The Pilsner Urquell brewery, a retrospective

We stood huddled together in the narrow damp tunnels. A chill fog was in the air, and above us ran frosted pipes, moisture dripping on to the cold stone floor below. The tunnels were filled to the left and to the right with wooden barrels, each filled with rich smooth Pilsner Urquell beer at varying stages of the brewing process. Those barrels are gone now, replaced with soulless but practical stainless steel, but this is the story of a visit to one of the world’s finest breweries before it embraced volume over quality.
The tunnel to the right contained the fermenters, large wooden barrels the size of a washer drier combo or perhaps a large jacuzzi. In each barrel, the brewed beer was left to ferment for about 30 days or so until was is ready to be lagered, or stored.
To the left were the lagering barrels, stacked three or four high. Once the beer has been pumped into the lagering barrels, it has only six more months to go before being kegged and shipped throughout the world to pubs in Europe, the United States, and Asia.
Over time, the chill became more pronounced, and the visitors began to move around in a vain attempt warm themselves. The tunnels are tapped to be between 36 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit, cold temperatures for shorts-and-sneakers-wearing tourists such as ourselves. Looking up at the frosted pipe which cool the tunnels, it occured to me that we were in one of the largest refrigerators in the world, with over 9 km of tunnels cut in the the hillside across from the industrial town of Pilsen.
Above the huge expanse of tunnels sprawls the brewery itself, with 32 kettles brewing a total of 1.3 Hectoliters of beer every year. Pilsner Urquell was, at the time, one of the few breweries still making its own malt, and a single train car was used to move the freshly made malt from a large malting house to the brewery itself.
The brewing tradition in Pilsen is strong, with some of the best hops in the world coming from the surrounding area as (Saaz, or Zatec) and years of brewing tradition. This tradition, the wooden barrels with the complicated pitching process, the malt house, and the concentration on beer rather than production was left largely untouched by the Communist regime. Unfortunately, Pilsner Urquell’s very success has ruined that long-held tradition, as the brewery switched to stainless steel lagering tanks in an effort to keep up production and revenue. I haven’t been back since that tour many years ago, but the beer is clearly different, and that’s a shame. Still, it’s a trip every true beer lover should make.

On a hill overlooking a lake …

Sticking with beer for the moment, we’ve moved across the ocean again, to a place that is simply wonderful in the fall. Kloster Andechs is a monastery located on a hill in the lake country just south of Munich, and offers fine beer in a beautiful setting.
Always one to combine healthy activity with my beer drinking, I would recommend that you take the S-Bahn (the local regional rail) to Herrsching and then hike the forest path up to the beergarden. The walk takes an hour or so, and you can always take a bus back down if you can’t make it.
The specialty of the house is the thick brown beer, which is no longer sold on weekends due to its high alcohol content (and the accidents which resulted). There’s an indoor beer hall which is very rustic in a traditional Bavarian sort of way, but the real beauty of the place is the outdoor beergarden. The beergarden is a multi-level, ancient looking place with more character than you could possibly hope for. Indoors you can grab a freshly-baked pretzel, a massive roast ham hock, spiral-cut radishes and a host of other specialties.
Don’t forget to check out the beautiful monastery grounds while you’re here (or, if you’re not a history buff, send the others to look at the monastery while you have another).

A pilgrimage, of sorts

So, this weekend we finally made it it out to the new Yard’s brewing company, in the not-so-lovely (but up-and-coming) Kensington section of Philadelphia. I wanted to visit Yard’s back when they were in Manayunk, near our own section of town, but I never made it. But when Yards combined their clear desire to brew beer the old-fashioned way with the purchase of a genuine, old-time brewery building, I was quite smitten. After all, Philadelphia’s long legacy of brewing is embodied in a whole series of decaying and disappearing brewery facilities, and anything which saves one of these nifty old buildings is a good thing in my book. Yard’s has gone that one better, by turning that old brewery into a new brewery!
The brewery is housed in the old Weisbrod and Hess brewery, which hadn’t brewed beer since 1939. The building is larger than the brewery’s needs for now, and they are clearly restoring it on an as-needed basis, but the parts they’ve done look good and the remainder is at least the beneficiary of more maintenance than it’s had in a long time.
To add to the enjoyment, the tour is very informal, very friendly, and pretty informative as well. There’s a fantastic old room which has been turned into a comfortable tap room for those who are waiting for a tour, and the brewery itself is contained on two floors of the old brewery.
Now, as noted, it’s not the best neighborhood in the world (we may or may not have witnessed a drug deal while driving around to see the rest of the building), but the beer is good and Yards deserves kudos for returning this great old building to its original function. By all means check it out.

Nobody home?

Continuing this blog’s wild swings across the ocean, we’re back in the UK again, this time in Devon, home to heavy cream (among other things). It’s also home to another pub which is worthy of a trip, the Nobody Inn in tongue-twisting Doddiscombsleigh, near Exeter. That is, it was home to the Nobody Inn, but when I checked the website this morning nothing showed up.
Anyway, the Nobody Inn is very well known for its incredible wine list, and deservedly so, since I think it exceeds 1000 at this point. It is less known for its very respectable selection of Scotch and the availability of some lovely local beers on tap. Either way, you can’t really go wrong at the Nobody Inn, unless I suppose you’re a fan of mixed drinks.
Even better, this is a place which feels like a pub, in the small-town, hundreds of years old kind of way. When we went it was winter, and we were staying in the Inn a couple of doors down. After crunching through the frost to get to the inn there was nothing more welcoming than the warm glow of lights on the low timbered ceilings, complimented by the hum of happy voices and the clinking of glasses. We’re not the kind of people who repeat restaurants when we travel, but we must have gone to the Nobody Inn four evenings running, a record for us.

And now for something completely different

So, having written yesterday about a European pub steeped in tradition and Scotch, now I’m sitting here at home thinking about something very different – the Flying Fish Brewing company in lovely Cherry Hill, New Jersey. More particularly, I’m drinking a pleasant enough (if decidedly un-Bavarian) beer called Oktoberfish, a seasonal beer brewed, not surprisingly, in October. I’ll cover the Oktoberfest in more detail at a later date, but the many “fest” beers resemble nothing I’ve ever tasted at or near the Oktoberfest. Of course, that doesn’t mean they aren’t pleasant beers, and I enjoy a number of them.
Back to Flying Fish. I have to confess, I’m not a fan of New Jersey in general, or Cherry Hill in particular. I also have to say that the Flying Fish Brewery, set in a nondescript corporate park along a typical New Jersey highway, is not really going to give you the warm fuzzies going in. They make up for it, however, in providing probably the most cheerful and accomodating tour available. Hell, check their website, they’ll even let you bring your dog. That, and they brew some very fine beers.