Previously: 40 Years in Beer, Part Twelve: Those first ever draft Pilsner Urquells in Prague, 1987.
When Barrie and I arrived in Czechoslovakia, it became the sixth East Bloc country I’d visited in 1987. Recall that we first met in Moscow for a guided tour that took us to Poland, and before that, I’d allotted travel time in May and June to Hungary, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.
From the perspective of beer and brewing, lagers of Germanic descent comprised the standard options available throughout these areas, and these beers were overwhelmingly golden.
Communism was the prevailing political system, and it was entirely red.
And, a pervasive green was the color of my face when I experienced my very first Balkan squat toilet.
But I digress.
As a primitive precursor of future internet beer lists, I actually enumerated in writing the different beers I drank in 1987. The stated goal at the outset was to drink at least one different brand of beer each day, and I achieved this: 120-odd days, and 130-plus brands.
There’s a copy of the list somewhere downstairs in a banker’s box, although it seems senseless to dig for it, as there’d be only a handful of “dark” lagers and probably fewer ales.
Not unexpectedly, the...
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