The story of Pivovar Kutná Hora is one of hope, faith, survival and resurrection. It is a tale that lightens the heart and directs a searchlight on the battles between big and small, which continues to bedevil not just the Czech, but the whole beer world.

However, before we leap into its story, let’s pour ourselves a glass of the brewery’s Zlatá 12˚ pale lager (or světlý ležák in the native Czech) and tumble acrobatically into that instead. It is golden in its ambition, gleaming in the glass, a smile from the Czech lands, a reflection of the way that beer inhabits every warp and waft of the country’s fabric, part of its nature, its soul and the way the world is interpreted. The aromatics rising from the glass merge Moravian malt sweetness with Saaz hop spice, an earthy herbal note redolent of the fertile lands in its northern Bohemia home.

Let’s take a gulp, for this is the kind of beer that we drink with the heedless greed of a thirsty traveller. There’s that assertive spiciness again, a light daub of citrus and an elegant sweetness—the lamb of the malt lying down with the lion of the hop. A crisp dryness alongside a winsome bittersweetness serenades the finish. Your glass will be empty very swiftly.

Whistled whetted, glass vacated, it’s time to tell the tale.

***

I was in the southern Bohemian city of Kutná Hora in the autumn of 2011. There was a brewery here, I was told. Was. It had now closed, shuttered and silent, skulking behind a ragged wire fence, a presence of nothingness on the edge of the Unesco World Heritage Site city centre. Such was the forlorn scene ahead that I almost imagined seeing tumbleweed blowing through the empty yard in front of the building. I went for a drink in a nearby bar and got talking to a local who rolled his eyes when I mentioned it. “The town wanted to buy it,” he told me. “But Heineken, who owned it, wouldn’t let us.”

For a more succinct view of what happened, I spoke to Martin Macourek who works for CzechTrade in London, a business body that connects companies in both the Czech Republic and the UK. Part of his work, sees him dealing with independent breweries such as Kutná Hora. Even though he doesn’t come from the city, the original brewery is recalled with affection.

“Their bottom-fermented lagers had won a wonderful reputation throughout the 20th century until Heineken stepped in and closed the brewery,” he says. “Not happy with such a turnaround, the locals stopped drinking anything connected with Heineken, preferring the nearby Kozel. And eventually, they won, with the brewery being reopened and now brewing their fantastic lagers again.”

I returned to Kutná Hora in the autumn of 2019 and as Macourek related, there is a brewery here now. This is the same one that I saw in 2011, but instead of silence there is the laughter of brewers, the clang of kegs being readied to go out into the world and the gleam of stainless steel equipment reminiscent of the flash of sunlight in a forest clearing. More soberly, there is also a reminder of the past: parts of the former brewhouse hang from the ceiling, jaggedly cut metal where the wreckers were sent in and wrenched away the working kit and despatched it to a scrapyard. There are also kettle-sized holes where brewing vessels once stood and poked their way up through the floor. All of the current equipment is new.

“We want to make proper Czech lager, without exceptions.”

— Jakub Hájek, Pivovar Kutna Horá

Kutná Hora’s brewmaster Jakub Hájek has been at the brewery since it produced its first batch of beer in February 2017. He’s a garrulous chap, open and generous in the way he and the owners (who also have Pivovar Břeclav, based in the southern Czech region of Moravia, in their portfolio) foresee the future, a progress that sees them slowly but surely building up trade in local bars and pubs as well as restoring the brewery.

“Our midterm goals are to fulfil the capacity of the brewery and establish ourselves among traditional producers once more,” Jakub tells me. “We want to make proper Czech lager, without exceptions. The short term goals are to finish our pub in the brewery and restore its outside look. We believe that a brewery has its own genius loci, or protective spirit, so we wanted to preserve it.”

With this in mind, Jakub also supervised the restoration of several chimneys as well as the malt silos, while there are future plans to clean up the old statues on the roof plus an original painting that he discovered in the brewery. “It was believed to have been painted by a former brewmaster in the 1920s,” he says.

Such faith in the future and a zeal to recapture past glories would mean nothing if the beers that Jakub and his team produce were substandard or lacklustre. As my tasting of the 12˚, plus the sweet, floral and dry gold-tinged Stříbrná 11˚ and the full-bodied, bittersweet and handsome-in-its-amber-broodiness Vánoční Dědictví 15˚ demonstrates, this is not the case.

“The alpha and the omega of our approach is to focus on the traditional way of brewing Czech beers,” he says. “This means using double decoction [mashing], which helps to enhance the body, drinkability and colour without need of using excessive special malts. The main fermentation is in open vessels, because who doesn’t want to watch that beautiful foam on top of it.”

Fermentation is halted when there are enough sugars left in the wort to allow for slow attenuation in the lager cellars, where the beer sleeps the sleep of the just for no less than two months. According to Jakub, “I believe this helps to balance the beer and that’s why Czech beer is so famous—it is all about balance and drinkability.”

Balance and drinkability is something I have heard many times from Czech brewers. I recall Adam Matuška of the eponymously named brewery telling me: “every beer that I brew you have to drink half a litre of it, and then you have to be thirsty for another half litre, even if it is 9%, you don’t have to drink it but you would like to.”

Perhaps what we have forgotten with Czech beer is the influence of malt, which I believe gives it that famed drinkability. To us in the UK the idea of the influence of malt seems to indicate a beer that is cosy and warm and almost befuddling in its sweet and cardigan-like character. On the other hand, in Czech beer, the malt seems to add a depth of flavour as well as a canvas on which the spicy floral notes of Saaz can be splashed. Not bright colours, but something like the pastel colours that mark out so many homes in the rolling countryside of southern Bohemia.

The story of Kutná Hora’s brewery cannot be divorced from the city’s, which is a familiar central European one of boom and then bust. During the Middle Ages, local silver mines made it second only to Prague in wealth and importance. Then came the 15th century’s Hussite Wars, followed by the 30 Years War a couple of centuries later, and a general sense of decline settled on the town like a shroud, a blanket of gloom that I felt I could sense when visiting in 2011. The back streets were still, overlooked by facades from which plaster seemed to bleed, though paradoxically the face its inhabitants seemed to present to the world was proud, resolute, tenacious, maybe something you could perhaps argue that the survival of the brewery represents.

Even though not from the city, Jakub has grown to love his adoptive home. “It’s a beautiful city to walk around with lots of green spaces,” he says. “Unemployment is pretty low since there are a lot of job opportunities. When the reopening happened people were happy and supported us. Some local pubs even wanted to be first and ordered the first keg way before our brewhouse equipment was even installed.”

Naturally, in order to really dive deep into the spirit and the superb beers of Pivovar Kutná Hora it pays to travel to the city and gulp glass after glass of the gorgeous 12˚. Thankfully, the beer is now being more widely distributed, including to the pubs and bars of the United Kingdom.

“It was a real treat, Kutna Horá 12˚ is a thing of beauty,” Martyn Railton, founder and managing director of the beer’s UK importer, Euroboozer, tells me of his own discovery of this brewery. “The full-bodied, soft, velvety mouthfeel from the decoction, the slightly sweet caramel malt body from the locally floor-malted barley, perfectly befitting a beer of this style. And the noble hopped well-rounded bitterness to finish from the Saaz took me to a place I never wanted to leave and will remain in love with forever.”

***

With thanks to Euroboozer for flying Pellicle out to the Czech Republic, and making sure our glasses of světlý ležák never ran dry.