From Richmond to Plzeň: Brewing at the Source

Every year, I take a trip with a small group of long-time friends. We typically pick a European destination or two and try to cram as much travel as possible into 4–5 days. This year, I had the opportunity to extend my trip and I was able to hit a bucket-list destination: Prague.

I'll be honest with you: this was absolutely a beer trip.

Sure, there were other things to see and do. But if you're a brewer and someone tells you that the city where the entire style of beer most of the world drinks was invented is a two-hour train ride away, you go. You don't overthink it. You go.

That city is Plzeň, Czech Republic. And the brewery is Pilsner Urquell.

I came home with a lot of thoughts. Some of them are already influencing what we're brewing here at Small Batch Brewing. All of them are worth sharing if you care about beer at all — or even a little.

Plzeň Is the Real Deal

I wasn't sure what to expect from Plzeň as a city. Sometimes when a place is famous for one thing, it ends up feeling like a theme park version of itself. Plzeň isn't like that.

It's a real, working city. People live there, work there, go about their lives there. The brewery isn't a museum — it's a functioning operation that's been running since 1842.

They Do Things Nobody Else Does Anymore

Here's what I want you to understand about Pilsner Urquell before I get into the details: everything that makes their beer exceptional is also the hardest, most expensive, most time-consuming way to do it. Yet they do it anyway.

That's the through-line for everything I'm about to tell you.

They make their own malt.

Most breweries, including Small Batch Brewing, source our malt from suppliers. That's pretty standard. Pilsner Urquell produces their own. They grow and process the barley themselves, which means they control the flavor at the very foundation of the beer. Before a single hop has been added, before fermentation has even started, the character of Pilsner Urquell is already being shaped.

They triple decoct their mash.

This one gets me every time I think about it as a brewer.

Decoction mashing is a technique where you pull a portion of the mash out of the vessel, boil it separately, then return it. Pilsner Urquell does this three times in a single brew. Each decoction builds color, promotes caramelization, and develops flavor complexity that you simply cannot fake with additives or shortcuts.

Almost no one does this anymore. It's labor intensive, it's time consuming, and modern brewing science has given us ways to approximate some of the results with less effort. But "approximate" isn't the same thing as the real result — and Pilsner Urquell clearly knows the difference.

They only use Saaz hops.

If you're used to American craft beer — the big, juicy, citrus-forward IPAs that have dominated the scene for the last decade — Saaz hops are going to taste like a completely different world. They're earthy, spicy, and floral in a subtle way that still makes you pay attention.

And then they wait.

About two weeks for fermentation. Four weeks of lagering. Six weeks from start to finish before the beer is ready.

Lagering is where lagers get their defining character. That long, cold rest smooths everything out. Any rough edges disappear. The beer becomes clean and bright and almost deceptively simple-tasting, because all the work has been done quietly, in the cold, over time.

In an industry that's always looking for ways to speed things up, six weeks is a statement.

The Pour You Can Only Get in the Cellar

Here's the part I think about the most.

On the brewery tour, you get to sample Pilsner Urquell straight from the tank. It's unfiltered, unpasteurized, exactly as it exists before it gets packaged and shipped to the rest of the world.

It's a different beer experience.

Not unrecognizably different. But without filtration, it's hazier, fuller, more alive in the glass. It tastes like something that was made recently and cared for carefully, because it was.

And here's what makes it even better: you don't have to be on the brewery tour to find it. Many bars in both Plzeň and Prague serve Pilsner Urquell unfiltered. Locals ask for it. Once you've had it that way, the filtered version — still a great beer, don't get me wrong — tastes like a postcard of the place instead of the place itself.

It reinforced something I already believed but felt even more strongly after this trip: freshness and proximity matter. The beer that travels the world is good. The beer in the cellar is something else.

The Beer Nobody Talks About Enough: Czech Dark Lager

Pilsner Urquell is the headliner, and they deserve it. But one of the best things I drank on this trip wasn't made by them at all.

Czech dark lager doesn't get nearly the attention it should, especially in the American craft beer world, where dark beers almost always mean heavy. Stouts. Porters. Big, rich, fill-you-up beers.

Czech dark lager is not that.

It's a dark version of the same crushable, low-ABV tradition that gave us the pilsner. Pilsner Urquell clocks in at 4.4%. Czech dark lager isn't much higher than that. It's complex and layered, with a roasted character that's more of a whisper than a shout — and it goes down exactly like you'd want a lager to go down: easy, clean, refreshing.

Honestly? Standing there drinking one, my first thought was: I need to brew this. I found myself ordering it more than I expected to. If you've never had a Czech dark lager, find one. It might change how you think about dark beer entirely.

What I Brought Home

The souvenirs are fine and dandy. The real thing I brought home is perspective.

Watching an operation like Pilsner Urquell which has been refining the same beer for over 180 years and still chooses the hard way, every single time has a way of clarifying your own priorities as a brewer.

We're not on the same scale by any means. But the intention is the same: make something worth drinking, don't cut corners on the things that matter, and trust that people can taste the difference when you care about what you're doing.

As for what comes next: if all goes well, I've brewed a pilot batch of Czech lager a few weeks ago and it’s already bringing me back to the Czech Republic. Czech dark won't be far behind. I'll share some pictures along the way. If a Czech-inspired beer shows up on the Small Batch Brewing tap list in the coming months, now you know where the idea came from.

Come Drink With Us

If any of this resonated, whether you're a beer nerd who wants to talk shop or someone looking for a craft beverage experience for your next event in Richmond, we’d love to hear from you.

At Small Batch Brewing, everything we pour is made with this kind of intention behind it. We just happen to bring it directly to you.