It seems odd to write about a beer that’s almost gone. 

Usually when I write about a collaboration beer, I do it a couple of weeks before it comes out because the brewing process is complete and I want to drum up some enthusiasm for it. 

It turns out that it’s a little different if you’re making a lager. People would forget that the project existed if you wrote about it while brewing it.

I came back last year from the Czech Republic and there were two things that stuck with me. The first was the early spring. Every time I get to go somewhere in March that isn’t Toronto, the world seems lush and green and verdant. In Prague, along the Vltava, there were cherry trees in bloom and the vibrancy of it stuck with me; bursts of colour along the shore below the castle on the Andelsky side. 

The second was Pivovar Nymburk. We had gotten to taste their Postřižinské Jubilejní Hrabalův ležák in the cellar. We had been to Pilsner Urquell and Ferdinand and Budvar, and it was the last stop. Everyone was a little loose and had seemingly reached the point of saturation for serious appraisal. We just liked the beer a lot. It was lagered for 45 days (not the 90 Budvar strives for) and retained a miniscule iso-amyl hit. It was quite bitter and extremely characterful. It was named after the celebrated novelist Bohumil Hrabal, so you’d expect nothing less.

On the way to the bus, we sort of decided we should have more of that, so bumming a couple hundred Koruna from Jon Moxey (cards have not caught on in Nymburk), I strolled towards the window of the low slung gatehouse that had become a retail store. To the right, a group of men from Nymburk, who had probably been engaged in construction or some other physical labour until about lunch time sat in the small beer garden below budding trees smoking their cigarettes and drinking the beer from their hometown brewery for no other reason than it was Friday afternoon and it was the first week of the sun’s warmth. They laughed and observed us with a little bemusement, but mostly they sat around a picnic table telling the same jokes they told last year and playing cards with a worn out deck.

I’m sure I’ve seen men enjoy beer more than those men enjoyed that beer, but I struggle to think of when. The thought entered my head that I wanted to make a beer that they would enjoy, because what’s the point of beer if it isn’t a Friday in Nymburk? They’re not sitting there dissecting the beer. They probably wouldn’t even mention it unless something was very badly wrong with it. 

Armed with several bottles, I returned to the bus and shared them around. Thinking about it I probably still owe Jon Moxey about twelve bucks, although he probably considered that a public good. Nice fella. 

Coming back to Ontario, the Spring Issue of The Growler had come out, and I had joked with Mike Lounds from The Second Wedge about doing a collaboration beer with them since they had rebuilt their brewery in the wake of an EF2 Tornado. I had Mike as a student for a semester at Niagara College, and I’ve always been impressed by his drive, but also his willingness not to change the recipes at The Second Wedge. He’s doing new things, but he’s not changing the things people already like. That takes a lot of maturity in a young brewer.

We went back and forth for a while. Mike wanted to make a Cold IPA and I wanted to make a Specialni Lezak. We resolved on a couple of things. We didn’t want to use corn as an adjunct, so we settled on rice. I wanted to use modern Czech hop varieties, and had my heart set on Agnus, which is used in Budvar 33. The Czech hop growers still think in terms of bitterness/aroma, but if you’ve been around NEIPA as much as I have, you think in terms of essential oils more than alpha acid.

A funny thing happened on the way to the brewery. Adrianna, who had very kindly put aside some Agnus for our 20 hL batch, got in touch one day to say that it had accidentally shipped with someone else’s order. She offered to throw in some Saaz for the trouble, and I asked if there was anything else Czech in the warehouse. This is how we ended up with Vital hops. 

Vital isn’t a brewing hop. It’s pharmaceutical grade. They were originally grown for their antioxidant properties (xanthohumol and DMX), although I didn’t know that when I leapt at the opportunity to use them. What I saw, looking at materials online, was that it contained everything including Farnesene and Linalool in pretty high proportion. Farnesene is usually Saaz exclusive (gingery, snappy, peppery). Linalool is the monoterpenoid associated with lavender, lilac, and rose. In fact, the description of it said lavender, spice, plum, licorice. 

We decided on Floor Malted Bohemian Pilsner from Weyermann (which I had seen being produced at Ferdinand in Benesov) and pre-gelatinized Jasmine Rice. We bittered with Herkules, used the Saaz for flavour and aroma additions, and used the Vital not just for whirlpool, but for dry hopping. When we threw them in the whirlpool there was suddenly an immense waft of potpourri. We aimed at 15 plato, but hit 14, probably because the floor malt is a little under-modified. Like I keep telling the local homebrewers, you gotta decoct.

The beer lagered until February 29, and went on sale at the beginning of March. Mike thinks it was 107 days between brewing and packaging, so maybe 80 days of lagering. When Mike delivered some cans, I was a little baffled by it. I’ve never encountered a beer that is so completely changeable with service format and temperature. If you started it at draught temperature and let it sit over twenty minutes, you’d swear you were drinking three different beers over that time. I’ve described it as viciously floral, and I swear at times you get orange blossom, sakura, alyssum, magnolia, lavender and maybe even a touch of hyacinth. At other times, especially mid palate: ripe cantaloupe, ginger, licorice, eucalyptus. 

It’s pretty lively, so I figure Životní, which is more or less a direct translation of Vital, is a good name for it. When I talked to Eva from the consulate, she said it sounded like a name you would give to vitamins for the elderly. You can’t hold back spring.

Budvar featured the beer on their instagram as part of the #yearofthelager campaign. Some attention had also been driven to the beer by the fact that Luc Lafontaine had let us put a keg on at Godspeed on their Lukr tap so we could see it as a side pour. It was very kind of him.

On Wednesday last week, Mike and Rob and Joanne from The Second Wedge came to Toronto and we all sat on the patio of the Only Cafe where one of the last kegs was on tap. I had walked from Davisville, stopping periodically to smell the lilacs. We sat around a table on the patio on a warm spring day and drank beer and ate some pizza and had a nice time.

You can analyze beer, dissect beer, evaluate beer, rate beer, write about beer, take pictures for instagram, worry about the state of the industry, have an existential crisis, or swear off it altogether. But really, the only thing you’re meant to do is have a nice time with people you like. 

I like to think that if we shipped some cans to Nymburk, those fellows at the gatehouse would probably drink it without complaint.