Pivní Filosof - Beer Philosopher

I heard about last week, but I foolishly hoped it wasn't true, that it was all a joke of some sorts. It wasn't. Kaaba-Lucemburská is closing down this Friday. And I'm quite sad about it. The feeling is a completely different to when Svijanský Rytíř closed . Kaaba has been a regular stop for me for at least the last three years or so. Actually, it was more than that. My relationship with this little café in a side street in Vinohrady went far beyond the good beer I could drink there. Going to Kaaba for a couple of late morning pints on Tuesdays and most Thursdays became a ritual, something I needed to do. Kaaba was a place where I could detach myself from my daily life without losing touch with reality. It was a place where nobody knew, or cared, that I write about beer; for them I was this bloke from Argentina who's been living in the Czech Republic for over a decade and every now and again was able to tell a good joke or a funny anecdote. Nobody can be blamed fo...

Before I begin, I must tell you that I'm really excited about this project . Not only I got some great feedback, but it has also given me an excuse to go back to some places I visited in ages, places that I used to like a lot, but you know, life. (On a side note, maybe we should all do that more often, go back to places or beers we once loved, but that now are almost part of our past) It has also given me a pretext to finally make it to the, for the time being, though not for much longer, newest brewpub in Prague, Pivovar Liboc , though I still haven't decided how excited I am about it. Anyway, I've been thinking about the order in which I would post the reviews. Chronological – from the oldest to the newest brewpubs, or the other way around; geographical or maybe pitching one of the older brewpubs against one of the newer ones. But I've opted for something far more logical and straightforward, based on whenever I had enough time and happened to be near and/or could ...

Chris Lohring is the owner and Brew Master of  Notch , a Boston based brewing company specialised in Session beers. I met him and his wife almost two years ago when they came to Prague and we spent a glorious afternoon at Únětické Pivovar, drinking several litres of Desítka. He mentioned not long ago that he had decided to leave the Brewers Association and I was curious about why, and also wanted to ask him a few more questions; he has some quite interesting things to say. How long was Notch a member of the BA? Two years I believe, I opted out in 2013. With my previous brewery Tremont, I had been a member as well, both pre and post-merger (Association of Brewers and Brewers Association of America). How did the BA change during those years? The real changes came after the merger, at least that from my point of view. Very small brewers were now in the same organization as some very large brewers. We saw how that played out with the craft beer “definition” change. Over the ...

As I've already mentioned , I've got a bit bored of ranting and I'm trying to take this blog in a different direction, having a go at beer fiction or at a different, and to me more interesting, way to review beers , among other things, which I've so far enjoyed But the other day, as I was walking around in this lovely early spring weather we're having, I thought I could also be fun to go a bit back to basics and review the 16 brewpubs that are currently operating in Prague, all of them. It'll be, though, with a much more cynical approach than back in those days when the mere announcement of a new brewery was enough to give me a beer boner. I haven't decided yet what shape the reviews are going to take, though posting a bunch of three to four short reviews is for the time being the most likely candidate. The methodology, on the other hand, will be very simple, and down to earth. I will go to each brewpub once and drink a pint of each of their staple bee...