Weekly Review: Pilsner Urquell is an Original

Even though I prefer pale ales and heavier beers like porter and stout, this week I had a taste for a lager or a pilsner. I wanted to return to one that I have enjoyed for a long time, one that has what a lot of those commercial size lagers or those that call themselves pilsners lack: some character, some flavor, some boldness without excessive strength.

I therefore turned to an old favorite, one from the original brewery for lagers or pilsners: Pilsner Urquell, brewed in Plzen, Czech Republic.

Mugs of frothy beer served in this cobblestone-studded city southwest of Prague may resemble others the world over, but a trip to the local brewery confirms these are no ordinary suds.The faintly bitter lager first produced in Plzen more than a century ago gave rise to a style of beer that has since circled the globe. Much of today's lager-style beer, in fact, owes its flaxen color and crisp flavor to a brewing process formulated in this small metropolis in the Czech Republic's Bohemia region. Its name still reflects its origins: Pilsner, Pilsener, or sometimes just Pils.

The beer's precise birthplace, the Pilsner Urquell brewery, stands on the city's fringes, enclosed by an ornate 19th century double archway. Its copper kettle-lined confines have changed with the times, but visitors can still see hints of the past, including a network of underground tunnels once used to store huge casks of fermenting beer.

The Pilsner Urquell factory of today is a marvel of modern brewing, operating 24 hours a day and churning out 120,000 bottles of beer per hour. In 1842, after years of bad recipe produced unsavory beer , a young brewmaster and reputed ruffian, Josef Groll, took the helm and began making the beer that became known as Pilsner lager, fermenting barley malt, hops and water at a low temperature, and adding yeast that collected at the bottom of the mixture.

Among the beer's defining qualities were its shimmering appearance and subtle bitterness from locally grown hops. Other ingredients specific to the region included soft water drawn from 328-foot-deep wells and malt made from barley grown in the Czech regions of Bohemia and Moravia. The strain of yeast used reputedly is traceable to that used in the original recipe.

The brewing of Pilsner Urquell has remained largely unchanged since Groll's time. Ground malt and water are boiled three times in copper kettles, a procedure carried out perhaps once or twice in the making of other beers. Carmelization occurs at the bottom of the kettles, producing flavorful compounds.The concoction is boiled with hops before being fermented at a low temperature, pasteurized and packaged in bottles, cans, kegs and tanks. The total brewing time remains the same as in the days of yore, about five weeks.

The beer's name, Urquell, means "the original source" in German. Pilsner beer is the ancestor of the kind of global international lager style that makes up 90-something percent of the beer being drunk today, like brands such as Budweiser, Rolling Rock and St. Pauli Girl. In a nod to the beer born in Plzen, American brewers of the 19th century created a brew that was much softer for the American palate. That, in turn, has swept the world. Pilsner and pale ales that emerged around the same time stood out because they were light colored, and you could see it was pure.

The beers owed their attractive look to malt made from barley that had been heated evenly using an indirect source — then a revolutionary technique. Earlier malt may have been partly burned, producing beer with a darker and roasted taste. The malt's consistent quality yielded exceptionally clear beer, and its emergence coincided with the spread of glassware that allowed drinkers to admire its appearance. Pilsner Urquell's flavor tends to be dry rather than fruity like an ale.