October 11, 2001 -- The Great American Beer Festival, held late September this year, is typically and understandably a tribute to the beers of the United States. This year, however, a break in the proceedings allowed for a tasting of a different sort. Compliments of a committed beer aficionado from Prague, Honza Kocka, I and a handful of others enjoyed the opportunity to sample a wide variety of Czech beers beyond those imported into North America. The results proved there is a lot more to this country's beer scene than Pilsner Urquell and Czechvar.

We tasted three beers from Bernard, a regional brewery located near the Moravian border. The Svátecni Lezák has almost vanilla-ish notes on the aroma and a slightly tight, sharpish body with rooty, herbal notes and a bone-dry finish. "Ox," a special higher-gravity brew with a label that would do the aerospace industry proud, is blessed with a rich, herbal aroma and a big, malty start, but curiously vanishes in the mouth to a dry and almost non-existent finish. And finally, the Cerný Lezak is an off-dry, roasty and lightly coffee-ish light mahogany lager with terrific balance and a moderately earthy finish.

Samson, the other brewery from Budweis, came through with a delicious Premium lager of 4.9% alcohol, with a nose of fresh grain on a spring breeze and a round, firm, perfumey body. This beer, the third tasted, definitely rated as one of the stand-outs of the day.

Cerná Hora, a brewery from the village of the same name, meaning 'black hill,' offered their Lezák, a malt-accented lager that becomes rather sharp in the lingering finish. (One taster remarked that the beer "overstays its welcome," a comment with which I was in full agreement.) Also from Cerná Hora was the Kvasar, a honey beer with a hint of buckwheat on the aroma and a sweetish body that never quite seems to find its balance.

From the Svijany brewery came a beer called Svijansky Knize, or "Knight of Svijany," an unpasteurized lager of 5.5% alcohol with a great complexity. The aroma is off-dry and lightly floral, announcing a body that is soft and perfumey up front, herbal and hoppy in the body and dry and just a little bit rooty in the finish. This was another of the day's top-rated brews. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of the "Knight's Wife," Svijanska Knezna, an orangey-brown lager with a hint of coffee on the nose and a sweet and brown sugary body.

A small brewery named Hols from Vratislavice furnished its Konrad lager, a lightly sweet brew with low aromatics and a fairly simple flavour leading to a mild-mannered finish. This was the seventh beer tasted, which may have had something to do with the lack of impression it left, but even for a fairly delicate beer it didn't seem to offer much in the way of overall character. Somewhat better was the Konrad Cerná, an amber-coloured beer with a sweet malt aroma and notes of roastiness, tannin and leafy hop in the body.

Baron Trenck is a big, 6% alcohol, malty lager from Starobrno, a significant Czech brewery with more than one hundred years of history. The flavour on this one starts sweet and malty but makes way in the middle for a full hit of hops and a complementary note of caramel with a faint woodiness. Contrary to the malty overtones of the body, the finish turns fairly dry to complete a lovely progression of taste from start to end. Starobrno also contributed the Cerveny Drak, another strong brew of 6% but this one made with added herbs. A curious pinkish-gold colour, the Cerveny Drak boasts wonderfully complex aromatics of herbal and black pepper notes, and a softly sweet body accented by nuances of spice, mint, pepper and a hint of clove. The off-dry finish offers a 'dusty' herbal character with a hint of orange blossom. Both the Starobrno beers fared well on my scorecard.

Search The Real Beer Library For More Articles Related To: Starobrno, Bernard, Samson, Svijany, Cerná Hora, Konrad

Feedback?

We're very interested in your news, notes, comments and questions, so please feel free to contact SBWoB by clicking on the link below. Or you can add your comments when you sign up for the World of Beer Update, a mid-month e-mail newsletter that brings even more of the world of beer to your computer.

Send Feedback To: beaumont@worldofbeer.com