Pivo
Beer - the Czech National Drink. You may as well learn the word - Pivo.
Important notice - we are Mormons. That means we follow a revelation received by Joseph Smith called the Word of Wisdom which, among other things, instructs us to not drink alcohol. No alcohol was consumed in preparing this post.
Czechs drink beer. Lots of beer. More beer, in fact, than any other people on the earth. They drink nearly twice as much beer per capita as Americans - 156.9 liters per person (or about a pint a day). Given that most of this is consumed by men, but the per capita includes women and children, the guys here make college boys in the US look like teetotallers.
Beer is everywhere here. Every restaurant serves beer, every supermarket has a whole aisle dedicated to it, everywhere you turn.
The big names in beer here are known to people in the US too:
- Budvar is a popular beer hailing from none other than our home town Česke Budejovice (or Budweis in German). In American, Anheuser-Busch stole the name for their Budweiser Beer.
- Pilsener beer (a generic term for a pale lager) was developed in Plzn in the western part of the Czech Republic. The brewery in Plzn produces two hugely popular beers: Pilsner Urquell and Gambrinus, the latter being the sponsor of the professional Czech fotbal league.
By the way, if you want to read an intriguing book in which beer plays a pivotal role in the battle between East and West, check out The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers.
The most intriguing thing about beer in the Czech Republic is that they are serious about non-alcoholic beer. Because they are so strict about drunk driving (legal blood alcohol limit is 0.00), non-alcoholic beer has a place in the mainstream. You see billboards for it and the major breweries produce it.
So, we have given the non-alcoholic beers a try. We first tried one made by Birrell (with the classic roast pork, sauerkraut and dumplings). Silas spit it out. Everyone disliked it. Then we tried the non-alcoholic Budvar (with hot dogs). This was much smoother but still tasted foul. Finally, we tried Bernard's Plum Beer (with burgers). This had a nice plum flavour that was only marred by the beer taste. I guess we just haven't developed a taste for beer, but that's okay.
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| From Sept 09 |
Peter
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Caleb looks like he's contemplating the best strategy to blow up the bottle! I guess it's good that you haven't developed a taste for beer.
Harff family, are you sure you are in the Czech Republic and not in Bavaria. All the things you wrote about beer fits exactly a description about Bavaria, except the non-alcoholic beer. No selfrespecting Bavarian would be caught drinking non-alcholic beer. BTW I check your blog almost daily and its so much fun to read about your (mis)adventures. Much love, Lisa B.
The alcohol kills the taste buds! Without it I understand that beer would not be so popular!
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