Last year, I was on vacation with my dad here in Europe, and we went to a few cities in Germany and the Czech Republic. It was at about this point that I started actually taking the idea of making a beer and backpacking blog a little more seriously, and I tried to write down some notes on the beers. Fortunately, I managed to find my old notes in one of my journals. Unfortunately, my notes are sparse at best, and so I figured I would more or less just make an aggregate rating of my general opinion on Czech beers based off of my memory and my sparse notes.

The first place that we got some Czech beers was when we we just crossed over the border from Germany into the Czech Republic’s Bohemian Switzerland National Park (although it’s not even relatively close to Switzerland…). My dad and I took a ferry across the river dividing the 2 countries at that point and we stopped for a few beers at a bar.

The first beer I had was a “real” Budweiser. I say real because there are actually 2 different brands of Budweiser in the world, and they have different rights in different countries. One was started in the town of Budweis, which is now in the Czech Republic. That is marketed in most of Europe as Budweiser, while the American Budweiser seems to be more often labeled simply as “Bud.” Anheuser-Busch started making their own version of Budweiser in the 19th century, and that is what most Americans will recognize as Budweiser. It’s actually pretty interesting. So we had the original Budweiser per say, and the first one we tried was the normal Budweiser Budvar.
Sight: A little like urine, but it was how most lighter lagers look, so I can’t really complain. The beer had a good transparency to it and the foam was fine I guess.

Smell: Going to have to skip over this because I can’t recall the smell and I didn’t note anything down.

Taste: I recall the taste being pretty mild, like a light lager would be. A little bitter, but nothing much. In the end though, I found it to be just a little but too mild, bordering what I would call water.

I then had the Budweiser Budvar Dark, which is just the dark version of their normal lager,
Sight: I liked the dark color to it (I am partial to darker beers though), and the foam was alright, although maybe a bit too much, even if the foam did go back down fairly quickly.

Smell: I don’t recall too much other than it smelling a little sweet, almost like caramel.

Taste: I thought this was a step-up from the normal Budweiser, although it was still on the milder side of the spectrum. You could taste the roasted/burnt hops used to make it dark, although it wasn’t off -putting by any means.

Once we finally got to Prague, we stopped and got a bite to eat, and we both got a Pilsner Urquell, which is said to be the world’s first pilsner style lager (The name itself comes from the city of Pilsen, which is where this style of beer was first brewed).
Sight: The color was similar to the Budweiser, although it was lightly more opaque and it also seemed to have a mild orange-tint to it. The foam was also really thin, and it clung to the sides of the glass (not that I am saying that is bad or good, just an observation).

Smell: I can’t recall anything about the smell, and my notes are lacking unfortunately.

Taste: The taste was reminiscent of the Budweiser to me – very light, but nothing that particularly made me excited. It was almost too light for me, although it would be a great refresher on a hot summer’s day.

There are a few other beers for which I don’t have any notes, read about the cheap Czech beers we drank here.