One Iconic Beer: Pilsner Urquell

About this episode

One beer “gave us a vocabulary that includes the word pilsner for a style of beer, the word pilsner for a type of malt, and the word pilsner for a type of glassware,” observes the Prague-based writer Evan Rail. “No other brewery has had that type of impact,” he concludes.  He isn’t exaggerating. It’s hard to argue that any other brewery or beer has had a greater impact on the world than Pilsner Urquell, the subject of this episode of One Iconic Beer. Among the first golden lagers ever made, it would soon spark a wave of imitators that would spread around the world, a legacy we can see in every pub and store that servers beer.  How did a brand-new brewery located in a small Bohemian town with no history of making lagers pull off this trick? And what was so special about the original pilsner that has allowed it to flourish for nearly two centuries?  We’ll hear from Rail, who has written more extensively about Czech beer than any English-language writer, about the breweries origins and its development over decades filled with revolution, war, and turmoil. We also hear from Kamil Ruzek, a brewer who has spent the past 24 years at the brewery. He takes us into the brewery an