A Matter of Taste

We have entered the longueurs of autumn, a moment that arrives in the pre-holiday dark of daylight losings time. There’s not a lot to talk about, and anyway, what’s the point when the sun sets at 4:52 pm? Holiday cheer will restore our vigor, but for now we mostly brace for winter. As such, there is little in the way of malty news of activity.

I am therefore going deep into the well for this post, to a realization I had two years ago when I last visited Czechia. To set the stage, I will reintroduce you to the country in the same way I was, when I arrived at my hotel, which was also the brewery U Medvídků. The brewery had emailed in advance of my arrival with an offer: sign in online, and we’ll give you a free beer when you arrive. They didn’t have to email me twice.

Medvídků is a funny little brewery in an ancient building noted for a very strong beer, but their standard is Oldgott, a 13° polotmavý ležák (amber lager). Which is what I was handed at the charming little check-in desk/foyer/bar, tired and jet-lagged after a long journey from Far Oregon. Even before my lips it the rim of the handsome mug, I got a whiff of that unmistakeable scent of Czechia, which made me grin in recognition. I had returned to the land of diacetyl.

I assume everyone reading this post knows diacetyl, but briefly: a compound produced during fermentation, it adds a fullness to the beer, along with a sweet, butterscotch flavor. It crops up a lot in the beers in Czechia, and most prominently in Pilsner Urquell, where its levels vary. On that visit, I would find it in the beer I photographed at the top of the page, at Hostomice, and of course in Urquell. I also tasted a bunch of beer that was diacetyl-free, and herein we come to the point.

The American-born writer Evan Rail lives with his family and writes in Prague, and in fact calls Hostomice his local. (He even receives mail there, and when we walked in I watched the bartender hand him a letter.) Typical for any immigrant who lives in an adopted city long enough, Evan long ago absorbed the preferences of Czech drinkers. One of these was an indifference to diacetyl. Or perhaps more accurately, an agnosticism to it.

He explained it to me as we sipped buttery pale lagers at his local. Czechs don’t take a position on diacetyl. Like any drinking public, Czechs have certain considerations about what makes a good beer. It should have some meat on its bones, some hop bite in the finish. It should be crystal clear. Above all, it should encourage another sip, another half-liter, and another after that. Diacetyl is just not one of the things it must have or must exclude. In the United States, to cite an analogue, some IPAs are hazy, some clear. We don’t take a position on which is “correct.”

Evan and I don’t get together as much as I would like, and it’s always a kick to compare notes. I pointed out that Czech beers are getting pretty popular in the US—real Czech beers, with decoction mashing and Czech malts, not just Saaz hops. But here, I mentioned, no brewer would ever allow diacetyl to kiss their světlý ležák. “That’s just wrong,” I think he said. (Evan, if you’re reading this, forgive my memory.) He follows American brewing closely enough to have heard this complaint from Americans before. In Czech brewing, diacetyl may be optional, but it’s never bad. “It’s just not how Czechs think,” he said.

The tiny Hostomice pub, one of Prague’s coziest.

He’s right, of course. But twist! This story isn’t actually about Czechs or diacetyl, it’s about Americans.

I’ve been delighted by this new American interest in Czech brewing. When I wrote the first edition of the Beer Bible, it was one of the first English-language books to describe a world of Czech brewing beyond pilsner (Evan’s own Good Beer Guide to Prague, a reference of mine, was another). The book was published a decade ago, and the number of Americans who had ever heard the term “tmavý” then were vanishingly rare. Brewers had rarely visited Czechia, so their interpretations of “Czech pilsner” usually meant a regular pilsner with Saaz hops.

Today it’s common to find breweries making Czech lagers. They use side-pull taps to pour them into beautiful Tubinger mugs. They use imported floor-malted barley from Czechia and often throw in a decoction mash. Sometimes two! They understand the degree system of gravity, and know their amber lagers from their darks. But diacetyl? Absolutely not. This isn’t because they’re not devoted to Czech beer, but because the American sensibility about diacetyl is far from agnostic. When you talk to brewers who have been to Czechia, they acknowledge that diacetyl is common, but hold a view about it that is … not complimentary.

When we were sitting in Hostomice, Evan seemed irritated at the derision Americans felt toward the kinds of beer we were drinking. And indeed, for those who instinctively recoil at diacetyl, it is a failure to truly get Czech beer. But it’s also a bog-standard common cultural misunderstanding. If you talk to brewers (and to a lesser extent drinkers) from one region, you will often find that they hold derisive views toward preferences elsewhere.

I have come to accept that less as a culture failure of awareness, however, and more the manifestation of culture itself. Americans didn’t come to their diacetyl antipathy accidentally; a number of factors led them there. Until the 1980s, American brewing was basically German brewing, which outside Franconia is less forgiving of diacetyl. Furthermore, diacetyl was a fixture in early craft brewing, and is today seen as an amateur blunder. Finally, diacetyl really doesn’t go well with hops, and brewers have developed extensive regimes to exclude it from their breweries. Czechia has an entirely different history of drinking and brewing, and so they have come to a different position regarding diacetyl.

The fact that American brewers have a position on this question at all is itself a good thing. It means they are developing their own preferences and opinions. It may not be the open-minded ecumenical view some prize, but it is inevitable once the concrete of culture begins to set. Like phenols, Brettanomyces, or catty hops, diacetyl is a taste acquired by some, but not all. And that’s just fine.