Pivní Filosof - Beer Philosopher

Last Thursday, the Missus had a do in the evening. It had been originally scheduled for Wednesday, but for one reason or another it had to be moved to the day after. This meant that I would have to take Nela to her ceramic class in Roztoky. I'd lie if I said I was jumping with anticipation—the thing that bugged me, really, was the trip, which includes switching buses in Velké Přílepy, meaning that we wouldn't be home until almost 8. But I didn't complain, I want my wife to go out and have fun on her own, she needs it. Nela had stayed home that day; she hadn't been feeling well the day before, and we thought it'd be better to let her rest. She spent the hole day lying in the sofa. We even considered skipping that ceramic class, but somewhere before 3, she got her life back and was her usual self—she really loves that ceramic lesson. Since she would be in town, my wife said she'd go early to take care of a couple of work related things, and do some shopping...

I've always had a soft spot for Mate's , a polotmavé pivo from Hostinský pivovar U Bizona, Čižice brewed with Yerba mate , not only because of my country of birth, but also because it's a good example of how a beer with an unusual or novelty ingredient should be made—it still tastes like beer. The rest of their production, however, was of the sort that I wouldn't mind drinking if I see it at a pub, but wouldn't go out of my way to find, either. That's why I was quite surprised when about a month ago I got an e-mail from Robert, U Bizona's owner, inviting me to join a group he was putting together for a trip to Bamberg at the end of February. To be perfectly honest, if the invitation had been for a festival or something else along those lines, I might have politely declined, but I'd been wanting to go back to Bamberg ever since I was there a few years back, even if it'd be only for a day trip. So, after getting permission from the boss, I accepted...

The other day, at home, I opened a bottle of your average ČIPE—Český India Pejl Ejl, a bit of a scruffier cousin of IPA—and by the way, it was a half litre bottle, as it should be for pretty much anything below 8% ABV, I hate třetinky, and I'm not a big fan of sedmičky, either, but I digress. It was a new beer for me (its name isn't important, this isn't a review), so I paid extra attention. It started juicy, quite nice and juicy, until a mineral note crept in, getting more intense with each sip, to the point of becoming almost unpleasantly pervasive. But then, about two thirds down the pint, someone smacked it on the back of the head and told it to stop behaving like a twat and play its role, which begrudgingly did, and I ended up enjoying the beer, not as much as at the beginning, but a lot more than I thought I would. The moral of this: to properly evaluate a beer, drinking is far better than tasting. Na Zdraví!

Last week was a sad one for lovers of beer minimalist pubs, with two of them closing on Friday: U Klokočnika and Hrom do Police . I found out the former when I dropped by to make some photos for the new edition of the Pisshead's Pub Guide. There was a blackboard outside announcing the news, but I didn't take it seriously, anyone could have written it. It was true, of course. When I asked, the waitress told me it was because of the insanely high rent for the location—78,000 CZK + utilities (though I read 76K elsewhere)—and the shop's being in serious need of a refurbishing (on a side note, the premises don't belong to any greedy capitalist pig but to MČ Praha 4). Later that day, a couple of hours after having posted the news on U Klokočnika on my FB page, I read on Pivni.info the news on Hrom do Police. The reasons behind it are quite similar: high rent—more understandable given its prime location—and the need of likely expensive renovations that nobody was willing...