The next day of the Brewery History Society visit to Prague saw us get the train to Pilsen. I know there's a lot of brewing history in Prague, but I've wanted to visit the Pilsner Urquell (Plzeňský prazdroj) brewery for a very long time. For many years Pilsner Urquell was the only lager that I liked, and the brewery of the original pilsner is obviously of great historical significance.
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| A view of the brewery and the Jubilee Gate |
It was good, very good. There's a large modern brewery on the site (production is over 10 million hectolitres a year) but they've also kept the old brewhouse and cellars.
The bottling line was also suitably large, and working at a cracking pace. I didn't see any stoppages whilst we were there.
The old brewhouse has more copper though:
Some serious hammer rash can be seen on the chute going into the lauter tun:
The new brewhouse is another cathedral of gleaming copper, though I think in this case it's copper cladding over stainless steel. But they do still have
direct gas firing and a copper heat exchange surface, and do triple decoction mashing.
They also have two 10m lauter tuns, with space for one more.
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| 10m lauter tuns |
Quite where and when the mash and wort go I'm not entirely certain. With the two vessel continental system I'd been assuming the lower vessel was the mash and wort kettle, and the upper one the lauter tun. Where an extra lauter tun comes into it I'm not sure, but I dare say it speeds up getting things through the brewhouse.
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| It's all highly automated |
Then it was into the cellars.
There's 9km of them.
And they still do some fermentation and conditioning in wooden vessels there.
And yes, we did have a drop or two.
Pilsen murky: it's great stuff.
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| Na zdraví |
grt
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