Pilsen – The Capital of Beer
more than a year agoTown councillors were so concerned by the situation they formulated a test to see if the beer a brewer was producing was fit to drink. Oak benches were placed in the entrance hall of the brewing building. The town magistrate would take a pitcher of the beer and in what seems like a very wasteful thing to do, pour it over the bench. When the pitcher was empty, the councillors would sit on the bench for one hour. When they stood up 60 minutes later, their leather breeches had to stick to the bench. If they didn’t, the beer was deemed unfit to drink and the burgher couldn’t sell it. No word if they were provided with a pint to occupy the hour spent sitting. Or how often they had to replace their breeches.
The pivotal event to permanently rectify the city’s bad beer situation came in 1838. Thirty-six barrels of beer so bad it was considered a health risk were dumped in front of the town hall. A group of enterprising beer brewers were thus inspired to build a new brewery. The new Bürgerbrauerei or “Burgher’s Brewery” was originally established to produce Bavarian style beer. The brewers recruited a Bavarian brewer with an excellent brewing reputation named Josef Groll. Shockingly, probably even for Groll, was that the beer he brewed was entirely different from what he had intended. Lucky for him (and us) the new lager had a fantastic colour and taste and its special characteristics soon made it popular around the world.
A trip to Pilsen really isn’t complete without sampling at least one Pilsner Urquell beer. If you take a tour of the brewery, you’ll enjoy a fresh one straight from the tank, or enjoy one with a hearty Czech lunch at U Salzmannů.
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