SVIJANY BREWERY

Over the years, it has been threatened with closure several times. Today, its success comes down to the enthusiasm and hard work of people who were not afraid to take risks at the right time, craftsmanship, but also the heart that every employee puts into it.

Although production exceeds 600,000 hectolitres per year and the brewery belongs to a group of larger breweries, it is still one of the few in the hands of exclusively Czech owners.

We honour traditions in Svijany. That is why beer is still brewed here, as it was in the middle of the last century, at the time Czech beer became famous around the world. This involves a double-mash brew, with thorough brewing of the mash and long hop brewing, followed by fermentation in open vats in a fermentation cellar, and subsequent maturation at low temperature in lager tanks. We see the beer brewing process as a craft, and although we are forced to expand our operations every year due to the growing interest in Svijany beers, we only use modern technology where it does not have an impact on traditional production methods.

WITHOUT QUALITY RAW MATERIALS

NOT A DROP OF BEER!

Good beer is not only about the brewing process, but also about the ingredients. On this front, we never compromise!

• BOHEMIAN AND MORAVIAN MALTHOUSES SMALL AND INDEPENDENT

The vast majority of our production uses threshed malt made from varieties of barley approved for the production of Czech beer. These originate from small, independent Bohemian and Moravian malthouses.

• MALT FROM SELECTED VARIETIES OF MALTING BARLEY

Malt is an extremely important raw material for beer production. After all, it shapes the resulting character and taste of the beer. For classic Czech beers of the Pilsner type, we need malt produced traditionally, just like we produce our beers. Unfortunately, large malthouses cannot do this, so we buy it from several small, independent malthouses that do it excellently.

• YEAST

We use our own strain of brewer's yeast, which is stored with the Brewing and Malting Research Institute. We grow the strain in the brewery in our very own propagation station.

• HIGH QUALITY WATER FROM OUR OWN WELLS

We have a total of seven wells in the brewery from which we draw water for beer production. The boreholes are between sixty and eighty metres deep. The composition of this deep water is ideal for making beer.

• THE FINEST SAAZ HOPS – SEMI-EARLY RED

We exclusively use hops from our own farms in the renowned hop-growing area of Polepské blaty, which we tender with great care.

• OUR OWN HOP FARMS IN THE EXCEPTIONAL HOP-GROWING REGION OF POLEPSKÉ BLATY

Hops are a key raw material for us. As a result, in 2006, we bought a share in a hop cooperative near the village of Okna in the Litoměřice region. Hop farms in the Czech Republic are ageing, or have often been over-cultivated, producing less and less good quality traditional hops. We did not want to replace this indispensable raw material with hops from abroad, so we ensured a sufficient supply of it in the future.

We grow traditional Czech hop varieties on dozens of hectares in the area of Polepské blaty. We tender them with great care, producing more than enough for our own needs. The surplus we sell to other breweries in the Czech Republic and abroad. Since 2006, we have also successfully reintroduced the classic Osvald clone of the traditional Saaz hop, which was almost completely displaced by overbred "merists". We add it to all our beers during the final hopping and use it to brew our Premium 450 pale lager.