Non-natives

It's usually a good idea when in a certain country, to drink the beer styles which have a heritage there. So avoid lager in the UK which is normally fizzy piss, and don't even get me started on the vile noxious filth which passes for 'porter' in Germany.
How does Czech fare when it comes to brewing non-lagers?

This brewpub "Klášterní pivovar Strahov" in Prague proudly displays its wares.

Non-lager styles are usually referred to as 'special' on Czech menus but without much more detail, whereas in this place they've got a heavy tourist custom.

Come on in...

Their IPA is a regular feature of the show, with various rotating beers, one of which was an 'American Pale Ale'. Everything's unfiltered and unpasteurised naturellement.

The 'APA' on the right contains what the brewery claims are newly breeded hops - 'Mandarin' and 'Polaris', although it doesn't say how the names were chosen. It had been a while since I'd had a heavily citrus hopped beer, and this one reminded me why - all hops and no chops you might say. The bitterness drowned out everything like an enraged elephant in a glockenspiel performance.
The IPA was far better though, with the Amarillo and Cascade in proper proportion. Either of these could have come straight from an American craft brewer.
 

This pair of fellas from a supermarket were a curiosity. I wasn't able to find much detail out about them other than that they're called 'Master Pivo', and that they're 'Special' beer. The lighter one was vaguely like Old Speckled Hen, whereas the dark one looked, smelt, and tasted like a coffee infused stout. Definitely worth getting again, although they're battling for room in my trolley with the unfiltered Staropramen and the unpasteurised Klaster lezak.

Olomouc is a town in the east of Czech, and in the 'Sherlock Holmes' you can find various special beers such as, depending on the season, fruit ales and pale ales.
The pale ale was a commendable effort, and mercifully not overhopped.

Nice as it was, it couldn't quite compete with the star of the show, the unfiltered Rychtar:

Skilful though the Czechs are at brewing non-lagers when they put their minds to it, I'm going to stick with gems such as this.

Nepasterizované

"Tankové pivo" are unpasteurised beers with natural carbonation, delivered to the pub in giant lorries. You can find them in lots of places around Prague, this splendid place being one of them:

Pilsner Urquell, in its bottled form, is a reasonable enough beer, and is the pilsner I'd always drink in Germany if I had a choice. In its 'Tankové' form though it's far superior.

Guz daaan griiiiirt.
So which of pasteurising and filtering is it more important not to do? To investigate I proceeded somewhere which has both unpasteurised and unfiltered beers.

This place has beers from some of the finest breweries in Czech, including Rychtář.

This unfiltered specimen from "únětický pivovar" was unspeakably good. You could guzzle it down in 5 seconds so smooth is the carbonation.
 

Next up was an unpasteurised "Klášter Ležák".

Good but not a patch on the "únětický".
Every time in a Czech pub now I ask for a "nefiltrované" as to me that's more important than "nepasterizované", and sometimes they even understand what I'm saying. Luckily the beer boards outside usually alert you to the presence of such a brew.

Nefiltrovany

Filtering and pasteurising is of course the worst thing you can do to a beer, so when I spotted this fella in the supermarket I bung a couple in, as you don't have to speak Czech to work out what 'Nefiltrovany' might mean.

The bog standard Staropramen which I tried was very uninspiring; the only one of the ten or so Czech beers I've tried from the supermarket which I wouldn't get again.
This one was way, way, better though; nice and cloudy, with spices and fruitiness. Why exactly would they make the crud ones when they can make this? At about 60 Euro cents I bought another 6 today.

It's always encouraging when a pub / restaurant has brewing equipment on display in the window, and when the menu is headed 'we serve unfiltered and unpasteurised beers' then that's even better.

I went for the mixture of pale and dark lager and it was a reminder that lager can be as flavoursome as any beer when it isn't buggered with.

Lager is the beer equivalent of pizza; abused, defiled, misrepresented and misunderstood.
There's lots of beery snacks to keep you going, such as 'beer cheese'.

They also do their own fruit beers; I went for a 'nettle' and a 'sour cherry'.

The nettle one had just the right combination of beer and fruit flavour; the sour cherry one was much more oriented to the sour cherry taste but was still worth drinking. You even get a real sour cherry at the bottom...

Pivovarsky Dum, may your beer stay nefiltrovany.

Prague Supermarket Beers

Is Czech beer more interesting than German beer? I intend to find out.
Perusing the beer section of a Prague supermarket, I noticed that, as well as the Czech brands well known outside the country, there were countless brews I'd not heard of as well. They are also all pretty cheap, around 60 cents a shout, so I grabbed some at random and dragged them back to the batcave.

Kozel was slightly malty, with a gentle kick to it, whereas Breznak was darker, much more malty, with a bigger kick.

Branik was pale and at first taste seemed run-of-the-mill, but grew on me the further down the glass I got. Bernard had a giant head on it, slightly sweet, but very distinctive.

Radegast was a decent brew, easy quaffing - whether it was named after the wizard though I don't know.
So far all the beers were recognisably superior to the vast majority of German beers I've tried - although nothing to write home about, they were all beers I could quite happily drink regularly. However I'd also chucked a Staropramen into my trolley, so that I could do an 'unknown brand vs international brand test'. Switching to this from the Radegast instantly showed the Staropramen up as utterly tasteless and bland, pretty much like a Helles.
In future I'll stick to what I don't know.