Czech Beer Tours

Staropramen brewery tour
There is also a preview of the tour on the website. If you did not see the technology, what is behind the brewing, you should not miss it. It is near the center of Prague. I did the tour couple years ago, I would recommend it to anyone who likes beer. It is as good as the tours in other breweries in Ceske Budejovice (Budweis, Budvar) and Plzen (Pilsner).

If you're in Prague for a while head to Plzen for a night and do the brewery tour there...accomm is cheaper than in Prague and it's nice to see somewhere else apart from Prague too.

Has anyone ever done a Pub Crawl in Prague? It looks like a lot of fun, and a good way to see some of the town at night. I'm not much of a drinker, but I can take good photographs of others acting crazy!

Definitely. Staropramen is massive and has a nice restaurant and pub on-site; the tour is a fascinating look at high-volume beer production.

Other great beer tours are available at Pilsner Urquell in Pilsen, Budvar in České Budějovice and most of the now-more-than-110 wonderful breweries throughout the Czech Republic.

If you're interested in beer travels here, there are a few good resources online. The first is Ron Pattinson's European Beer Guide:

http://www.europeanbeerguide.net/

The next is the Pivní Filosof blog, which has a lot of information for travelers in Prague:

http://pivni-filosof.blogspot.com/

My editor would probably suggest that I mention my column, Beer Culture, at the Prague Daily Monitor:

http://www.praguemonitor.com/beer/

If you do want to know even more about Czech beer travels, my book "Good Beer Guide Prague & the Czech Republic" includes a calendar of Czech beer festivals, listings for every Czech brewery and every Czech beer, as well as travel information, maps and an index of all Czech brewery hotels. It's available at Amazon.co.uk in Britain and, finally, at Amazon.com in the U.S.

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Guide-Prague-Czech-Republic/dp/1852492333

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-Guide-Prague-Czech-Republic/dp/1852492333

If you have more questions about Prague beer tours, post them and I'll try my best to answer.

The best place for beer tours in the Czech Republic are Plzen and České Budějovice, home of Pilsner and Budvar, respectively. Here's a bunch of information on Beer Trips to the Czech Rebpublic that can help you plan brewery tours, day trips to Plzen and CB, etc.

Happy travels!

I'm not sure what kind of time you have, but if you have an extra day or so to spare, you may want to head to the beer spa. There's only a couple in the world and one's about 4 hours (by rail) from Prague.

http://www.chodovar.cz/specialni_1_en.htm

We did a tour of the Eggenberg brewery in Cesky Krumlov... no, we had never heard of this beer either before coming, and I guess this is the reason that we were the only ones on the english tour, so we got a fantastic private tour including tasting the yeast that had recently been scraped off the ceilings in the cellars (no joke!) and tasting the beer sraight from the barrel. I've never done a tour in one of the big famous breweries but I suspect that they wouldn't be nearly so interesting!
The result of the yeast that grows in their cellar, incidentally, is an ale that makes you sick if you're not used to it, so its brewed in miniscule quantities for local consumption only (you can have a small one without getting sick)! They also make a really good normal commercial czech style beer.

These days the options for a beer tour are many. There are some great, but touristy, microbreweries in Prague. For a short trip, that's the easiest. A trip to Plzen, easy from Prague, will net not only Pilsner Urquell but a couple of microbreweries too.

The big news right now is that the beer culture is exploding right now. Every month another brewery reestablishes the brewing tradition of a Czech town that has long been dry through Communism. The diversity is growing quickly.

Unfortunately the growth of good beer has not been matched by that of Czech infrastructure. There are some tour companies that will direct you though, e.g. www.pivoisbeer.com.

It's a great time to explore the Czech Republic through beer.

I agree with you Koper, I have been to U Fleku a couple of times and the musicgetting played for the tourists drives you mad,how many times a day can you listen to the Beer Barrel Polka?
I love the Oldgott brewery in U Medvidku and the St Norbets up in Klasterni,some great beer produced by them and St Norbets new IPA I had late last year was one of the best beers I have tasted in years.
The Jihomestsky Pivovar is a bit harder to find but does great beer and terrific food well worth seeking out.
I have visited the brewery in Plzen 5 times now,and the. changes over the years have been quite marked. I have also visited the Kozel brewery twice and there is a recently opened visitor center there now,well worth the trip,but not much else about the small town/village.
Both places are easy to get to from Prague by public transport.
In october I will be making my first ever visit to Cesky Budejovice and the Budvar brewery there,really looking forward to that.
a good beer blog to follow is this one.
http://www.pivni-filosof.com/