Beer Trails: The Brewery in the Bohemian Forest: Evan Rail

The author with one of his mates

This compact e-book is a superlative piece of beer writing: I read it in one go, partly on a bike in the gym and then finished it when I got home in league with a coffee so strong that when I dropped my pen in it the damn thing floated. It’s the sort of joyful and under-the-radar beer writing full of words, phrases and sentences that bring the reader straight into the heart of the Bohemian Forest as well as create a monumental thirst for the beers of the brewery Rail writes about.

What a word Bohemian is. I used to joke that my wife and I were Bohemian, but the truth was I hadn’t cut the grass for a while or mended the skirting board I’d promised to do six months before. And then there is La Boheme, with whatshername and her tiny frozen hands (my mother’s favourite opera, I prefer Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust); lot of Bohemians there then, going hungry, getting cold and generally mooning about the place. On the other hand there’s a deeper meaning to Rail’s evocation of the Bohemian Forest — the dark, trackless places that could swallow a legion, as happen in the Teutoburg Forest where Arminius destroyed Varus. All these connections: yes it’s that good a piece of writing (and he also gets to use the word spelka).

For anyone who doesn’t know of Rail, he’s a Californian journalist/author who’s been living in Prague for a few years now (he did tell me how many when we were judging beer in Rimini earlier this year but I forgot). He wrote the CAMRA guide to Prague and the Czech Republic and writes fantastic travel pieces for the NYT and various other journals (he’s got a piece on a hacker-turned-Berliner Weiss saviour in the current issue of All About Beer). He’s also written several of these e-books, including the fabulous Why Beer Matters, In Praise of Hangovers (a real comfort on a slow journey from the aftermath of Sun in the Glass fest at Pivovar Purkmistr to Oktoberfest in 2012) and Why We Fly.

Bohemian Forest is his latest and is about Pivovar Kout na Šumavě and his search for a sacred brewing book the people that brought the shut brewery were supposed to have. It’s more than that though, to my mind being a meditation on what it is that attracts people to beer, what makes them engulf themselves in the world of beer.

This is a story that could work as either fiction or non-fiction. There’s almost something within that teeters on the edge of magical realism; there were times when I wondered if the brewery existed (it does and I have probably drank its beers with Rail in Zly Casy in Prague). A beautiful lyricism flutters through the story in alliance with a musicality that demonstrates what beer writing can be about. There are a couple of moments when the text slightly slows down, is not as flowing, but then the Thames doesn’t always flow in a way we would like it to but that doesn’t detract from its beauty.

To my mind Rail is a writer who is producing some of the best words about beer at the moment, helping (along with other writers both in print and online) to move beer writing on from its antediluvian origins, beyond its lorries and overalls, its cup cakes and ‘look a woman has a glass in her hand’ obsessions (though they do have their place). I can’t recommend this enough.

Disclosure time: I was sent this by Rail and have known him and drank deeply with him for a few years. The Brewery in the Bohemian Forest (which can be bought here for the price of a third of the tiny tears of a craft brewery) is part of a series called Beer Trails, which Rail has told me that Joe Stange and Stan Hieronymous (two other great beer writers) will also be contributing to — I look forward to it.

World Atlas of Beer

In the post the postman brings a copy of The World Atlas of Beer by Stephen Beaumont and Tim Webb, their attempt to cover what’s happening in the world of craft beer (I would have added ‘at the moment’, but things are moving so fast that the book can only provide a snapshot of a moment in time, something that Webb acknowledged when he wrote about the book in the British Guild of Beer Writers newsletter last month here). 

It’s a gorgeous production, luxuriant and lush with photos of fields of barley caught in the sway, men and women on the mash and bronzed, Adonis-like streams of beer flowing with a Gambrinus-like sense of freedom. Webb and Beaumont are for my money two of the best beer-writers on the planet — forensic in their attention to detail, wry stylists and both imbued with years of traipsing round breweries, talking to people and drinking the beer. If Michael Jackson rediscovered Belgium’s great brewing heritage, then Tim in the manner of a Pointillist painter filled in all the dots; Stephen’s elegant brushstrokes of colour on beer, gastronomy and travel sometimes reminds me of Van Dyke or Reubens. 

As the book’s title suggests, it covers the world, shining a spotlight on 35 countries and their beers. As with most books of this nature there are sections at the front about the raw materials and brewing modes, a couple of spreads about craft beer plus one spread about ‘High Volume Brewing and Convenience Beers’, which has long been missing in beer books (when I edited 1001 Beers I included several beers of this ilk because I felt they needed to be there, they couldn’t ignored). 

Here’s Tim Webb second from left at the
British Guild of Beer Writers awards in 2005 with
Michael Jackson, John Keeling (far right) and
Alastair Gilmour (left)

A page is also given to styles and it’s clear that the authors are not fetishistic about this subject. This para is a good summation of their beliefs: ‘Unfortunately this (beer styles) approach has evolved into a morass of confusion and obfuscation, with it seeming at times as if every new beer is awarded its own unique style descriptor’. 

It’s a delicious book, over which I have been drooling over and delving into for several days. If I have only one criticism it’s this: modern publishing likes photos, usually at the expense of text, it’s about connecting with a modern audience we’re told. Given the two writers’ expertise and pleasing manner of expressing themselves I could have done with more of their words.

While we’re on the written word, I’ve also been sent the second issue of a magazine called Doghouse, which styles itself as the pub and café magazine. It has lovely production values, a pleasing aroma of paper, is thick and just right to read in the pub, has an avalanche of words tumbling over the edge of the precipice, photos of pubs that you might want to enter and others you might want to give a miss, has the size and feel of Wallpaper, swells with an infectious liveliness and in this issue focuses on the borders and Marches of Herefordshire, but I am told by the editor that it will move about. It’s a valuable record of pub life, whimsical and occasionally rambling, but well worth looking out for. It’s £4.99 and I’d recommend going here to find out more.

Prague: A Pisshead’s Pub Guide

Yep this gem of a pub is in the book

I’ve been over to the Czech Republic twice in the last couple of months, both times on assignment, one of which was totally beer and brewing related — the other not. Even though the second visit was more about the general ambience of Prague, I was able to visit a good quota of bars and brewpubs in the evening. And that’s where this guide might have been useful if I had stayed any longer on my second trip after having done my job — it’s Prague: A Pisshead’s Pub Guide, written by Maximiliano Bahnson (he calls it the best ever guide to Prague written by an Argentinean), who also writes the rather entertaining Pivni Filosof blog. I met him during my visit in September where I ended up at the Purkmistr beer festival trying home-brews from both Czech and expat beer guys. Maximiliano has now sent me a PDF of this self-published guide (I think he uses the same company as the indefatigable Ron Pattinson). The title says it all, this is a guide to beer crawls, an enthusiastic and rollicking ride through some of his favourite Prague hostelries, and you know there’s nothing here about drinking within limits. It’s a good home-brew beer transplanted into writing, rough around the edges, definitely not smooth, occasionally jagged, but possessed of an honesty and an interesting perspective that will keep you reading. As he says in part of the introduction:

‘I didn't write this book with the goal of pleasing beer geeks, tickers, raters or advocates, this book was written for people who enjoy drinking beer, people who sometimes will drink a beer just because they fancy drinking a beer, regardless of who brews and how, and the best place to do that, at least when it comes to Czech beers, is the pub, or hospoda as we call it here. Which brings me to this other thing.

‘This book is not a manifesto in defence of “craft beer” (whatever that might mean to you), this is a book about pubs, and a pub is actually more than the beer, it is about the place and how you feel there. I'd much rather drink Pilsner Urquell, or even Gambrinus, at a hospoda where I feel comfortable, than Kout na Šumavě at a cocktail bar. There is a limit, no matter how nice the place might be, I won't go if they don't have a beer that I can at least tolerate, and that's why you won't see any Staropramen pubs.’

So if Prague is on the agenda soon this little gem (which you can get here) should be stowed away in your duffel bag or on your iPad — and when you get there be ready to soak in its beery bath tub of Rabelaisian wit and wisdom. 

And so is this