I was in Prague last week for a few days.
When I mentioned to a friend that I was going to be in Amsterdam for a conference in the middle of November, he pointed out that I may as well make use of the whole being in Europe anyway thing and hop over to Prague. Naturally I agreed entirely, and so did my best friends, one that lives in Slovakia and the other in Boston.
I have spent an inordinate amount of time in the last few months trying to decide what breweries and pubs I definitely wanted to get to, and often it came down to a choice of 2 for an out of town excursion, Únětice or Hostomice. I even considered the possibly of doing both in a single day, then looked at the logistics of public transport and train connections...um, yeah, no. It is a mere 60km, or 37 miles, from one to the other, but it would take 4 hours by public transport and train, so no. The deciding factor was the fact that Hostomice has a brewery tap in Prague itself, so we got the metro to Dejvická and bus 355 to Únětice, Na Parcelách, wandered down the hill a wee bit and stumbled into the cavernous, and practically empty on a Wednesday night brewery beer hall.
We didn't care that it was empty, only that it was open. Also need to give a shout out to the ticket inspector that we met on the way. For those who remember Prague ticket inspectors of the Noughties, you will understand the cognitive dissonance of a younger guy who was polite, helpful, and when my Czech ran out, spoke good English. My best mate that came up from Slovakia speaks very good Slovak, but as the Czech Republic and Slovakia drift further apart in terms of shared tv channels and the like, it seems fewer and fewer young Czechs readily understand Slovak. Anyway, having checked our main tickets on the metro, he then got on the bus out to Únětice, for which we had got the required additional ticket. I seem to recall him nodding appreciatively when we told him we were going to the brewery.
Any way, back to the brewery beer hall - sorry but terms like "taproom" or "pub" just don't do justice to central European beer halls, even though they serve the same purpose. I fully expected to sit down and order a half litre of 10° pale lager, yet my heart leapt when I saw the magic word "tuplák", which in Germany would be called a maß. My first beer in Únětice would be a litre of their desítka, and I knew right then that many of my favourite US made Czech style lagers would struggle for my attention when I got home.
If I remember rightly from a conversation with Evan Rail, recently the venerable 10° has been overtaken as the most commonly drunk Czech pale lager, usurped by it's stronger brother the 12°. My mate that lives in Slovakia and I though are devotees of the old school and love desítka, Únětice's is as classic a classic as you could ask for, and I may have wondered out loud more than once why it is that US made 10° lagers for all their trumpeting of authenticity and faithfulness to Bohemian beer just consistently fall a little short of the real thing, and that includes those that take the time to do decoction mashing, etc, etc. Maybe it's a sitz im leben thing, I really can't tell, and maybe it is ostalgic (not a typo) revelry on my part, maybe it's the firm 30+ IBUs that are crammed into the best Czech desítky?
I am sure I followed the tuplák with another, this time with the filtered 10.7°, and then eventually the 12°, I wasn't taking notes, and clearly as the only 2 pictures I took are on this post, I was doing a shoddy job of thinking about blog content. That just wasn't the point of the visit, we were there to enjoy absolutely world class beer in supreme company. I do regret though not taking a picture of the game pâté that was a revelation, various forms of meat products and Czech bread were to be a feature of the trip.
Anyway, if you're ever in Prague, take the time to make the trip out to Únětice for some of the best beer on the planet and if meaty snacks with rye bread are your thing, that too.
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