Top Tastings 2010 (Oldgott Barique)
ABV: 5.2% and 12.6%
Origin: Praha 1, Hlavní město Praha, Czech Republic
Website: www.umedvidku.cz
U Medvidků, Praha 1
The Czech lands gave birth to the world’s most ubiquitous brewing style and the modern day Czech Republic is still one of the great beer nations, so it’s rather remiss of me to wait almost a year before finally adding a Czech brewery to this ste. Sadly only a severely limited range of Czech beers is available in the UK, so it’s taken a long overdue trip to Prague to furnish some recent tasting notes of the more interesting stuff.
And more interesting stuff there definitely is besides the obvious “heritage” pale lagers. Following a rapacious period of consolidation and globalisation ushered in by the restoration of the market, pockets of independent thinking are developing, and a new craft brewing culture is starting to emerge that both takes pride in indigenous brewing traditions and is open to innovation, and influence from abroad.
The microbrewery at Medvidků, on the edge of the historic Staré Město (Old Town) district right in the city centre, is a great example. U Medvidků (‘At the [sign of the] Little Bears’) is a classic sprawling Prague pub and hotel with half a millennium’s worth of history behind it, long appreciated by discerning drinkers as a more amenable and less tourist-saturated alternative to slightly better known drinking holes like U Fleků and U Zlatého tygra. For years it stocked only one beer, the standard draught 12° golden lager from Budějovický Budvar, which it was renowned for keeping exceptionally well. Then on 17 November 2004, the 15th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, onsite brewing was revived for the first time since 1895 using a 250l-capacity microbrewery newly installed in the former malthouse. Wisely the brewers chose not to challenge the popularity of Budvar but instead developed a range of their own specialities, traditionally lagered in wooden barrels and served unpasteurised and unfiltered.
Oldgott Barique, the regular beer, is an amber polotmavý or ‘half-dark’ lager, a traditional style near extinct by the turn of the millennium and since rejuvenated, though still a relatively rare speciality. Its closeness to the more widely known Vienna style associated with Anton Dreher reflects the region’s history as a former province of Austria-Hungary.
This example is a cloudy amber with a thick nutmeggy light beige head, served at the pub in a chunky multifaceted glass mug. A fresh, slightly yeasty aroma has lightly tart strawberry notes. The palate is dry-sweet and spicy with a slight touch of burnt wood, a hint of dates and strawberries and a bite of herbal hops over very smooth and generous toffeeish malt, with perhaps a fleeting touch of mint. The dry, spicy smack persists in a quite rooty, hoppy and bittering finish with tart plummy notes softened by yeasty malt. It’s a striking, unusual and very distinctive beer.
U Medvidků X Beer 33
Better still is X Beer 33, an extraordinary strong lager brewed once a month from Pilsner and caramel barley malts at an original gravity of over 33° Plato and matured for up to a year in oak barrels using a special yeast. It’s also available bottled, but I sampled the draught version, which arrived at my table a deep hazy ruby-brown with a thick beige head. A tannic, grapy, oaky aroma has some fresh fruity esters, heralding a big bodied grapy-fruity palate, notably sweet but with a plummy, tannic, balsamic edge, Rodenbach-like sour tones and complex spiced orange liqueur notes. For all the complexity, there’s a soft, clean character that identifies the beer as a lager rather than an ale. The finish is long, complex and marmaladey, with a little powdery dry pursing hops and a late splash of vanilla. Of course it’s by no means the strongest beer in the world, as its publicity still claims, but it’s certainly among the most remarkable.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/u-medvidk367-x33-beer/58029/
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