Mark Dredge

Eight skilled men, wearing dusty dungarees, stand around the giant wooden barrel. Big enough to hold over 7,000 pints of beer, they’ve spent two months building it; selecting the Czech-grown oak, carving it into perfect curves, piecing it together stave by stave, crashing heavy hammers down on the seven-foot structure. This team of brewery coopers – the last left in Central Europe – build and maintain wooden barrels for Pilsner Urquell, the brewers of the world’s first golden lager in 1842.