A Birthday Polotmavé
This has quite unexpectedly turned out to be my year of the Czech amber (or half-dark) lager. In January, I spent several days in Prague indulging in every dark and amber lager I could find, and in the spring I wrote about this obscure style in Craft Beer and Brewing. So of course it seemed like kismet when Josh pFriem suggested we collaborate on one to celebrate the brewery’s 12th anniversary this month.
Among the many ways Czech beer is unusual is the country’s relationship to what we call “style.” It is at once more rigid and far looser than the American definition. Czechs have the most durable beliefs about how to make a beer rather than the style they’re making. Dark lagers are especially broad, but ambers are hardly a well-defined category. Should they be sweet, strong, dry, bitter, sessionable, or …? Could be! In January, I arrived for my guest room above the U Medvídků brewery and, because I’d already checked in online, was rewarded with a mug of amber. It was a sweet example, made sweeter still by a healthy dose of diacetyl and barely any hint of hop. A day later I was sitting at the pub of Strahov up by the castle, and enjoying their flagship polotmavé, which is dry and pretty darn bitter. Was one of these more “authentic” than the other? Nope. (One was more typical, though.)
These were the questions Josh and I tackled when we got on the phone to discuss how to make a version of the beer that would appeal to American tastes. I was able to try pFriem Polotmavé at the brewery over the weekend, where it should be available for a few weeks. A keg or two may make it to a draft handle near you, too, so keep your eyes peeled.
Many Czech style descriptors are actually adjectives—which is common across languages (think about reds and stouts). Polotmavý is a conjunct adjective meaning “half-dark.” Sometimes it’s spelled with an -é at the end and other times a -ý. That’s because as an adjective, it follows the gender of the noun it’s modifying. If you were describing an amber beer it would use the -é ending (polotmavé pivo), while amber lager would get the -ý (polotmavý ležák). So when it’s standing alone, it may have one or the other.
The color of this beer does seem to be fairly consistent, and pFriem’s was right in the sweet spot. It’s a warm amber, with hints of molten gold as the sun hits it. pFriem used an aromatic Czech floor malt (Sladovny), which smells like warm bread, but which reminds me of dough on the palate. Part of that is the yeast, also assertive, and I’ve had this impression many times drinking beer in Czechia. It’s a pretty full beer, as appropriate, but also sharply bitter. The brewery lists it at 35 IBU, but it tastes stronger than that. Sometimes I find that Czech beers have a quality of stiffness about the bitterness, one I suspect is extracted from the hop matter during the boil. Many lagers are designed to have low flavor impact, but not this one—it gives you tons of flavor on just about every dimension possible. It tasted recognizably Czech to my palate, but the choices pFriem made actually hinted at its American maker.
Building a Czech-American Amber
As when pFriem and I collaborated on that scrumptious Dreher-style Vienna lager a while back—they really ought to brew that again—we started by trying to define the style. My default here was to go back to the way Czechs think about beer. I hate to recycle a quote, but let’s go back to that CB&B article I wrote on amber lagers earlier this year. I contacted Strahov, who makes that dry, bitter version I love, and got back a bog-standard answer for how they make the beer:
The brewery’s manager, Marek Kocvera, assures me that they do not. Writing in Czech, he describes a familiar process: “The two-mash decoction adds more non-fermentable sugars that remain in the beer and add to the intensity of the malt body, which must be balanced by a fair amount of hops to achieve harmony between bitterness and sweetness. The hops are Žatecký poloraný červeňák [i.e., Saaz], added three times over a period of 90 minutes. Primary fermentation takes five to seven days, maturation around 30 days.”
Czechs often use open fermentation, typically add the hops during lauter (ie, first-wort hopping), and may lager for extra-long periods. There may be variations brewery to brewery, but there are rarely surprises.
Note the molten gold at the glass' edge.
I told Josh about all of this, and later we spoke again to hammer out the formulation. “My fear with a beer like this,” he said, “is that you make it too sweet. But, if you undershoot the malt, then it’s a metallic, bitter thing.” He envisioned a beer that had a full body and lots of malt expression, but a drier version, and a bitter one.
We spoke the last time just before the beer came out so I could hear how it turned out. Since the ingredients and process were pretty standard, we ended up talking about the hops more than anything. He used just Saaz hops, which were layered throughout the process, beginning with first-wort hopping. “We hit it with a pretty big charge at whirlpool, as is the pFriem way,” he said, laughing. (Americans, too have become process brewers, and whirlpool hopping is as irresistible to an American as first-wort hopping is to a Czech.)
I hadn’t tasted the beer yet, but Josh hinted at that “stiff” hopping I referenced above. “One thing that I love about Saaz is it’s so low in alpha, so you get this cool hop plant-material quality that gives it another dimension—a delicate, resiny creaminess.”
It’s not the kind of beer that is going to attract a big crowd, despite what pFriem or I might want. The name is weird, and even the bartender paused briefly after I said it. But it’s not just that. Ambers are a hard sell these days in any beer—people have become color-averse. It’s fuller in body at a moment when brewers are stripping all the malt out of their beers. But it’s also got that long, resinous bitterness which is presently out of fashion.
When we spoke, Josh called it an “adult flavor” in passing. I asked him what he meant, and he contrasted it to the simple, sweet flavors common across foods and beverages. Adult flavors, he said, were those very assertive ones you find in the kinds of foods connoisseurs enjoy, but which require attunement. Few people love blue cheeses right off the bat. It was a good observation with a lot of salience at the moment. People often talk about “beer flavored beers,” but if you wanted to be a little bit more provocative, you could call them “adult beers.” As volumes drop, breweries lean into crowd-pleasers to attract sales rather than these kinds of beers. Ah well.
I found it interesting because it inverts the role polotmavé plays in Czechia. There, it seems to exist for those who want sweeter, simpler flavors. The style often has a caramel note, which adds a familiar candy flavor. Leave the diacetyl in it and you have a very sweet beer. The beer pFriem made is all adult flavors. The people who order a second pint will be those who appreciate bold complexity. It would be a funny irony if Czech amber lagers built an audience in the US, but based on examples like pFriem’s that are more robust and mature, if every bit Czech. Wayfinder has made a polotmavé in the past called Golden Tiger, and it, too, is very assertive. Two beers does not a trend make, but it is suggestive. The U.S. has plenty of sweet beer styles. It makes sense Americans would gravitate to something different.
In any case, plan a trip to Hood River if you’re in the neighborhood and try this lovely beer. Happy 12th anniversary, pFriem!