In an age of countless one-offs and seasonal beers, the team at London’s Bohem Brewery have nailed their colours to the mast of perfecting a core range in the challenging lager market. And by offering an authentic taste of the Czech Republic, they’re winning over drinkers left, right and centre.
A lot can happen in seven months.
On a blistering afternoon at the end of June last year, the team at Bohem Brewery were in the company of 40 or so other outfits pouring their beer at the London Brewers’ Alliance festival. An event held in the venerable surroundings of the Fuller’s Griffin Brewery in Chiswick, West London.
The festival, spearheaded by Fuller’s ambassador and former head brewer John Keeling, its then head brewer Georgina Young, and members of the London Brewers Alliance, was a resounding success.
The sun was shining, excellent beer was pouring, and everyone was having a jolly good time.
But things change
The impending completion of Fuller’s sale to Japanese brewing giant Asahi surely puts this year’s event in doubt.
The aforementioned Young, in the role of head brewer at Fuller’s since 2017, has departed to pastures both new and old. Returning to the area she grew up to take up the position of head brewer at Bath Ales, a business acquired by St Austell back in 2016.
Heading up Bath Ales’ Hare Brewery, she reports to Roger Ryman, the group’s brewing director and a figure understandably delighted to be working with a brewer he respects on both a human and professional level.
Weeks before said appointment was announced however, Ryman was busy swapping the South West coast for a sojourn to England’s capital for a brewday with the team at Bohem.
There’s perhaps some circle of life irony to unravel there, or maybe not. But what is certain is the lager brewed on that day is likely to be very good, very good indeed.
Ryman teamed up with Petr Skocek, Bohem’s co-founder and head brewer as well as Bohem brewer Matej Krizek (below) to produce Otakar Brut Lager.
St Austell’s brewing director transported the yeast used to brew the Cornwall brewery’s Korev lager to London. The recipe, originally developed for a one-off beer called Korev Brut, was given a new twist by being brewed by Ryman and Skocek on Bohem’s decoction brewing kit.
The result is a 6.4% ABV beer named for the several King Otakars who ruled Bohemia, which today sits within the Czech Republic.
Lagered at a low temperature for six weeks, Otakar Brut Lager was brewed with Pilsner, Cara Gold, Acid Malt and maize, along with Magnum, Hersbrucker and Saaz hops, as well as Nelson Sauvin in the dry hop.
Described as having a fresh, vibrant aroma, and initial light citrus tones of lemon and grapefruit, Otakar has low hop bitterness, which combined with the soft carbonation delivers an easy drinking beer that belies its strength. It was also the first time Ryman had made a decoction mash.
Such collaborations, and there’s more to come, are effective indicators of how far the brewery, completed by co-founder Zdenek Kudr and chief tapster Marek Průša, have come since the early brews of Victoria, their 4.2% Session Pils, back in May 2015.
Kudr (above) previously drove trucks across Europe before moving to London in 2010, where he started his own lettings business for Czechs and Slovaks arriving in the capital.
Skocek (below), originally from Pilsen, had made London his home five years prior to Kudr’s arrival. While, he admits, the USA was his planned destination, the opportunity of work proved too much and here we are, 14 years on.
But there was one part of London life Skocek couldn’t get on board with and that was the lofty price of a pint in the capital. So naturally, he turned to home brewing.
“I knew Petr from games of football we played in Finsbury Park. He’d often bring bottles of beer for people to try, which was very welcome,” explains Kudr.
Kudr would soon find himself in need of beer, a lot of it. He’d be hosting a party and as was customary at such gatherings, he needed a keg to keep the thirsty guests watered. Conveniently for Kudr, Skocek had recently brewed a Belgian-style beer with orange peel for the Christmas that has just passed. However the 8% number ended up not being ready in time for the celebrations.
“I bought it off him for £120 and the whole keg, all 50 litres of it, went in about three hours that night. The Czechs, the Slovaks drank every last drop!” he laughs.
Returning the empty keg, Kudr would regale the beer’s virtues to Skocek, encouraging him to take his beer-making prowess to the next level. But for the brewer, he wasn’t sure where to turn in order to move from a labour of love that enveloped every Saturday, to something more viable.
“The paperwork, premises, resources, finances, the lot,” recalls Kudr. “It was clear he had given it some thought before, but these were all hurdles in the way. “However, we worked things out. I felt I could help, and we shook hands there and then. Bohem Brewery would be established in 2015.”
A modest premises in North London, towards the outer reaches of the capital’s Piccadilly Line, was secured and with it, an equally unassuming one barrel kit and 200 litre kettle.
Beer produced on that kit include Victoria, a 4.2% Session Pils with a sweet butterscotch and floral aroma. The flavour has a little grapefruit and a touch of sweetness, as well as notes of fresh baked bread, and a building bitterness on the dry, subtly spicy finish.
Amos, its 4.9% Czech Pilsner has subtle lemon and honey in the flavour, balanced by a dry bitterness and a spicy burst that lingers in the aftertaste, while Amber Lager Sparta has bitterness and hop spice complementing the honey and Dundee orange marmalade notes. The aftertaste has orange peel, toffee and a building dry spiciness.
Though amber beers have fallen out of fashion in the UK market, Sparta had the opposite effect for Bohem. The beer resonated so much with one local drinker, known for his love of variety, that he stuck on the lager for a whole evening during a session at nearby pub, The Prince N22. Not only that, he and another friend sought out the brewery to offer investment.
Such an approach was well-timed, enabling the team to move to a significantly larger facility in Tottenham in early 2018. Beers made here, much like those produced at the existing site, help serve a range of customers including the company’s taproom near Bounds Green, North London.
Its Tottenham brewery comprises 215 square metres, with a brewing capacity of 6000hl a year and, currently, a lagering capacity of 2400hl a year. Bohem produces its beers through decoction brewing, the traditional European brewing style which sees part of the mash boiled, and returned to the main mash to raise the temperature. The process adds the depth, complexity and flavour which characterises authentic Czech lagers.
2018’s expansion at Bohem not only enabled the brewery to grow but also its team, too. Matěj Křížek, awash with experience from Břevnov Monastery Brewery, one of the oldest micro‘s in the Czech Republic, joined Bohem that March.
At High School, he gained his Maturita certificate, similar to A-Levels, in Food Technology, specializing in brewing beer. Upon joining Břevnov, Matěj brewed many different styles but found he was particularly excited by lagers, and so wanted to specialize in that area.
“I was looking for something that I could do for the rest of my life. I went to a small event where lots of different schools would attend and I saw some demonstration of fermentation,” he recalls. “And there and then my father told me that’s what I was going to do. Why? Because people are going to drink beer for the rest of time. They’re never going to stop, so I’d always have a job!”
Moving to London to be with his girlfriend studying in the captial, Křížek emailed many of London’s breweries but with no luck.
“I had zero responses but thankfully got wind of two Czechs running a brewery in London. I got in touch, they replied within minutes and two weeks later I was here,” he laughs.
Křížek says the most automated kit he encountered at the Břevnov Monastery Brewery was the keg washer, so to be part of a growing, evolving outfit at Bohem offers up a whole new, exciting experience. But he’s in no rush to push things too fast, either.
“We are just doing our best and we don’t want to rush things so we opt for quality over quantity,” he says. “As a result, we’re maybe not as visible as we’d like but we have to do what’s right for us.”
Křížek adds: We want to perfect our core range of beers because that’s what our reputation relies on. They are always improving because you have to be honest, there is no such thing as a perfect beer. You can always improve somehow, no matter how minor the detail.”
Skocek, Kdur and Křížek are passionate about making the best beer they can, trying to reverse the reputation lager has long held in many circles.
“All lager, regardless of quality, is too easily associated with the cheap and fizzy liquid produced by major brewers and dismissed by CAMRA. The media still uses the term ‘lager louts’ to describe any alcohol-related disorder,” explains Kdur. “However, in the Czech Republic, lager is rightly celebrated for quality. We believe that the same quality standards should be applied in the UK, and is making its quality pledge through the Bohem Lager Manifesto.”
He says: “It is not helpful for consumers that the term ‘lager’ is applied to such a wide range of products of differing quality. In the absence of EU appellation regulation being applied to the traditional lagering method for beer, as it is to Champagne and other food and drink, we are making the quality pledge for our own products and production.”
And in accordance with their own personal manifesto, Kdur says the brewery can guarantee the following: There are no additives, including no added sugar, there is no forced carbonation, its brewing equipment is a bespoke design for brewing lager, manufactured in the Czech Republic, its lager is unfiltered and unpasteurised, only specialist malts designed for brewing lager are used, its lager is always bottom-fermented using specialist lager yeast, no high-gravity concentrate is used, beer is lagered in a precise temperature-controlled fermenter and finally, all its beers are lagered for a minimum of five weeks.
This passion also extends to the way their beer is served. Marek Průša (above), the brewery’s chief tapster, is a Certified Pilsner Urquell Tapster and has more than 20 years experience in the Czech Republic, and latterly at Galvin Hop in Spitalfields. He is responsible for the expertly-poured beers found at the brewery’s North London taproom.
For Zdur, the taproom is an essential part of the Bohem jigsaw and something he’d like to see grow, too.
“Successful breweries tend to have their own retail source, which helps make a significant contribution to cash flow. It is so important,” he explains. “I’d like us to open more bars, giving us the opportunity to showcase our beers while offering guest taps to the many other breweries across London. We promote their beers, they promote ours, and everyone wins.”
Zdur is particularly keen to push this aspect of the business in what he sees as an increasingly competitive market and one in which Bohem needs to stand its ground in.
“Too many people are competing on price, and that’s not something we wanted to be involved in. Instead we remain focused on quality and creating a premium product,” he says. “Sure, you would never call it a premium product because that term is meaningless today. If something says it’s ‘Premium’ on the package it normally means the complete opposite.”
He adds: “We are not focused on producing many one-off beers. That works for some, but not us. I’m more concerned with cementing what we do and giving people confidence in what they buy from us.
“I think that the craft beer revolution in the UK is almost dead. It’s not going to move anywhere else because realistically, everything has already been done. So now is the time for a really good quality, consistent, core range of beers.
“There are many breweries in the UK but within the next 10 years I see 30% of those going bust because they’ve not prioritised correctly. People want reliability and they want consistency, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
