Pilsner Urquell

Time is always said to be of the essence, but for the producers of Czech ‘gold’, they know that it takes the time that other European beer producers fail to allow. This was certainly the impression that those attending this year’s ‘Czech Beer Day 2017’ up in swanky Hampstead heard this July.
Indeed, beer produced these days in the Czech Republic, a nation that lays claim to the world’s first-ever pilsner blond lager - Pilsner Urquell in 1842 - takes between 100 to 200 days to brew. That bottom-fermented beer in fact inspired much of the beer produced around the globe today.

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.