Pilsner Urquell rant

The P.U. from back in the days when it was sold here in 4-packs & brown bottles is a vastly different animal today. They need to bring back the pitch-lined wooden fermenters.

 

Here in Brazil Pilsner Urquell is pretty common but its price make this beer not be a good choice. IMO

I'm not exactly a lager guy, but to me Urquell is not that different of Heineken to justify the gap on the price of both.

 

just confirmed by rewatching the old michael jackson's beer hunter TV series: the open fermenters were NOT lined with pitch, and constituted a "cleaning and maintenance nightmare." only the lagering vessels were lined with pitch.

perhaps more important than even the old wooden system was that it used to be fermented with five strains of yeast - at least according to jackson. today i believe it is only a single strain.

the only way to get this original version is to visit the brewery or the licensed pubs in pilsen. i get confused which is which here on the listings for beeradvocate: it is either the kvasnicovy or the nefiltrovany. i believe the "tankova" version is simply the common stainless steel fermented one, except unpasteurized. someone who knows better should feel feel to correct me and/or confirm.

[EDIT - i believe the kvasnicovy is the cask-refermented version, served from wooden casks, with fresh wort added for the secondary fermentation. some of these were sent to the UK for special wooden barrel events.]

 

ADDENDUM [past the 15 min edit time for my previous posting]

frankly, some of the reviews for the kvasnicovy are suspicious. it should not be bottled, and probably not "on tap" either. to add to the confusion, ratebeer only has one additional listing for the nefiltrovany, which contains this description:

 

Here is a video including Václav Berka about unfiltered Pilsner Urquell. Unfortunately there is a lot of background noise but the beer sure looks yummy!

 

Many just assume an unfiltered beer is Kvasnicovy, but it's not. Also, Kvasnicovy can be served via draft, it's the process not the container that makes the distinction. Tankovas are not dispensed via direct gas, but by air pressure (it is a bag in tank system), and, to my knowledge, unpasteurized.

 

thanks for the post, chris!

so what is the "process?" refermentation with fresh wort? repitched with yeast?

specifically for urquell, which ones qualify as kvasnicovy and which ones qualify as nefiltrovany? meanwhile ratebeer.com says tankova should be reviewed as the standard pilsner urquell.

 

They went from 5 strains to 2 and now use 1. This is a little old but covers the changes.
http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue5.3/urquell.html

 

Here is a video of a tapping of unfiltered PU at the Chicago Map Room. The audio is better here:

 

I don’t speak Czech so I don’t know which adjective goes with which version of Pilsner Urquell.

One version is the unfiltered and unpasteurized version which is available at the Pilsner Urquell Brewery as part of the tour and available at Na Parkánu Bar in the town of Pilsen. Luckily they are exporting more and more kegs of the unfiltered and unpasteurized Pilsner Urquell to the US. There were several of these kegs sent to Philadelphia (most recently in July 2014) but I have had conflicts for all of these releases.

In the Czech Republic there is the unpasteurized version available at what are called Tankova pubs.

Cheers!

 

Have you had any beers from Pivovar Kout na Šumavě? If so, what do you think?

Cheers!

 

Wait, what can we get in Boston?

 

What is that, I've been reading this entire thread and I am still unsure which version of Pilsner Urquell that is (if it is at all)?

And where in Boston, at a bar, is it in bottles?