Czech Beer Bicycle Run

A springtime cycle to collect a variety of Czech microbrewery beers from source. We taste some Psychovar, including a matcha beer and chocolate cheesecake Baltic porter, then visit Pivovar MMX and the hidden gem that is Pivovar Řevnice.

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Welcome. Something a bit different today. Back in the spring, I went on a bike ride out of Prague with my Basque friend Bastion to visit two breweries and bring back a nice big loot of beer. Brewery in Czech is Pivar. That word is going to crop up a few times. Think of it as like a mini river trip. And season two of that is coming. I promise. It’s just a lot of video files to get through. All right, we’re in Prague today going on a bike ride beer run to where we going towards caring hopefully right the place. Yeah, first stop will be Revit. Uh second one will be Pivar MMX which is uh hotel and Piv bar which is one of the best combinations in this life. Yeah, burning off some calories and then gaining them back. Yeah, with interest probably. Got my trusty steed. My beautiful foldable city bike and Bastion’s much cooler. What is it called again? It’s just a great bike. It’s just a just a gray bike. Right, let’s go. Czech Republic is obviously known for its great PSNA style beer. And we’re going to visit two very different breweries today. actually in the opposite order to what Bastian said. So, we’re heading south a little bit along the Voltava, the opposite direction to the way I set off with Jadams at the beginning of the river trip. Then branching off along the Barona Tributary River and a ways along that we find our two breweries. Pivar MMX first. A very modern looking brewery in a hotel in Topitzer and then Pivar Revit, a beautiful brewery located in an old disused train station building in Revitzer. And along the way, there’s going to be some some lovely scenery. And we stumbled upon a little festival as well, so that was a bonus. Enjoy. Just push it back. I think it’s not that steep, is it? Ah, take that back. Don’t look down. That is scary as it’s fine. It’s just see-through. Definitely just higher here. down. Oh, it’s just floating above the water. The floor is just like completely see-through when you’re over there. [ __ ] Oh, my balls. I am. I’m in five. Oh, I’m just confused now. But what do you mean? I was I was in a low low gear. You got up. You got high high gear. So one is higher than five. Yes. Welcome to cycling, my friend. The wacky world of cycling. You see how it looks now? Yeah, but I was I was when we crossed the bridge. The the last one. Sorry. They It just about missed. Hit more like the Gucci area. See what I mean? There’s something cool about this. Yeah. This scene, even though these things are obviously like concrete monstrosities, really. They are. Having crossed those two bridges, we’ve left the Voltava and we’re now riding along the Barona. You can see it there on the left. I’d never actually come this way before, but I definitely will be going again. It was really lovely from this point on, as you’ll see. Just editing this video is uh giving me seasonal effective disorder, making me miss the springtime. Anyway, first beer is coming up. Neither of the breweries, just a little um pit stop at a very Czech pub to wet the whistles. Oh, it’s beautiful. Smells great as well. Smells of hay fever. Cheers. Cheers. show. We’re about to collect a bonus bit of micro brood loot cuz we’re about to come across a little festival in a clearing in the trees. And a festival in the Czech Republic means a lot of beer stalls. And we were going to go with a beer that I didn’t realize at the time is also from our final destination. Sikhavar, the self-described extreme nano brewery. What a magical place to live. Oh, what’s this? Good question. Oh, we have to have a look around this. What have you ordered? Uh, I haven’t ordered yet, but I’m about to get a bacon burger or as they would say in check, probably like a baton. You joined like the longest queue in the whole in the whole place. It’s popular place. I’ve had I’ve had a whole massive pack of onion ring crisps and mice. The beer is very good. It’s very good. Yeah. What are you saying about a Sikhov beer? I’m I’m impressed because the beer has this sort of like bottom of a barrel taste. It’s like slightly smoky, right? Not too smoky. It’s very weird. It doesn’t have like the bacon flavor like some beer has. It is very good. It’s very good. I’m impressed. I love this whole place. I love this country, man. You just You stumble upon stuff like this all the time. Yeah. There’s this synergy between doing some kind of exercise and then there’s beer, there’s food everywhere, there’s music. Actually, there is like a there are cycling tops which are from which is a you know it’s it’s a brewery. That is ridiculous. I could never think of that in Spain. No, no one would make like a you know San Miguel top for cycling. That that that wouldn’t happen. But here that is normal thing. I love it. Problem is there are loads of different breweries here and we still got a way to cycle, right? Uh yeah, we’re not far away anyway, but um this was sort of mandatory cuz I am pretty hungry. And I mean it’s a beer run, right? This whole this whole trip is a beer run. This is just supposed to be for this stop. That took a bit longer than I expected. Must be like 40 45 minutes. Sorry. This burger is called [ __ ] because when you eat it, you say [ __ ] Look at that. All right, let’s dive into it. Let’s get some food porn. [ __ ] It’s true. Got some interesting beers here. Matcha beer and a chocolate cheesecake. Baltic porter. Uh yeah, the Baltic always. I’m not optimistic about this one to be honest. Yeah, it it looks like grass. Looks like a smoothie. It tastes like dark beer. Does it taste like chocolate cheesecake? Um it does taste slightly chocolatey like a funky one. It’s not bad. I like that. Let’s go with the matcha one. Well, first of all, I don’t really like matcha. Doesn’t smell good or look good, doesn’t it? It’s like green tea. It’s like green tea and beer. Yeah. And if you ignore how it looks, it doesn’t taste too different. It’s just lag good. Yeah. With that green tint on it, you know? Yeah. I mean it when it comes to looks it’s quite memorable I would say. Yeah. But we won’t we won’t be getting in the bottle of that I guess. Um that won’t be part of the beer run. That doesn’t make the cut. I don’t think uh probably not. Probably not. This one might I like this. Yeah, that is quite good. That is quite good. They’ve got bottles. They haven’t got the one we had. The the other one they What was the name of it? Uh Zubie something. Zubie. Yeah. Um, but they’ve got the 11, which is basically similar, he said. So, as we head on through beautiful Chevrolets, we’ve left the Prague region into the central Bohemian region, but that is still Prague on the opposite side of the river at this time with the first bottle of the trip in the cycle bag, an 11°ree laga. And just to explain to non-C viewers what those degrees mean in the Czech Republic they do use this system. They’ll tend to order say a desitu those are the two most common. It doesn’t mean there’s 12% alcohol in the beer. To get technical it’s a measurement of the concentration of sugars in the mix before fermentation. So, a 12° beer will tend to be a bit tastier and a bit more alcoholic than a 10, but it’ll be about 5% alcohol. So, pretty normal. Just as scary to look down, if not scarier. It’s a bit rickety for my liking. Approaching now. And once we arrived there, we found another little event in the grounds of the chatau there, or Zamk as they call it here. I wrongly said at the start of this video that Pad Mmx is injit, but turns out it’s just a bit down the road in Leti, so not far to go now to the first of the two breweries we set out for. Not a beautiful building, but it is in a really nice part of the country. So if you ever wanted to stay somewhere around here and you didn’t want far to stumble after a few points, it is as I mentioned a brewery hotel or pe hotel if you will. It was founded quite recently in 2010, hence MMX. A modern stainless steel automated brew house. Cheers. Cheers. The first planned stop. Yeah. Anything to say about this brewery? Oh, this fantastic. That is nice actually. Yeah, it’s very good. This is one of the most underrated beers in the Czech Republic. I would say it’s just the 10° the normal. This is the light grassroot kind of beer you can get. And this is absolutely great. The the the amount of taste you get from it is is really really good. I mean you can get yourself a room here just get wasted. Um but you know what I like about this country is you can book a room in literally breweries. I don’t know if you are like uh like us going by bike somewhere, you can do that cuz the next place is a hotel as well. Uh yeah, in in theory you can also get yourself uh a place there to sleep. Uh I’m not sure if it’s like 60 to 80 a night. Yeah, they they Yeah, I think it is a bit. Yeah, we’ll see. But it’s very good. It’s nice beer. They make it there. And uh that place actually used to be a train station. So it looks fancy. It looks pretty good. Yeah, I have to say. Second beer literally in the bag. So, another short ride to our second and final brewery of the day, Pivar Revit, which couldn’t really feel more different than MMX. It’s got a real old school rustic vibe to it. It actually started brewing a lot more recently in 2019, but it’s set in an old train station building from 1882, so it really sits nicely in the landscape right on the tracks. And you can get here in about 20 minutes from Prague to the current Chevnitz train station just a bit down the road. And I recommend it. I really love this place. I’m definitely going to be coming back here once next spring rolls around. It’s a cool place. It’s quite unique. This is sort of places which you know I think only local people know about and I think you can clearly tell I mean the the the menu would be in check and it’s not very easy let’s say to get to so I think it’s it’s a it’s a very cool what would you call a hidden gem is that how how kids call it nowadays how the youth are calling it these days. Yeah. And it’s a nice beer as well. One other things I like the most is many places have not just their own beer but their own cyclist beer. So that is the let’s say if a if a 10 degree like check 10 degree is your regular beer. Yeah. So that is let’s say 42 up to 4.4% alcohol. Yeah. So then they will have you know usually higher degrees like a 12 that that will be a 5% and and then it just goes up and up but then they also go lower. So that will be in this case your cyclist beer which will be an eight degree. So that 8 degree would be like 3% alcohol. So, you know, that’s that’s that’s the thing. I we like you can get smaller percentage of alcohol, but the surprising thing is they have full taste. You know, you could expect a beer to taste a bit waterish. Yeah. For example, I was in China and they have this so-called snow beer and that’s a two 2.1% alcohol. Yeah. That is nothing. But it really tastes like water. But here there’s this, let’s say, three% alcohol, but it has full taste. It’s that you can drink it, but you don’t get pissed. You know, it’s very bad when you start accumulating beers. So that right here, that’s a 10. That is the upgrade. The 12. What do you think about the upgraded one? It’s tastier. Yes. Like usually the way with the 10 and the 12. The 12 is just like a tastier version of the 10. And Bastion’s a bit bit slow. So I am still got some 10 left. I am slightly slower at drinking. But you know what? There’s someone who is slightly um faster at at me at something and I at tanning because look at that. Look at how do you even explain that? I mean, look at me, man. I’m I’m translucent. I’m not made for the sun. Yeah, British people have something against the sun. So, the sun Welsh people, you know, Welsh people have something against the sun. I guess the sun has something against us. We’re fine with the sun. The sun doesn’t feel the same way. Never visits. Ladies and gentlemen, we got it. Three beers, three micro breweries. This is the third one. It’s going in the bag. We’re not going to do that on film because I knocked the bag over like an idiot last time. Now we’re catching the train back to Prague. And yeah, you could go to a beer shop, but doing this, you know, you burn off some calories and it’s a lot more fun. So, I’ll see you next time. So, that’s it. Back to Prague via the more modern train station with a cycle bag full of delicious loot. We do love our Czech beer, so we’ll probably be doing some more of these in future. And keep an eye out for series two of the river trip. I’m determined to get episode one of that out this year. Like and subscribe and all that. And I’ll see you next time. Heat. Heat. N.