Happy New Beer!

And so another one rolls around, taking us further along the calendar and further away from all things past and passed. Christmas seems like a distant memory, and it was with great sadness that our tree was taken down. Three weeks after I struggled and fought to get the eight foot beast up the stairs and settled in its stand it still looked as fresh as the first day. So here’s 2008, which will no doubt go even faster than 2007.

I don’t like New Year Resolutions. They smack of the tokenism and conventionalism; two of the very few isms that I don’t wantonly indulge in on a daily basis. If you want to do something just bloody well do it. There’s no need to wait for the calendar to tell you that this is the day that you are going to change your life. I wanted to quit smoking, so I quit smoking. I didn’t need a New June Resolution to do this last summer. If everyone who claimed that they wanted to quit smoking actually grew some balls overnight we could put the patch industry out of business by next Wednesday. And send all those hypno-frauds back to their crooked colleges and sham clinics. Isn’t a world without Paul McKenna worth stubbing it out?

If one is to resolve to do something then it must be something that one is truly resolved to do. In my case I have resolved to drink more beer, or more to the point, more beers. Hopefully, with the support of my friends, a few motivational websites, and a daily refocusing of my life aims, I should be able to do this. It is time to venture along the road less travelled (mainly because most travellers have fallen over into a ditch) and unleash my inner potential. Now where did I put my bottle opener?

The Czech Republic has more than one hundred breweries, all producing different and varied beers. Beer does tend to get a bad rap in many parts of the world. Americans associate beer with kegs and frat parties, where the mentally retarded specimen that is the Average American College Boy tries to funnel some foam before spewing all over a Prom Queen. Even worse, they associate beer with American Budweiser. Most Americans, except those with an appreciation of microbrew, don’t know beer from shit.

Similarly, in Britain, the Real Ale mobs have managed to gain moral superiority because of the simply dreadful array of lagers that are available. Stella Artois is not, as the adverts claim, “reassuringly expensive”. Not unless you get your sense of inner security from having your wallet Hoovered out in return for something closely resembles water, and I mean the freshly passed variety. The less said about Fosters the better. Then there’s Skol. And so the begutted and self-righteous Little Englanders gather to be correct, and enjoy their tepid pints of Old Badger Scrotum and Randy Vicar’s Pants.

Czech beer, of course, is a perfect answer to all this nonsense. Crisp and refreshing lagers, but with a level of flavour and body that would make your Real Aler stroke his beard in genuflection and your Average American College Boy fall over comatose after three sips. However the good stuff can be a real sod to find.

Prague pubs mainly just serve the Big Three. Pilsner Urquell, its slightly lighter sister, Gambrinus, and the Prague brewed Staropramen. All three of these have the distinction of being owned by the multinationals and their future is probably as safe as any native tradition in the hands of white South Africans. There’s also a smattering of Kozel (named after a goat or a tit, depending on who you ask), Czech Budvar (a.k.a. real Budweiser), and some Krušovice and Bernard, but that is about it. Most of the one hundred breweries seem to be missing in action.

Of course these are fine beers, and knock seven shades of the proverbial out of most of the lagers (and indeed any beers) found elsewhere in the world. They are delicious and flavourful, and happily slip down the throat by the gallon, especially when accompanied by some stinky “beer cheese” and cold meat. Pilsner Urquell, when it is served from a big tank rather than the usual kegs, is notably smooth and solid and lacks the excessive bitterness that it can otherwise have. Even Staropramen, which tastes like bleach when served in most London pubs, is presented here in pleasing form.

Best is always preferable to better, and so the search for new beer experiences goes on. Thankfully there are a handful of bars and bottle shops that sell beers from all over the Czech Republic, and it is these that lie at the heart of my beery aspirations for 2008. Here one can easily sample the beers of this country without wandering out of the city. Speciál beers made with more sugar (14s and 16s, as opposed to the usual 10s and 12s) that have more body (and alcohol) than their lighter counterparts. Unfiltered beers with their unmeddled cloudiness, and the once almost extinct half-dark granát brews with their deep red colours. If you get lucky there may be a kvasnicový (yeast) beer on tap, or even the delicious heavy porter that comes from Pardubice. And that is just the start of the list.

And so there it is for 2008. Drink more beers. Not necessarily more beer, because the second plan for this year is to back away from the twin barrels of heart attack and high blood pressure that are currently pointing in my direction, but more beers. More variety. More taste. And in case you think I’m just a drunk looking for an excuse, more cultural understanding. (Beer is required for understanding… no point trying to get me to understand places like Africa until they have beer. I think they need water first though).

And so a slightly belated Happy New Beer to all of you out there, on the other side of the interweb. I’m off to drink a bottle of granát from the Černá Hora brewery. I bet you wish you were too.