Prague in June

Are there any must visit places in Prague or the surrounding areas? I’m going to try and get to Pilsen to visit Pilsner Urquell, but otherwise I’m thinking of taking a microbrewery tour that hits 3 breweries and includes drinks and food. We won’t have a car while there, so public transit and Uber are about it for us.

My favourites in Prague:

  • BeerGeek Bar
  • Hostinec U Vodoucha
  • Letná Beer Garden
  • Pivní Galerie Base Camp
  • Pivovar U Tří růží
  • U Kunštátů

It may be too late to do you any good, but the weekend of June 15 there are two beer festivals and one cider festival. https://www.praguebeergarden.com/news/post/beer-events-june-2018

I am going to all three, but if I had to choose just one, it would be Naplavka.

We did an ebike tour of Prague that stopped at
The Strahov Monastic Brewery.

Highly recommend both.

I may be able to swing Naplavka actually. We are doing a tour of Kutna Ora in the morning, but should be back by 16:00. Just need to convince the wife to do yet another beer thing while we’re there. 100 CZK is dirt cheap, but am I reading that that is for unlimited pours or just a glass and 5 drink tickets?

Naplavka requires you to buy a glass. Last year it was about a 0.3 liter mug, which makes for a pretty big pour if you want to sample a lot of beers. I think the plain mug was 100 crowns and one with a logo was 200. No drink tickets, you buy beer from each vendor for maybe $1 to $3 each, depending on the strength of the beer. Svetly Lezak, or light lager, is everywhere, but most of the 50 or so breweries do a variety of other styles as well. You won’t find any brewery you’ve ever heard of before here.

Naplavka is a regular weekend farmers market on the river and it has a lot of pretty nice food vendors. Beer is always sold there, but the festival is only one weekend per year. There is supposed be a free shuttle across the river to the cider festival. I do not think there is any admission charge there, you just buy by the glass.

Finally, for the sake of completeness, the festival at the castle (behind it, actually) charges 500 crowns admission (a little under $25) and it is all you can drink in small pours. Mostly micro-breweries here as well, but a few internationals and a few Czech beers with broader circulation. Food is much more of an afterthought for this one, but there were at least a couple of vendors.

Strahov is a legit tourist attraction in its own right, with spectacular views of Prague, so it might be an easier sell to the wife. Take the 22 tram PAST the castle to the Pohořelec tram stop. How long are you in Prague?

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We’re in Prague from noon on Sunday the 10th through Saturday the 16th, but we’ve got excursions or tours planned most of the days, though they tend be half day things for the most part. We’re flying out around 1PM on Saturday, so we probably won’t have time to do much aside from grab breakfast somewhere before heading to the airport.

BeerGeek Bar is excellent and a must-visit in any case. Their store is quite good, but I’ve heard from people whom I’ve told to visit it you have to watch out for expiry dates (quite common really)
Zlý Časy didn’t thrill me as much as I expected, but I liked their Pivkupectví store.

Pivotéka ŽižkOff was a pretty cool little find too. Slovanske Lipy and related bars are cool, but I’d probably try to order at the bar. Quite sure we were brought wrong beers because of language barrier of sorts and they being unable to explain things to us at U Šumavy (which actually had a more interesting selection than Slovanske Lipy.

As for brewpubs… Loď Pivovar (on a boat!) is a must-visit. The concept is damn cool, so are the surroundings and the beer is very much good. Vinohradský Pivovar is quite cool too. U Tří Růží didn’t disappoint this time either - it was a breath of frash air professionalism-wise after several bad experiences with staff in the old town area…

The Strahov Monastery Brewery was my favorite place in town until my last visit. Abysmal, rude as fuck staff in the part across the yard from the brewery. Cynical tourist-trap style. First a waitress comes to our table and yells at us, slamming a “reserved” sign on it. As if we should have known. Then we go up… There, some teenage or barely-not teenage guy basically first seemingly decides he won’t wait tables but stand behind the bar. Okay, no problem. I go and wait patiently to order. Then at first he confirms a part of my order, and then says they don’t have something else. Then the degenerate retard cut me off mid-order and mid-sentence to take an order from some random half-drunk GROUP of people. And then proceeds to tell me, after I repeat my order that in fact they don’t have anything I tried to order (despite confirming half of my order before (!!!). We wasted fucking 30 minutes for nothing, being nothing but polite. I think it was supposed to be my rating No. 5000 I think. Even if it was 6000, no matter, went there as both experiences before were excellent, likely won’t return and will never recommend it to anyone again.

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