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September 7th, 2008

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Brewmaster reinvents a legacy

Born into beer, Václav Berka leads Pilsner Urquell into the modern brewing age

By Paul Voosen
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
November 7th, 2007 issue

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Berka wants Pilsner Urquell to taste identical on Times Square and Old Town Square.

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More than 3,500 barrels lined the tunnels under Prazdroj when Berka began his work.

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Václav Berka pushed for the introduction of stainless-steel tanks used for Pilsner Urquell's fermentation and maturation.

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Water into beer

There are three ingredients and one catalyst used to brew Pilsner Urquell, Berka says.
Water: "Plzeň's water is soft, low in mineral salts. In brewing books, this type of water is described as 'Pilsner water.' "
Malt: "We use a copper kettle heated by direct flame. On its walls, sugar builds from the malt, which caramelizes and causes our golden color."
Hops: "We use Saaz hops. They're fine in bitterness, not as bitter as other hops. They have a strong aroma, which you can taste."
Yeast: "Our yeast, Strain H, gives us the proper level of residual extract during fermentation. It builds the body of the beer."

PLZEŇ, WEST BOHEMIA

People often ask Václav Berka how he knows that the beer he brews, Pilsner Urquell, is the same as it was 150 years ago, when it was first created by a Bavarian named Joseph Groll.

Sitting in his office on the grounds of Plzeňský Prazdroj, Berka, the brewery’s senior trade brewmaster, eases his bulk from his chair and walks to a glass cabinet. He pulls out two thick, musty books and puts them on the table.

“My answer is simple,” he says. “We have evidence.”

Opening the first book, he points to row after row of identical numbers. “This describes analyses from 1932 to 1959, all the parameters from the brewhouse to fermentation to maturation.”

Berka turns to the other book, its text in a fine cursive scrawl and its pages yellowing. “And this dates from 1885.”

The weight of history is inescapable at Plzeňský Prazdroj, the brewery that has come to dominate how both a beer-proud city and nation regard themselves. When you’re the source for a brewing style used to produce more than two-thirds of beer consumed worldwide, tradition is paramount.

Throughout his career at Prazdroj, where he has worked all his life, Berka has struggled to balance tradition and innovation. Forever guarding against any change in the beer’s taste, he has helped adapt the brewery’s history-sodden production methods to the 21st century.

Berka, born in Plzeň in 1952, was raised to be a brewmaster. His father oversaw Pilsner Urquell’s fermentation department, and, as a young boy, Berka would visit him on the job, walking through the rows of wooden vats where the nascent beer was exposed to the brewery’s secret strain of yeast.

“It was magic to see the operations of Pilsner Urquell,” Berka says. “I had to follow in his footsteps.”

Because the fermentation process for lagers requires cool conditions, the brewery had hollowed out 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) of tunnels beneath its grounds. For decades, the work done in these honeycombs, full of the sickly sweet atmosphere of bubbling beer, changed little. It was manpower-intensive, relying on the broad backs of Plzeň’s generations.

“In the cellars we had more than 3,500 wooden barrels,” Berka says. “It was a hard job. After each maturation cycle, the men would roll the barrels — which each weighed one ton — out of the cellar, washing and pitching the barrels with resin. And then roll them back in.”

Walking through the tunnels, which are now largely vacant except for one section devoted to tourism, Berka points out the circular grooves pounded into the stone walls by rows of barrels that were stacked four high. “I know each meter of these corridors,” he says.

His visits to see his father in the tunnels gave Berka a career — he then attended a high school and university in Prague that had a program specializing in fermentation. On school vacations, he would return to Plzeň and intern at the brewery. At the age of 16, Berka brewed his first batch of Pilsner Urquell.

Out of college, Berka joined the brewery in 1980 and quickly moved up in the ranks. After two years, he became chief of Pilsner Urquell’s maturation, returning to the tunnels where his father still worked.

“I had the same office as my father,” he says. “He was in fermentation and the results of his work would be sent to me, and I’d bring the beer to its final state.”

Berka led the department for five years, subsequently working as the brewery’s chief technologist and then as its plant manager.

“By then, I was my father’s boss,” he says. “It was a funny situation. Sometimes we had tough talks about technological processes at home.”

It was a family affair: Berka’s sister is chief of a Prazdroj malting plant. But the tradition will likely end there — Berka’s adult daughter is a lawyer.

Later, Berka oversaw the plants at Pilsner Urquell and its sister brewery, Gambrinus.

During his rapid ascent, he never forgot the inefficiencies he saw in the brewery’s tunnels. After the 1989 revolution and Prazdroj’s privatization, Berka saw his chance to modernize the brewing process.

Eager to invest in itself, Prazdroj sent its beer brain trust touring across West Germany, visiting breweries that had undergone waves of modernization while Prazdroj remained in stasis. Reporting back after their trip, the team said that, while the modern brewhouses — where the malt is mashed and stewed with hops — were nice, the most important step for the company was modernizing Berka’s former departments, fermentation and maturation.

This launched a debate inside and outside the brewery, with many concerned that such a step — moving from wooden vats and barrels to stainless steel tanks — could fundamentally alter a beer that had remained unchanged since its first groundbreaking batch in October 1842. If Berka and the brewery could not keep the taste identical, there would be hell to pay.

Several breweries in the country had already made the leap to steel tanks in the early 1990s, and Prazdroj used their facilities; the relationship among breweries was friendlier then, Berka says. They made thousands of test batches.

“We had a panel of old brewmasters,” Berka says. “We regularly prepared trials and comparisons for them. … Finally, when they didn’t recognize which beer was new and which was from the wooden vats, we said, yes, we can go to market.”

This panel of retired brewmasters still meets every month to evaluate the beer, and, as a control, Prazdroj ferments a small batch of beer daily in the traditional style.

“They are quite critical guys and don’t give you any breaks,” Berka says. “They tell us quite openly what is good and what can be improved.”

There are some beer critics, like Roger Protz of Britain’s Campaign for Real Ale, who say the move to steel tanks and, eventually, an automated brewhouse, have fundamentally lessened Pilsner Urquell’s taste.

Berka says that criticism is unfounded.

“If you ask me whether the beer from now or the past is better or worse, my answer is simple: It’s better. Not better in taste, because the taste is the same. But better in safety … we really manage what happens in these tanks now.”

Tomáš Maier, an expert for the Czech Beer Consumer’s Union, says Prazdroj’s move to modern equipment has left a tangible impact on its beer. “The taste has changed — but it’s definitely not worse,” he says.

For Maier, there is still no better lager than unpasteurized Pilsner Urquell served fresh from the tank.

Taste sensation

Prazdroj’s modernization, which, contrary to popular belief, began well before the company was sold to multinational beer giant SAB (now SABMiller) in 1999, is complete — only three people per shift are needed to oversee fermentation now.

Berka has now turned his attention to how Pilsner Urquell is experienced beyond Plzeň.

“Our beer is in excellent condition when it passes through our gate,” he says. “But, on the way to consumers, thousands of people handle this beer: people in trucks, people in warehouses, people in restaurants, people in supermarkets.”

“We want to prolong the flavor stability,” he says, “so that on Times Square in the United States the taste of Pilsner Urquell is the same as here in Prague on Old Town Square.”

Berka and his ambassadors travel the world, training bartenders and logistics staff on how to handle the beer. The brewery is trying to set itself apart from other beers, with a leader-of-the-pack premium branding similar to Ireland’s Guinness — a beer Berka admires and enjoys.

You can see this commitment to presentation and quality throughout the company, says Maier of the Beer Consumer’s Union.

“The whole company is concerned about hygiene and quality norms,” he says. “They keep their eye on the glasses, how the beer is drunk.”

Berka, who says exports of Pilsner Urquell will continue growing — it is SABMiller’s flagship brand — has already experienced positive returns in the United States.

“Some years ago, I visited New York City and I saw that beer was served at terrible temperatures and with no foam head,” he says. “Now, the temperature is proper and bartenders serve the beer with a thick foam head.”

SABMiller’s investment has been a huge benefit to the brewery, Berka says, and his loyalty to the multinational has clearly intertwined with his ties to Prazdroj and Plzeň.

To Maier, who calls Berka extremely competent, humble and friendly, this loyalty can cause blinders at times. For example, Maier remembers discussing with Berka the different tastes of Pilsner Urquell that was brewed in Russia and Poland, used for domestic consumption, and Plzeň.

“He seemed surprised, telling me that was not possible,” Maier says. “But I have to say those beers are really different.”

Subtly biased Berka may be, but that, along with his decades devoted to beer, also make him Prazdroj’s perfect ambassador.

“If you drink Pilsner Urquell, on the first sip you’ll recognize the bitterness,” he says. “But in a short time this bitterness is balanced with sweetness. And this sweetness, with a hint of caramel, will rest in your mouth, inviting you to another sampling. And another.”

Paul Voosen can be reached at pvoosen@praguepost.com

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