After visiting Český Krumlov it was time to head to Pilsen for a tour of the Pilsner Urquell Brewery in the city of Pilsen. Before we take a look at the brewery lets take a look at the beautiful city of Pilsen.

The brewery was founded in 1839 by local Czech and German speaking citizens in the city and for the first two years was brewed in the homes of the locals. There was major inconsistencies in the beer so it was decided to build the Burgess Brewery in 1842, which is where the current brewery stands today. Currently the brewery produces almost 10 million hectoliters of beer per year. It was the first brewery in the world to produce pale lager, branded as Pilsner Urquell since 1898, which can be roughly translated from Czech to English as “the original source at Pilsen”. The beer was trademarked in 1898. The brewery was sold to the Japanese company Asahi in March 2017.

During the tour they took us to the original water tower, the bottling factory, the old brewery, the new brewery, and the original underground cellar network. We even were able to sample some of the original unfiltered and unpasteurized beer that is still brewed and stored in kegs in the underground cellar. The flavor profile is quite distinct compared to the regular filtered version.