On 8-9 December 2011 hotel Jelinkova Villa and its Malostransky Brewery in Valasske Mezirici hosted the ELIT CZ Ltd. management retreat. Even though its main programme rested in annual accounting balance sheets, annual report and plans for 2012, there was some time spared for merging it with a different highlight of the managerial event: the brewery sightseeing and sampling of the local beers directly from the cellars. After that a typical Czech beer evening followed – with the tasting of special beers as a part of Czech beer roulette and participating in beer recognition games.  The winners of the game were rewarded with a jackpot prize: a box with rare Belgian beer specials and an original Czech-Beer-Tours glass. (Photo gallery)

The head office of the Czech tourist industry “CzechTourism” organised in 19 – 23 October 2011 a motivational fam trip for foreign media. Its objective was to get the journalists and the readers of the press acquainted with the scope of Czech traditions in the culture of beer. The participants visited several small, medium-sized and large breweries during the trip, such as the Brewery Lotr, Minibrewery “Knight Lochota”, Brewery Chodovar and Pilsen Urquell Brewery, among others. They have visited the Brewers House in Prague and the minibrewery “U Medvidku” where they got to know the ancient architecture of traditional houses of beer, their history and legends. The gala evening was held at the end in the Brewery Club. The catering was inspired by the local beer gastronomy, which turned into a 9-course menu where each of the beer tasted was matched its specific culinary complement. Though it required a trained skill to taste at large all nine beers, all participants agreed that it was a unique opportunity to see how most varied the Czech beer culture could become. Photogalery.

On 5-6 October 2011 Can21, Ltd. – the authorised system partner of Canon – held the Open Door Days. Except that there was an exhibition of new products of Canon, its business partners and potential clients had a chance of getting acquainted with the beer brewing. The event took place in the very area of the firm for both days. The demonstration concerned the beers with top cropping and warm fermenting. On the first day it was the weizen beer and on the second day the ale. It will take another month until the samples will be filled into patent bottles and tagged with special labels, printed exclusively in memory of this opportunity. During the Open Door event the visitors could sample special beers from all over the world in the beer bar. The photo gallery of this festivity can be seen HERE.

Our Dutch colleague and friend, the beer explorer Django (picasaweb.google.com/deciBeer), paid a visit to Prague in September. As he knew a great deal of Prague, we have decided to design for him a special loop for sampling. Instead of visiting breweries we have picked up the pubs with interesting beer, which are not enlisted in the standard guides for foreigners.
We commenced in Kavovarna with The Raptor Beer of the brewster Matuska and visited afterwards the Café Samsa (serving excellent beer from Policka), the Jedova Chyse (The Toxic Shanty) with Rohozec beer, Beer Archive (serving the beer from Bulovaka Brewery – finding out that the Archive will be converted to a standard pub), pub U Jelinka (Pilsner treated by an especially nasty bartender) and the Pub U Medvidku (serving their 1466 special). There was a time in the evening for dropping by to Jama Restaurant where the tasty dark Velen of Cerna Hora Brewery served as the last toast for concluding that excellent meeting. (Photogalery)

The Wine-Maker of the Year is a prestigious competition organised regularly by the Czech Archive of Wines. On this year there was held the 9th annual meeting. Even though this is a pure winy event, its international wine commission represented by John Avery, Ralf Anselmann and Natasha Hughes paid a visit to Pivovarsky Dum (The House of Beer) and, in the company of our Honza Suran, tasted the secrets of the Czech beer. Nothing new in the cellar ! A year ago similar experts of the wine competition – John Salvi, Sarah Abbott a Jonathan Pedley revealed the same preference but on top of it they even managed to visit the mini-brewery U Medvidku at that time. Our recent guests had their second preference in going out for an old Prague sightseeing, disregarding the tropical heat on the day.  (Photogallery)