St Wenceslas Microbrewery

The best beer in Olomouc is to be had at the Svatováclavský Pivovar on Riegrova ulice, which runs between Náměstí hrdínů (Heroes’ square) and main square.

Five types of beer

The recently opened brewery makes five different kinds of beer on the premises. The standard is the 10-degree ‘Vašek’ and it’s the closest thing they have to an ordinary beer. A half-litre will set you back just 19Kč. The 12-degree is 24Kč for 400ml, but is perhaps the best of the beers on offer; a deep, reddish brew described by the authoritative Good Beer Guide to the Czech Republic as “a relatively clear, deep gold with a creamy malt body and a lasting sour-sweet finish”. The 13-degree dark beer (25Kč), the weissbier (wheat beer-27Kč) and the cherry beer (28Kč) won’t be to everybody’s tastes, but if you’re feeling adventurous you should be able to find at least one of the three to your liking. Whichever you choose, you can be assured that it’s fresh.

Fresh, no chemicals

Microbreweries have sprung up in the last few years since the big traditional brewers have sold out to multinational companies. Unlike the corporations, microbrewers tend to stick to classic methods, using no chemicals or enzymes and serving their beer in a natural state; unfiltered, unpasteurized, and straight from the vats. No long journeys or nights spent waiting around trucking yards for these brews. Just four or five metres from the vats to the consumer!

Bigger than it looks

The brewery is very popular among people who know how a good beer should taste, but don’t be put off if it looks full from the street. The first few tables are along one side of the narrow entrance hall, but when you reach the two big copper tanks, you’ll see that the building opens out at the back and is much larger than it looks from the street. When you count the upstairs (part of which is reserved as a non-smoking section) there’s probably enough space for about 200 patrons to sit down.

In the summer there’s also a small outdoor area set up on the street. Like the main part of the brewery, there’s table service at this outdoor area - just choose an empty table (or ask if you can join a half empty one) and the waiter will ask for your order the next time he or she passes.

Beer culture

As one of the world’s great beer producing (and consuming) nations, some of the most notable works of Czech literature and film have a close relationship to beer and brewery life. The Good Soldier Švejk was known for a fondness for the amber liquid and innumerable pubs are named after him or some of his fellow characters. The chapters of Jaroslav Hašek’s Good Soldier Švejk were famously written in the pubs of Žižkov, and several of Bohumil Hrabal’s hilarious tales also unfolded in the setting of a brewery-manager’s residence.

One of these, Cutting It Short, was made into a film by Jiří Menzel and scenes from this film are reproduced by the life-size full-colour murals that decorate much of the microbrewery’s interior. The rest of the interior decoration is taken care of by a predictable but fascinating collection of old enamel beer signs, lashings of fresh hops on the vine and coppery distortions gleaming from the sides of the brewing tanks.

Pleasant as it is, you don’t really go to the microbrewery for the decor. Now which of those five beers are we going to start with…?

Svatováclavský Pivovar
Riegrova 22
77900 Olomouc
Tel. 585203641