Czech Escape - Part 1

Just got back from five days in beautiful Prague in the Czech Republic. Earlier in the year my wife and I decided to tick this famous city off our bucket-list and so booked a city-break kind of deal that included flights and hotel room etc. First stop was the BA lounge in T3 (Heathrow) while waiting for our flight to board and (surprisingly) a little bit of Brewdog! Speed Bird OG is a beer that they created several years ago specifically for BA but I'd never tried it before, it was OK, a little flimsy for me, I guess made for more of a mass market rather than a pedantic old beer-geek. 

We seem to be fated to suffer weird delays and inconveniences whenever we visit Heathrow airport recently, this time the flight was delayed for 40 minutes (not unusual) but when it was called we all had to get on a bus which then drove all through the airport underbelly and popped up in terminal 5, where our plane was waiting. In all my years of flying from London I've never checked in at one terminal and flown from another, anyway after an uneventful 90 minutes in the air we landed at Vaclav Havel airport and the adventure had properly begun!

Having never been to the country before I had been doing my due diligence on-line using (mostly) you-tube and had discovered that not only did Czech taxi's have a rather sketchy reputation at the best of times, but that an honest cab to the city from the airport would cost around 25-40 Euro's depending upon the time of day. An alternative mode of transport (as discovered online) is to take a public bus (#59) from outside the terminal to a nearby metro station (Nadrazi Veleslavin, pictured above) and then take the train into the city centre, total cost 30 Czech Crowns or (roughly) £1, quite a difference! We chose the latter option and although more hard work lugging our baggage, it was very easy, clean, safe and frequent only taking around 25 minutes to reach our hotel in the central district from the airport terminal (probably quicker than a taxi in the rush-hour traffic). Having unpacked and freshened up we headed out into the city. 

One of the things I'd been looking forward to was to try the famous Czech pilsner in an authentic cellar bar, so we did! Above is a picture of the way in which they pour their pints (500ml) as you can see there's rather a large foam head! Whilst cynical UK (mostly Northerners!) beer drinkers would insist that this is somehow a way of cheating the customer, there is method to this madness. The foam head protects the beer from exposure to oxygen and is so thick that it pretty much lasts for the duration, the beer itself is therefore maintained as close as possible to the intended freshness for as long as possible. The double-decoction method of mashing that the Pilsner-Urquell company invented back in 1842 created the world's first pale lager that subsequently went on to become the most popular style in the world. 

This method delivers a beer that's not too strong (around 4.5% ABV) but is very rich and flavoursome and when paired with German noble hops like Saaz and a soft water profile, gives a creamy caramel and spicy/herbal taste that finishes dry and is incredibly refreshing. I concluded that drinking pilsner in Prague is a little bit like drinking Guinness in Dublin, probably the best illustration of the style you can find. More in part 2..