So...You Want to Be A Brewer?

No...don't worry, this isn't a post about being a homebrewer with vague fantasies of upscaling my 5 gallon batches of beer to something that could become a lifestyle business. Nope, I have, sometimes reluctantly, accepted that I will never own my own brewery, for various reasons. So, I will content myself with the occasional brewing project with professionals - if anyone in Virginia is interested, drop me a line, it's been a while since I had a recipe on tap somewhere.

However, there were 66 intrepid souls in 1906 setting out on their education to become brewers through the "Ersten öffentlich Braufachschule in Prag", or "First Public Brewing School of Prague". The earliest reference to the school in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer dates from 1893 and locates the school, according to this advert, at "Wenzelsplatz Nr 54"...

Today that would be known as Václavské náměstí 54, the present day location of a building called Palác Fénix, which was itself built in the late 1920s and thus replaced the buildings in which the brewing school operated. The 1830s building had likewise been built on top of buildings from the 14th century.

By 1906 the school had moved to Mariengasse Nr. 4, or just across the street on what is today Opletalova - ironically on the very street I lived on from 2006 until I left Prague in 2009, and given that the pub I watched Liverpool in for 10 years was on the street opposite Opletalova, I regularly walked past both locations.

It would be in that location then that our 66 friends studied brewing in Prague, and in that school year there were some changes to the curriculum...

It was in 1906 that the school broadened its study program to include lectures in trade law, given by one JUDr. Josef Bohuslav (JUDr is a doctor of both civil and criminal law). As well as studying commercial law, students discovered that their study load had been increased in other subjects - apparently it was felt that not enough time had been allotted to mechanical engineering, and so an hour extra for extra subject had been added.

In the course of the week, our students would study:

• 10 hours of brewing and raw material theory, with František Chodounský (interestingly the guy that claims Pilsner Urquell got their indirect heat kilns from "Brauers Sauer" - I will be digging more into him in the future). 
• 2 hours of administrative theory, again with František Chodounský
• 10 hours of chemistry and lab work, with Dr Heinrich Friedrich
• 4 hours of financial law with a Mr Brokeš
• 4 hours of commercial law with JUDr Bohuslav
• 8 hours of mechanical engineering and steam boiler maintencance with Ing. Josef Pokorný (fun fact, when I taught English in Prague I had a student called Josef Pokorný, he may even have been an engineer)
• 4 hours of exchange law and book-keeping with Dr Haasz

A total of 42 hours a week between the middle of November and the end of June 1907, about seven and a half months, with just shy of half of the hours being the production and fermentation of wort.

The need for mechanical engineering and steam boiler maintenance stirs memories of the first time I attended a brewday at Devils Backbone, when Jason brewed the very first batch of Trukker Ur-Pils, a triple decocted Czech style pilsner that was superb. At one point in the mash, the decoction kettle wasn't heating up as expected, so Jason got under the gantry with a big ass wrench and gave the pipes a smack or several, and hey presto the heating got going again.

Of the 66 students, most came from the lands of the Bohemian crown, but also several from further afield such as Bulgaria, Russia, Poland, Germany, Galicia, and Styria.

I'd be interested to hear how this course of study stacks up with what brewers pursuing professional training here in the US, as well as abroad, had to study in addition to the actual making beer part of brewing.

The Importance of Being Josef?

It was one of those things that you just stumble upon as you are looking something specific. In one of my vaguely regular bimbles around the Austrian National Library's newspaper archive looking for interesting tidbits about brewing and beer in the former Austro-Hungarian empire I decided to do a quick search in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer for Josef Groll...

As you are likely aware, Josef Groll was the first brewmaster at Bürgerliches Brauhaus Pilsen, the brewing company that today is generally known by the brand Pilsner Urquell. It was the beer that he brewed in 1842 that revolutionised the beer world and became the blueprint for countless imitations of varying degrees.

For such an august personality in the history of brewing, I was a little surprised to find just a single mention of him in the official organ of the Bohemian brewing industry between 1891 and 1918, using the search term "Josef Groll". Even allowing for just his surname only 5 results were returned, of which just 2 are definitively about the first brewer of Pilsner beer. While it is true that the archive doesn't have issues from 1874 to 1890, I was still surprised to see so few references to our friend from Vilshofen.

The earliest of this pair of references comes from 1892, in a fairly extensive article marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the first batch of Pilsner Urquell being brewed. The actual company that would eventually create the largest revolution in brewing was established in 1839. The whole article is interesting as it makes no mention of several pieces of folklore that have become key to the popularly believed mythos of Pilsner Urquell. There is no mention of the citizens of Plzeň smashing up barrels of beer on the town hall steps, the reality was rather less prosaic and more economical...

Until 1839 the private and monastic brewers of Plzeň were making top fermented beers, using "primitive" equipment, but change was in the air in Western Bohemia, which butts up to Bavaria...lager was gaining ground. Not wanting to left behind in the popularity stakes, the leading citizens of Plzeň got together to build a brewery specifically for the brewing of bottom fermented beer, with building beginning in 1840.

At this point, it is worth skipping forward to the reference to Groll from 1897 as it relates directly to the building of the brewery. One of the things central to the mythos of Pilsner Urquell is that it was the "original" golden lager (I use inverted commas there because unless modern Vienna lager is significantly paler than in 1841, and that modern Pilsner Urquell is the same colour as in 1842, then the colour difference is not that drastic). To achieve a paler beer than had previously been seen in Plzeň, English style malting technology was installed. English malting methods were at least known in Germany in 1785 and may have been making in-roads into Bavarian brewing around the same time as Groll came to Bohemia. Andreas over at Daft Ejit has written more extensively about this.

While the use of English malting technology was essential to the creation of Pilsner Urquell, the second reference to Josef Groll in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer would suggest that they were not the first Bohemian brewery to adopt this method of malting barley. If I understand the text above correctly, Pilsner Urquell purchased their malting equipment, which we know to have used the English air drying method, from a brewery called Sauer in Haida, modern day Nový Bor. That claim by itself begs the question, what was being brewed by Sauer in Nový Bor? So far my further research hasn't brought any interesting nuggets to light about that, but I will keep on going. In relation to Josef Groll himself though, the text there basically says that he was "completely at the mercy of the kiln that had been installed", which points to the reality of those times that the reputation of a brewery was heavily reliant on the quality of the malt, which they malted themselves rather than sourcing from the multi-national maltsters supplying everyone these days.

Coming back to the article celebrating the 50th anniversary of Pilsner Urquell, the first brewday on October 5th 1842 produced approximately 36 hectolitres of beer, that's 30 US beer barrels for reference, which was presented to the world on St Martin's Day, November 11th, just 37 days apart. In the rest of the 1842-43 brewing season Groll produced 3,657 hectolitres/3116 barrels, and by the time he left the brewery in 1845, Pilsner Urquell was already brewing 5,510 hectolitres/4695 barrels. By the time the celebratory article was written, Pilsner Urquell was producing 462,540 hectolitres/394,161 barrels per year, under the watchful eye of Josef Binder, the fourth head brewer.

In those 50 years, Pilsner Urquell went from this

to this.

If you look very carefully at the latter picture, you can make out the 50th anniversary gate that is such an iconic landmark at the brewery.

Another fact about the actual beer being produced in Plzeň also caught my eye - that there were 2 types of beer being brewed at Pilsner Urquell, the famed 12° lager and an 11° schankbier, which may have at some point become a 10° version that was known within living memory.

The schankbier, the German equivalent of "výčepní", would be sent out to beer halls to be stored for 2 or 3 weeks before being ready to be drunk, while the lagerbier left the brewery ready to be tapped on arrival, and was mainly consumed during the summer months.

Such a lack of reference to Josef Groll in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer, by comparison the search term "Dreher" results in 162 references, "sedlmayer" 13, and "porter" 82, it makes me wonder if we overplay the role of the "founding" brewmaster in the subsequent success of a brewery? 

Even Groll's immediate successor, another Bavarian, Sebastian Baumgärtner, only lasted 5 years, and increased production to 10,865 hectolitres/9111 barrels by the end of his tenure. It was under the leadership of the third Bavarian to be headbrewer, Jacob Blöchl, that the brewery surged to be the powerhouse we understand it to be today. After 29 years production was up to 224,520 hectolitres/188,291 barrels.

All of this makes me wonder if we overstate the importance of Groll, and I keep coming back to the question, what was Sauer brewing up in Nový Bor with the air drying malting technology in use?

The Session - The Best Thing since 2018?

Oo-er missus, look at that..."The Session" logo makes a return to the top of a post on Fuggled, and to be honest it makes my heart glad to see the project being revived. The host for this relaunch is Alan McLeod over at A Good Beer Blog, and as with any relaunch the scope is naturally neat and tidy, with a pretty little bow on it...oh wait, no it's not, it's:

"What is the best thing to happen to good beer since 2018?"

There are so many avenues this question could be taken, he says channeling his inner James Burke from the Connections series of many moons ago. 

I could look at the big picture, though to be honest that picture is something of a grim one at the moment, with regular closings and well established breweries going to the wall in the face of economic headwinds. With such a curate's egg at the macro scale, perhaps the continued existence of Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, Allagash, and the other national scale craft breweries is the best thing.

However, I don't want to think about the macro, I want to ground my response in my day to day, so I am going to augment the question a little and make it:

"What is the best thing to happen to good beer for me since 2018?"

With that framing, the question becomes infinitely easier to consider and to answer, especially when I take a look at my annual review of beer in 2018 and compare it to 2019.

A very quick glance and the runners and riders for the the various categories I review each year show that of the 25 beers I name-checked only 9 were lagers, making up 36%. One year later though and that number jumps to 34 from 57 beers across the review posts, which is 59.6%. Now, admittedly in 2019 I went to Czechia and Germany, which could skew the numbers, so let's look at 2020 when nobody really went anywhere...Well, that was 37 lagers from a possible 51, or 72.5%. I would like to think you are getting the point by now.

When Mrs V and I first moved to Virginia back in 2009, finding good Central European lagers was difficult. There was no Port City Downright Pilsner, there was nobody making authentic Czech style dark lagers, as far as I am aware there was a single brewery that even considered decoction mashing...shout out to the still awesome Jason at Devils Backbone! Even a few years later, when we bought our house in 2012, readily available excellent lager was difficult, at a meetup in our house with Czech and Slovak friends, someone bought a six pack of Lagunitas' allegedly Czech pilsner to which an older gentleman who had fled Czechoslovakia (back when it still existed!) in 1969 commented, "this is simply not Czech". Well made beer it might well be, taste like a Czech pilsner it did not - haven't had it in many years so no idea what it is like these days.

Spring forward though to today, and just in the Charlottesville area I have several reliable breweries making excellent lagers, in particular I will highlight Selvedge, whose range of decocted and extensively lagered bottom fermented beers formed the vast majority of my drinking last year. While I make no secret of my preference for lagers made with traditional techniques, I am not daft enough to cut my nose off to spite my face. As such, breweries like Patch Brewing (very much my local), Decipher, SuperFly, and Rockfish all make cracking pale lagers that I am happy to drink regularly.

This then is the best thing to happen to good beer since 2018, good lager has become a staple of the brewing scene, and long may it continue. And on that note, I am excited for my first beer of 2025 tomorrow...it will be a lager, that is for sure, something from Bierkeller in Columbia SC as we are headed down that way for a family get together. Even getting good beer at all in Columbia was a challenge when we moved over here, that they have a brewery smashing great lagers borders on the miraculous.

Dej Bůh Štěstí!

Top Pubs - Let me Explain

Over the weekend, Ray and Jess of Boak and Bailey asked on their BlueSky account for a list of 3 pubs you must visit before you meet your demise. Thankfully they included the caveat that "You can do 10 if 3 is too hard". Yeah, 3 was way too hard, 10 was a challenge, but I trimmed my list down to just 10. Within the character limit of BlueSky, I couldn't elaborate much, but over here in Fuggled world, I can explain/justify my choices. There is no particular order in this list, so let's not get hung up on those kind of trivialities...

The Bon Accord - Glasgow

I have waxed lyrical about the Bon Accord several times, even though it has been about 9 years since I darkened the door of that most august of establishments. Not only is it a superb pub to get a pint or several of well kept real ale, it has a whisky list to die for, including 25 year old Talisker which was the perfect ending to the last trip Mrs V and I made to the Bon Accord in 2016. Oh and did I mention they do an all-day fried breakfast that would keep the Royal Navy running.

Beim Gloser - Windischeschenbach

If I have one regret from my life in central Europe it's that I never took the train from Prague to Schwandorf, and from thence to Windischeschenbach in order to delve into Zoigl world. I still have it on my bucket list of things to do eventually, maybe next time I get to Europe for a conference and have a couple of days spare to do a little personal side trip. Of the various Zoiglstuben in the remaining villages with a communal brewhouse, why do I want to visit Beim Gloser in particular - well it's simple really, it looks like the archetypal Wirtshaus as written about by Franz over on Tempest in a Tankard. Take a look at the pictures on their website and you'll see what I mean.

Brauerei Spezial, Bamberg

I spent a grand total of about 18 hours in Bamberg back in 2019, in between conferences, one in Prague and then another in Hannover. While drinking Urbock in Schlenkerla was a near religious experience, the sheer delight of several hours nursing beer after beer in one of the coziest pubs I have ever sat in was the highlight of my few short hours in the city. I love the picture above, taken sneakily for sure, simply because when Mrs V and I are in that stage of life, I would love us to be able to just sit with a superb beer and chill. And superb the beer undoubtedly was. I was not really expecting something to challenge for Schlenkerla's affections in this rauchbier loving soul, but Spezial did, and then some. Here, have another...

U Slovanské lipy, Prague

If you know me in the slightest, this one takes no explaining whatsoever. For the final couple of years that Mrs V and I spent in Prague, U Slovanské lipy was high on our list of regular haunts. It was less than 20 minutes from our apartment, it was the only pub in Prague, at the time, to have Kout na Šumavě's entire range of beers on tap, and after several pints the walk home was all down hill. I loved that place, nay, I love that place. Sure, it now has a rotating set of taps, and Kout na Šumavě are no more, but it still has the same, local, non-touristy, vibe that I always loved. Every time I have been back to the city in the last few years I organise a meet up with friends there largely because it is one of the models of perfection in my beery universe.

Pivovarský klub, Prague

Another place that means so much to me, so much so that I remember the exact date I first walked through its doors and went down the stairs into the cellar bar area. It was October 14th, 2005 when Mrs V walked down the same stairs and took the seat next to me at the table, we've been together ever since - with the 20th anniversary of that day being this year. If there was one place that we went to more often than U Slovanské lipy is was Pivovarský klub. We were such regulars that the staff knew what Mrs V would usually want to drink, Primátor English Pale Ale, and have it ready before she had her coat off. Pretty often I could just ask Klara, Karel, or Ambroz to just bring me something and it would be fantastic. It was here that I had my first rauchbier, Schlenkerla Märzen, it was here that Mrs V and I had our wedding reception in 2008, it was here most weekends were spent. It was our Cheers.

Hostomická nalévárna, Prague

If I were reasonably handy when it comes to these things, I feel like I could re-construct Hostomická nalévárna in one half of my garage, it is that small. But don't let outward appearances deceive you, while it may be small, it has everything that a proper boozer should: superb beer; efficient staff; well worn sturdy furniture; cracking Czech beer snacks. It's the kind of community boozer that is unassuming and down to earth, a place for the serious business of drinking world class lagers without the distractions of run clubs, yoga, or ill mannered parents letting their kids run wild (it is ALWAYS the parents that are the problem). Sorry Evan to sing your local's praises again...

The King's Arms, Oxford

Every trip I have taken to Oxford has been an absolute joy, whether going for a day when I was a student in Birmingham and sitting in cavernous dark pubs, whose names escape me right now, drinking mass produced smooth ales, if you were a drinker in the UK in the 90s you know the ones I mean or sitting around with your brother and friends while Mrs V attends an education conference, drinking pints of Young's Original. That last drinking session was at the King's Arms, just a short walk from the Radcliffe Camera, and in so many ways the epitome of a great English pub. There are many rooms in which you can find the perfect space for a pint and a feed, watch the world go by, and eavesdrop on conversations. Oh and from memory they kept their ales damned well, so that's good too.

The Westford Inn, North Uist

It seems weird to admit that I grew up in the Hebrides, including North Uist for a time, and I have never darkened the door of the Westford Inn. In my defense, I was still a Christian back then, as we say in the islands, I had the cúram, and so lived in fear of being outed as an apostate backslider because on the mainland I enjoyed a pint, or 2, or more likely 4 after a morning of studying theology and gradually realising you needed to try harder with this believing malarky. Eventually you get to a point of saying "sod it" and you give up, sorry Calvin no perseverance here. Any way, back to the Westford, next time I get home I will darken its door with abandon, and hopefully Mrs V will drink her fiddle/guitar/bodhrán/whatever freaking instrument she is learning this week, just in case there is an open session in flight at the time. Take a moment to look at their photo gallery and you'll get the appeal.

The Anderson, Fortrose

For a while after college and before moving to Prague, I lived with my brother and his wife in Fortrose, a small town on the Black Isle just north of Inverness - unrelated fact, the 11 mile walk from Fortrose into Inverness is a fantastic way to spend a morning, I jest not. While there, I worked in the local shop across from the chippy we initially lived above, and would wander into the public bar at the Anderson for a pint from time to time, oh and the occasional drop of something stronger. It was in the Anderson that I got used to the idea of putting a drop of water into my whisky, not ice, a drop of room temperature water from the ceramic jug on the bar. The Anderson was the first drinking den where I felt truly comfortable sitting at the bar rather than hiding my shy, introverted arse behind a wall or a curtain somewhere - might have had something to do with the cute barmaid, whose name I never learned, because well, shy and introverted me had struggled just to sit in full view of people. Thinking back on it, and this is some 25 years ago now, I was an awkward person, usually with my nose in a book, terrified of speaking to people, but a pint and a dram at the Anderson was probably the beginning of opening me up.

Karlsberger Pub, Svalbard

I have a thing for the North Atlantic world. When I took my family to Iceland a couple of years ago for our summer holiday, I was in my element. I love the ocean, the feel of the wind coming off the sea, the sounds of the ocean crashing against rocks, and the bare emptiness of the northern lands. Several of my friends and family on seeing pictures we posted on our socials commented on how relaxed, happy, and at home I looked. Yeah, the barren wilds of the north are a salve to my soul, and can you get more barren and wild than Svalbard? Watching the Craft Beer Channel's fantastic video about Svalbard, the Svalbard Bryggeri, and the Karlsberger Pub just made me want to visit, one day perhaps.

So there you go, a little delve into the pubs I chose and why I would love to visit them either for the first time or again. 

Where would you go?

2025 Homebrew Project

I mentioned in a recent post that I decided to make 2024 the year when I finally started making homebrew lagers properly. As such, I bought a chest freezer to be my fermentation and lagering chamber, I got to grips with rudimentary decoction mashing, and I learnt an awful lot about the importance of getting your beer off the trub if you don't want your lager to have a soapy character. As a result of all this, some of the best beers I have ever made were lagers I brewed last year, brews that looked like this:

Overall, last year I brewed 2 batches each of pale kellerbier and Vienna lager, and single batch each of a German pilsner and a 14° Světlý Speciál. Mostly I used a single decoction approach, where the decoction raises the temperature from a saccharification rest to mash out, and they were my favourite brewdays.

Now that lager brewing is a regular part of my homebrew world, I have decided that I want to make my main brewing project for this year to be starting to develop a house lager that will be brewed to the same recipe multiple times a year. I already have a house best bitter that I brew several times each year with a nailed down recipe, and now I want to do the same with a lager.

Where to start though. Being a "house" lager, it could be something a little stronger than I normally drink in the pub - after all, I will be drinking it at home, and if I ever get it in my head to drive home from home, well I need help then. At the same time, in 2023 I wrote a post about how the notion of a "house" beverage being the highest expression of those making it, so I wanted to make my perfect lager.

It would have been all too easy for me to just say that my perfect beer is a Czech style 10° pale lager, but that wouldn't be a fully honest reflection of my tastes. Yes I love Saaz, but I love Tettnang, Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, and Perle just as much. I also love styles like Vienna lager, Helles, and Dunkel, oh and I have made a personal commitment to use my local maltster's, Murphy & Rude, products as much as possible.

So when it come to recipe development, I worked backwards from a starting gravity of 11° and knowing I wanted between 25 and 30 IBUs to the iteration of the beer I brewed on Sunday:

• 88% Virginia Pils
• 12% Vienna
• 20.2 IBUs of Hallertauer Mittelfrüh at 60 minutes
• 7.5 IBUs of Hallertauer Mittelfrüh at 15 minutes
• 0.7 IBU of Hallertauer Mittelfrüh at 1 minute
• Saflager W-34/70

Beyond the 11° starting gravity, which I hit bang on, this should give me a beer which is 4.2% abv with a colour of 3.7 SRM, putting it in the straw end of the spectrum, though I am not sure how the brewing software accounts for the Maillard reactions of a decoction mash.

My plan is to brew variants of this beer on the first weekend of each quarter this year, and for 2025 at least to swap out the yeast strain for each brew before tinkering with grain and hops next year in order to really nail down my recipe. Hopefully I will be able to source some TUM-35 for one of those brewdays, but I am planning to at least try S-189 in one of the batches, and maybe the fabled Pilsner Urquell H strain as well.

Each batch will be lagered for 4 weeks before being slowly carbed for a couple of weeks ahead of tapping, which may mean I need another CO2 bottle and regulator to do that in the chest freezer.

My gut feeling is that this batch will be good, but my goal is to have a house lager that I can brew as consistently as I do with my house best bitter.