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to go home as she ushered us into an underground room to gulp down our glass of fresh pilsner before speedily ushering us back out again. But I refused to be rushed. I had come to the Czech Republic for this moment and I wasn’t going to hurry through it. WORTH THE TRIP? A few years earlier I’d taken a similar beery pilgrimage. We’d rented a car in Brussels and, with a conveniently pregnant friend at the wheel, drove to rural Wallonia in search of the Saint Sixtus Abbey. We nabbed our requisite six packs to take home, then sat down in the café to sip on the “world’s best beer” – the legendary Westvleteren 12. Over the years, I have had a few wow moments with beers; moments that made me stop in my tracks; moments that I look back on and think ‘that was a sip I will remember for all time’. This was not one of them. The 12 is a great beer, undoubtedly, but it was far from life-changing. In fact, I actually preferred the blond and happily sipped through a couple before our DD drove us back to Brussels. It was wonderful day out and I would do it exactly the same way if I had my time over. The beer didn’t quite live up, but then no beer could possibly live up to that level of hype – could it? As I sipped my unfiltered Pilsner Urquell I couldn’t help thinking that I’d had better beers – one in particular. And luckily it was available in abundance just a few metres above where we were standing. Beer lovers rave about the unfiltered version but just as I discovered I preferred Westvleteren’s blond to the revered 12, I learned that I actually preferred the familiar, filtered PU that I fell in love with while sipping it by the case back in Cape Town. And so we sat on the small terrace of the brewery’s pub and put our theory to the test – that this is a beer you can drink all day without your mind wandering to others; that if you could only drink one beer for the rest of your life, then this would be it. We tried the standard pour (Hladinka), we tried the Mlíko – basically a glass of foam with about an inch of beer at the bottom. We tried the rather bizarre Šnyt – about 50/50 beer and foam, with an inch of empty space at the top of the glass. We ordered beer after beer and we only moved on when we realised we needed a plate of goulash and dumplings to soak it all up with. In the end it didn’t matter that there were 30 other people on the tour. It didn’t matter that unfiltered Pilsner Urquell didn’t offer up an out-of-body experience. All that mattered was the beer. This beautifully balanced, endlessly drinkable beer that I flew across the world for and that was worth every single kilometre. FEATURE Didn’t offer up an out-of-body experience Mother Church selfie! Tasting from the tank at Pilsner Urquell Arriving at Plzeň station Plzeň's pretty cobbled streets 36 | Summer 2019 | ontapmag.co.za