Czechs drink more beer per person than any other nation and have done for three decades. Beer here is not a night out, it is an ordinary accompaniment to lunch, to conversation, and to sitting down.
It is also cheap, taken seriously, and surrounded by conventions that nobody will explain.
Where pilsner comes from
Until 1842, most beer was dark and cloudy. The burghers of Plzeň, ninety kilometres west of Prague, were unhappy enough with theirs to dump barrels in the street and hire a Bavarian brewer, Josef Groll, who combined local pale malt, soft Plzeň water, Saaz hops and bottom-fermenting yeast.
What came out was golden, clear and stable — and it arrived just as glass drinking vessels were becoming cheap, so people could see it. Pilsner Urquell was the result, and roughly two-thirds of all beer brewed in the world today is a descendant of it.
The other name to know is Budweiser Budvar from České Budějovice, which has been in trademark litigation with the American brewer for over a century.
How to order
Say the size. Velké pivo is 0.5 litres, malé pivo is 0.3. Asking for “a beer” gets you a large, which is correct.
Degrees are not alcohol. A beer described as 10° or 12° refers to the Balling scale — the sugar content of the wort before fermentation, not the strength. A 12° lager is around 5% alcohol. A desítka (10°) is the lighter everyday beer and a dvanáctka (12°) the fuller one.
Tank beer — tankové pivo — is unpasteurised beer delivered by tanker and kept in a cellar tank under a bag of sterile air rather than CO₂. It is noticeably better and pubs that have it advertise it.
The pours. Pilsner Urquell recognises several: hladinka, the standard with a dense three-finger head; šnyt, a smaller measure with a big head; and mlíko, a glass of pure foam, drunk quickly, which tastes sweet and which nobody outside the country believes in until they try it.
A large head is correct here and is not the barman cheating you. It protects the beer.
The etiquette
A slip of paper on your table records what you have had, marked with a tick per beer. Do not lose it, do not write on it.
An empty glass is an order. In a traditional pub the waiter will keep bringing beer until you signal otherwise. Put a beer mat on top of your glass when you have finished.
Say na zdraví — to health — clink glasses, make eye contact, and touch the glass to the table before drinking. The eye contact is taken seriously.
Do not clink with a non-alcoholic drink, which is considered unlucky.
Pay at the end, to the waiter, not at the bar. Say the total you want to pay rather than leaving cash on the table. Round up rather than leaving a percentage.
You will be seated, often at a table with strangers. Ask je tu volno? — is this free?
Where to drink
The centre is the worst place to do it. Prices in the Old Town are two to three times what they are fifteen minutes away, and the clientele is entirely visitors.
U Fleků — the 500-year-old brewery, very touristy, expensive, and the dark lager is genuinely excellent. Go once, decline the unrequested Becherovka.
U Zlatého tygra, Husova — a real local in the Old Town that has resisted becoming anything else. Hrabal drank here daily.
Lokál — several branches, tank Pilsner treated properly, and the most reliable good pint in the city.
Žižkov — the highest pub density in Prague. U Slovanské lípy, U Vystřelenýho oka, and a dozen others.
Vinohrady — Vinohradský pivovar, and Riegrovy sady beer garden in summer.
Letná beer garden for the view.
Beer spas exist, are aimed squarely at visitors, and are exactly what they sound like.
What else to drink
Becherovka, a herbal liqueur from Karlovy Vary, drunk cold as a digestif.
Slivovice, plum brandy, usually homemade and usually stronger than stated.
Kofola, a cola invented under socialism because the real thing was unavailable, less sweet and genuinely popular with people who grew up on it.
Moravian wine, which almost nobody outside the country knows about — the south-east of the country produces very good whites, and Prague’s wine bars are worth an evening.
A short glossary
Pivo — beer. Velké / malé — large (0.5l) / small (0.3l). Světlé — pale. Tmavé — dark. Řezané — a mix of the two, poured in layers. Na zdraví — cheers. Ještě jedno — one more. Zaplatím — I’ll pay.
Pivnice is a beer hall, hospoda a pub, hostinec an inn, and pivovar a brewery. A pivní zahrádka is a beer garden.
Beyond Pilsner
Pilsner Urquell and Budvar are the names abroad, and the interesting drinking is elsewhere. Kout na Šumavě, Únětický pivovar and Matuška are among the small breweries worth asking for, and Prague has a proper craft scene in Žižkov and Vinohrady that runs alongside the traditional pubs rather than replacing them.
The one thing to understand is that Czech craft beer has not displaced the lager the way it has in Britain or the United States. A good 12° pale lager, poured properly from a tank, is still what most Czechs consider the highest form of the thing — and once you have had one in a pub that cares, the argument makes sense.