It’s been a busy month or so since we got back from our travels — so busy we haven’t got round to mentioning all of the fascinating pubs and breweries we visited in Prague. So, a quick summary is in order.
Straight after U Fleku, we headed to the Novomeststky Pivovar, probably the second most touristy place in Prague. It was very empty, and had quite a dismal atmosphere as result. The beer was great, though — very yeasty — so much so that it smelled like rising rye bread. We completed our touristy trio by popping into the legendary U Medvidku. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get into the ‘pivovar’ bit, where you go to get the well-regarded Oldgott Barrique on tap. We settled for a bottle of the same in another section, which tasted a bit sour and watery. Not really worth the bother. The boring old Budvar on tap was great, though!
The two most interesting brewpubs took a bit more effort to get to. Although Klasterny Pivovar Strahov isn’t that far from the Castle, it is up a ruddy great hill. The beer and the food is a tad pricy by Czech standards, but we’d say it was worth paying the extra for. On tap was a tmavy and the ‘jantar’ (amber), which was one of our favourite beers of the holiday. It was almost like a British ale in its bitterness and fruitiness. Lovely stuff.
Out in the suburbs, Pivovar U Bulovky is worth the trip for a lively and cosy atmosphere (although there’s a very scary waitress) and great beer. Can’t really see the coach parties rocking up to this place, although we thought we spotted a few other beer geeks, notebooks and beer guides in hand. U Bulovky offer a good lezak and a lovely polotmavy (amber), as well as a changing range of other beers. The ‘ale’ was more interesting in the fact of its existence than its flavour though — definitely a few too many pear drops going on.
One other pub we have to mention is Baracnicka Rychta, up a side street in Mala Strana. It offers excellent beers from the Svijany brewery, the nutty “red” being the highlight. We ate a lot of nakladany hermelin there, and felt very contented with the world.
Apologies for the lack of appropriate accents. Life’s too short.
3 replies on “Prague pub roundup”
Life really is excellent when Budvar can be described as boring and great in the same sentence! I agree with the accents, although if you go back to the old Czech spellings you basically have Polish.
Oh yes – one of the many good things about the holiday was realising how good Budvar can be. It’s so ubiquitous in the UK, and rarely tastes of much here. While I wouldn’t rate it as one of my favourite beers of the trip, it’s always good to reappraise a beer you’d written off.
[…] nights later, having made a whistle-stop tour of as many pubs and breweries as we could, we’d got a better handle on Czech beer, so when we returned for one final pint of tankova […]