Pivovar Chodovar

The first stop on a three town visit to the Czech Republic, I had high hopes for this place, even though it does bill itself as “Chodovar Beer Wellness Land”. It seemed like an absolute winner of an idea: unused buildings on a brewery with several hundred years of history being converted into a hotel, spa and restaurant complex, with part of the lagering caves being one of the restaurants. But the reality is rather different; while it does have a couple of nice bits, it’s certainly very low on the list of places I can’t wait to go back to.

In through the portal

and up the corridor

At first the Ve Skále restaurant seemed to be ticking all of the right boxes. The entrance looks wonderful, a wall and a door into the hillside, and once inside you’re faced with a long upward sloping corridor with roof and walls hewn from the rock. The restaurant apparently seats 260 people but large sections of it had been block-booked by tour parties, so there was only a single table with some less than comfortable stools available and even that only after making it clear that I wanted only a few beers and no food.

Your prize awaits

When asked for a beer the waiter recommended the Kvasnicovy first. It certainly looked the part: a good deep straw to lightish gold colour and nicely hazy with a good head but that died off quickly and left very little lacing. There was an initially very refreshing sensation for a yeast beer, crisp, clean, almost sharp. The mouth was pretty much malt only, very little in the way of hops; or maybe it’s just that after having almost exclusively ales for years my pallet now craves a hit of hops from every pint. The finish was a nicely bitter contrast to the malty flavours and very long. You might have noticed there’s nothing above about the nose; that’s because I could hardly smell anything at all from the beer due to the overpowering aroma of fried food and cabbage. The location sounds like an absolute master plan, but with hindsight ventilation was always going to be something of an Achilles heel in an 800-year old cavern that was designed to keep fresh air out.

It could have been a wonderful pint, somewhere else

Hoping that more beer would, as it often does, provide a solution, I ordered a 13° Zámecký special lager, which gets very high marks for its style on ratebeer. However, before the friendly efficient waiter could put a frothing mug of goodness in front of me, the other major drawback of the cavern made itself painfully obvious. The echos in caves can be a bit of a laugh sometimes, but when you’ve got a screaming baby at the table next to you an echo chamber is very possibly the last place you’d want to be. I did manage to get a photo of the 13° Zámecký but I couldn’t hardly hear my own thoughts over the din, let alone write them up, so no review. And to be fair to the kid, if I were to be forced to wear a purple onesy and offered only a bottle of milk to sup on while all around me were necking excellent lager, I’d also be quite vocal about my disapproval. Just as my ears were starting to bleed a little less a fourth coach party turned up, so I knocked back the remains of a second Kvasnicovy and made rapid use of the tunnel to the door.

The other on-site restaurant, “Beerrarium Stara Sladovna”, housed in the old malt house certainly looked, and smelled, and sounded like a much better bet. Sadly it wasn’t. The first sign was that although the website spoke glowingly of a “beer menu” “which consists of at least ten sorts of beers of interesting taste”, the waiter offered a choice of two: the Zámecký and the Kvasnicovy.  

The lake next to the hotel: I recommend jumping in it instead of staying at the hotel, or eating at the restaurants

Fried stuff, schnapps included (to kill the flavour presumably)

The Zámecký there was like a different beer. OK, without the fried lets-not-go-there, you could pick up a slight whiff of rather earthy, slightly citrus hops, with some vaguely toffeed malt, but the everything else was vastly inferior. The mouth was much thinner and more watery; the flavour had become sharper and appley; and the finish had more than a hint of butter to it, quite a lot more than hint actually. And when the glass was given a swill round to bring out the aroma, there was very noticeable butter there too. I left most of it, along with the plate of fried pig fat and onion, and ordered a Kvasnicovy instead. Then I got married, raised a family, my children had children, I went to their university graduations, and just as I was teaching the first of my great-grandchildren how to ice-skate round the gates of hell, the waiter still hadn’t managed to bring me a beer. To be fair to him, there were 20 other people and only four other waiters, plus two barmen, on that floor, so he may have been a bit overwhelmed. Either way I ordered another and was fairly impressed with the beer that eventually arrived. Although the bill was even less impressive: although he’d forgotten to bring me one of the pints of Kvasnicovy, the waiter had remembered to add both to the bill. I didn’t bother arguing.

Decent but not worth the wait

For one thing the cost was about what I would have tipped but then didn’t. For another the first floor of the venue by that time had a wedding party which was in full swing. But instead of shelling out for at least a semi-professional wedding band, they seemed to have let the groom’s mother loose on a karaoke machine. Despite the location, Bohemian Rhaspody this was not. If you’ve ever wondered what the Czech versions of Abba’s greatest hits sound like, that was your night.

Personally I went back to my room, removed the contents of the mini-bar (strangely the beers there were priced at 50% of the cost in the bars) and found a deckchair in the gardens from which to enjoy watching the meteor storm and endure the nose-bleed German techno that the party next door were playing at a volume which rivalled the baby, and would continue playing until quarter past five the next morning. 

By far the best way to see Beerrarium Stara Sladovna

The next morning I had a breakfast every bit as good as my night’s sleep and went to settle up the bill. Although the mini-bar price list had said 20kr for each beer, the bill was four bottles at a total cost of 320kr. That sadly sums up the Chodovar experience, decent beer and a good idea but a completely missed opportunity and a rather unpleasant experience. I’ll happily drink Chodovar beer again, in fact had one later that same day while waiting for a train to Mariánské Lázně, it was half the price of the ones at the brewery bars and better than some of those too. So if you fancy a Chodovar, try it somewhere other than here.

Seeing this beauty pull into the station was the high spot of the whole experience