Two breweries. The division, time and distance, 1895 the year Budvar was kindled, in a town where German was the spoken word, while 2016 was when Lost & Grounded took root in the fertile soil (metaphorically speaking, in a sort of English) of Bristol. Both of them I visit in the space of 10 days, drink the beers their brewers produce, spend time amidst the gleaming turrets and tanks and spires and flights of fantasy that brewing kit (whether stainless steel in its nakedness or clothed in a copper carapace) seems to inspire in me. The brewing space in Budvar has the stillness of the cloisters about it, the monks nowhere to be seen, bending the knee in their devotions in another space perhaps, while Lost & Grounded was a boisterous space of people drinking and appreciating and listening to beats from an another age (a DJ like a warrior throwing out his views on the world). In Budvar, as well as beers drunk at different ages, I tasted the water, bright and as clear as the air in a mythical mountain range straight out of Thomas Mann. It had no mineral character, or either salinity, both of which you would expect to pick up in a brewery’s water. It is neutral and plain in the taste with a purity of a child’s voice.
Meanwhile, at Lost & Grounded, I tasted collaboration. First of all, Accidental Icarus, a beer the brewery made with Verdant: oily, a fruit bowl ripeness, sub-Saharan dryness, and hints of basil amidst the centre of the palate; then there was Burning Sky’s Les Amis du Brassage, a collaboration with New Zealand’s Fork & Brewer, a three year old saison aged with a 10% blend of Girardin lambic in Chardonnay barrels. Lazy and bucolic in the glass, juicy and citrusy and tart and peppery, it called to me with the yearning of a slow-played cello glutting itself on a surfeit of minor chords. And as I meditated over a second glass, I thought of Budvar and then of Lost & Grounded: two totally different breweries, but both with a soul and a sensuality that links then more than divides them.
