.003+01:00

I don't know who Alan Brewer is. Never heard of him, never read his opus. I assume he's someone who knows about beer, otherwise the Spanish magazine Bar&Beer wouldn't publish him. And most likely, he knows more than me, that's the least I expect from someone who's been writing on the subject for as long as he claims.I don't know who Alan Brewer is. I've looked him up on the Internet, but wasn't

St Peter's 12 Apostles (III)

2009-12-27T15:35:00.004+01:00

After going having gone through the oddballs and the modern classics that I had received from St. Peter's Brewery, all I had left were samples of the styles that, in the eyes of many, define English brewing: Mild, (Best) Bitter, (Old Style) Porter and (Cream) Stout (I had already tasted the IPA), plus the Winter Ale, which, since seasonal Ales have been brewed for ever, we can also say it's a "

Burp!

2009-12-26T18:15:00.003+01:00

This have been very special holidays for me. The first as a dad, and the first in who knows how long that I've spent with my parents and my sister (and her BF), who came from Spain to be with us.For Christmas Eve dinner we had the traditional fried carp with potato salad (that I had prepared a couple of days before) and then we went on to open the presents while stuffing our faces with the

I wasn't going to do this, but

2009-12-21T13:48:00.005+01:00

I didn't feel like writing a wrap up of this year, but after reading Knut's (who chose me as one of the bloggers of the year!) and The Beer Nut, I liked the format, which actually was thought up by Mark Dredge, so I changed my mind and decided to give it a go. Here you have it (with some adjustments):Best Czech beer, draught: U Medvídku 1466, specially when Laďa, its creator, taps me a couple

St Peter's 12 Apostles (II)

2009-12-18T16:20:00.004+01:00

Following my route through the samples the people of St Peter's Brewery sent me, it was time to start getting into the more or less classic stuff.The three I had in line were Golden Ale, Suffolk Gold y Ruby Red.Golden Ale is a pretty new style that, according to Martyn Cornell, came out as a kind of response to the rise of lager by the English Real Ale brewers. I had only tried one Golden Ale

Out of Nowhere

2009-12-16T10:55:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I got an e-mail that surprised me for two reasons: That someone bothered to send me an e-mail announcing an event, instead of waiting for me to find about it on the web, and the very nature of the event and its organisers.They call themselves "Pivní archív restaurace U Balbínů", something like Archive Beer Restaurant (coming from "Archivní Víno", wines meant for long aging). I had no

St Peter's 12 Apostles

2009-12-14T11:29:00.004+01:00

OK, it isn't biblically accurate, but it does the job for a silly pun.The good people of St Peter's Brewery, through Claire, were really cool and sent me a box with 12 samples from their product line, a very varied selection indeed.Since posting the tasting notes of 12 beers might be quite boring for you to read, and would sure be a lot of work for me to write, I have split them in three

Progress Report

2009-12-11T09:30:00.004+01:00

Since a few (very few) of you have been great enough to send me a few virtual moneys to help me finance my book, I thought it would be appropriate to write the first progress report, so you can see that your money is at work and that I'm not spending all of my free time doing things like looking after my daughter.I've already started wandering the streets of Prague gathering material for the book

Brave

2009-12-08T17:29:00.003+01:00

From the first sip Pivovar Chotěboř made a great impression on me. Their Světlý Ležák is a perfect example of the style that made Czech beer famous around the world: solid malt base with a most subtle touch of caramel and the distinctive presence of Saaz hops, and the unfiltered version ranks among the best new stuff that has come out this year.During the SPP Awards Party I had a brief chat with

Tasty December News

2009-12-06T11:12:00.002+01:00

Those who are in Prague during December, either permanently or on a visit, will have plenty of new, special beers to choose from.Last week Zlý Časy tapped the first barrel and sold the first bottles of their own Christmas Special, a Weizenbock which, just like their previous seasonal specials, was brewed in Chýně (who I'm sure are already pulling pints of their own holiday brew) by Petr Buriánek.

Hypocrisy?

2009-12-05T12:18:00.003+01:00

I was going to leave this post only for the Spanish speaking beer community, but since it wasn't very well received I thought I would share it with my English speaking readers as well, hoping some of you will have the same reactionAndrés, from the Spanish beer blog Culturilla Cervecera wrote about his visit to Fortiverd SL (Sp), makers of the Bleder beers. There he tells us about the brewery and

BFSD

2009-12-04T09:42:00.003+01:00

The other day my Spanish friend Delirium published a very interesting post (Sp) on the different processes used to make non-alcoholic beers.Besides enlightening me on something I didn't know too well, the post made me realise how little we speak about this kind of beers. No surprise, really. After all, we are all pissheads who love to drink and talk about the "realy stuff". And also, there quite