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Vine Park Czech Beer Trip 2006
 The two best smelling rooms in the world are in Trutnov! Midway thru an eleven day tour of Czech independent breweries, we were treated to a tour of the Krakonos Pivovary's (brewery) hop storage room and its fermentation room. Ahhh! as we tasted the pivo (beer), it was clear that something wonderful was happening in that place. In fact, it was clear we needed to do quite a bit of research on that beer.
Vine Park Brewing's first Beer Trip entailed eight breweries, three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, two castles, and one beer bath. I won't count the pubs nor the beverages we sampled over our time in the Czech Republic but let's say that group was pretty focused on developing a strong base of knowledge about the local brews.
Ten of us from around the United States got a chance to see a wide variety of breweries in virtually all stages of development & redevelopment. Many of these formerly Royal Breweries have histories that date back over 500 years! With the fall of communism, they are adapting to the new marketplace with varying degrees of success. In fact, some of the best beer we consumed was from large regional breweries most American beer drinkers have never heard of.
Early in the trip, we bused up to Zatec, the home of Saaz hops, for the local agricultural festival. This is a truly “locals” event although we were warmly welcomed and given a great tour of Zatec Pivovary by the local BrewMaster when we introduced ourselves. The festival itself was just like our state and county fairs with food stands intermingled with vendors selling clothing, gifts, etc. Of course, most of our fairs do not have Beer Stands from nineteen local breweries serving up their wares. We did our best to determine whose beer was the best-in-fair and luckily, we ended later in the trip visiting several of those breweries to see just how they created their pivo.
Most of the time we were in the smaller towns of the Czech Republic and staying in small inns. Steve Piatz & his wife Janis Sines joined Dan & Deb Justesen (Vine Park's Trip Hosts) in arriving early and doing a trip to the town of Chodovar Plana. Here we indulged in hot beer spa baths. They say it's great for the skin & body. It might be, but I can only attest to how it takes away the jet lag. Between checking-in and our spa appointment, we did find the pub that the local brewery workers stop at and ordered our first round of pivos. We fought over the bill (as in “no, let me pay this one…”) as we realized we just had eight 0.5 liter beers for less than $5.
 In downtown Prague, tourism has driven up prices and the most we paid for a delicious tall (0.5 liter) pivo was close to $1.75. Still a bargain, given the incredibly beautiful city we were in. Our first night in Prague, we toured the main sites with a guide and ended the tour in U Fleku, the world's oldest brewpub. The BrewMaster, Ivan, is retiring soon after 36 years is part of a line of BrewMasters that stretches unbroken back to the 1350's! Steve & I got a private visit to his offices and learned about his hopes to export a kit to the US for home brewers to recreate their famous mavy (dark) beer. I will be contacting Ivan soon to see if Vine Park can offer this as a special brew this winter.
After a hearty dinner of traditional Czech foods, we soon started a pub-crawl back to our hotel. As folks peeled off and headed for the hotel, the crawl got smaller. Finally, one wife set off by herself and we had another round. Upon our return to the hotel some time later, we learned said wife was not yet there and a frantic search of Prague's medieval maze of streets ensued by the husbands. Many miles & hours later, said wife was found safe at the hotel having found her way without the help of said husbands who had also gotten lost. Oh well, makes a good story now and became a great running joke through out the rest of the trip when another wife wanted to go out on her own.
 That and so much more happened in just the first few days of the trip. Much more information and photos will be posted soon at Vinepark.com and I'm sure all of us will be glad to bend your ear with lots more stories and beer reviews in person.
Part of my excitement was learning just how well the trip went and how much fun we had as a group. The trip operator did a great job getting us to interesting places, the hotels were charming, and the tour guides spoke English well and were enthused about what they were doing. I'm already planning our 2007 trip! The current debate is between Bavaria and Great Britain. If you are interested in going along, please let me know your preference soon by contacting me at Dan[at]Vinepark.com.
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