August 2015
Story about the city of Plzen here
This article is about what 99% of you will go to Plzen for - about the brewery tour
I'll clarify right away that there's one brewery, but they brew many different beers there.
Main one - Pilsner Urquell, secondary ones - Gambrinus, Radegast and even Kozel.
What's important to know from "Wikipedia":
1) the brewery is owned by Japanese from Asahi, so the best Czech beer - by tradition, is Japanese
2) now Plzen beer is brewed only here, but from 2004 to 2017 was brewed in one of the best Russian cities - Kaluga
The first thing a tourist walking from the station will see - decay (although probably by now, everything's not so bad)
Better in summer
Throughout the whole city and the entire area there's only talk about the factory
Right on the territory there are nice little restaurants with Czech food and the freshest beer
By the way, exactly after the factory tour I finally decided my opinion that in Czech beer the most important thing - is not the brand, but freshness, storage time and the skill of pouring it
Dishes typical for all of Czechia
Forward
You won't get lost, signs throughout the whole city
Inside everything's standard for a brewery
Beautiful
Incomprehensible for a Russian - discounts for students and schoolchildren at a brewery
It should be noted that there are two tours.
One about the history of the brewery and how beer is generally brewed. Called Pilsner Urquell - in meaning very similar to the tour at Kozel
The only interesting thing about it is how the factory itself works (at most a dozen people brew tons of beer per day)
Everything's automated, caps are supplied - people only wash floors
The second tour is more interesting - called "Gambrinus", happens only once a week
I don't know if I was just lucky or what, but the main part of the tour - lecture from "Sladek" (actually, the head brewer).
On it we learned to pour beer properly, he talked about details incomprehensible to the layman too.
For example, that:
- the freshest beer, most likely, you'll try on Tuesday - they deliver beer to restaurants on Monday
- a dirty glass greatly changes the taste
- storage temperature greatly changes the taste
- the clumsiness of those pouring beer is off the charts, taste gets ruined
From interesting - an antediluvian refrigerator, which was previously filled with ice (a frequent guest at breweries, by the way, but this one is really huge)
And that's it - back to Plzen, which in this area is really shitty (attention to road width)
Collapsing
But one cool artifact was found
Home to Prague
