Back to Pegas

The best brewpub in Brno is Pegas. That is what the guide books I have been reading say, and I can not tell anything else. Pegas is the only brewpub I have visited in the Moravian city.

Pegas is both a hotel, a brewery and a beer hall. As a beer hall it is perfect with a great interior. As a brewery I am really impressed. The beers brewed at Pegas have a great reputation, and the ones I have tasted have been very good.

I visited Pegas two years ago and I had a wonderful time. This revisit to Pegas was just as fun. First I tried the pale lager, Světlý Ležák. It was still great. This is a cloudy beer with nearly no carbonation and a large head. In the nose yeast take the lead. In the mouth this is a wonderful beer with traces of yeast, lemon and hops before a fruity finish. This is an extraordinary beer that is to be recommended!

But there are more beers available at Pegas. On the table the beer menu said that I could also have a dark lager, a wheat beer and Pegas Gold. The latter is a stronger pale lager. I chose none of them.On a poster I found Pegas also offered another beer called Pegas Březňák. I tried that beer instead.

Pegas Březňák was another cloudy pale lager. In the glass it had nearly no carbonation and a medium sized head. The beer was fruity before a semi bitter finish. It was lovely, but I preferred the ordinary Světlý Ležák at Pegas.

If you go to Brno, Pegas is a must. This is a wonderful brewpub with excellent beers and a nice atmosphere. It is to be recommended!

Two pubs in Brno

It is evening, and it is time to take a walk through the city centre of Brno checking out some of the pubs there. Brno has loads of pubs, so it is difficult to choose where to go. Czech lagers are among the better ones in the world, and it is tempting to sit down where they sell Pilsner Urquell or Budweiser Budvar. But no. I want to have something else.

In the Beethovenova street I see a sign promoting the club and restaurant Freeland. It says that Freeland sells beer from the Dalešice brewery. I tried a kvasnicove from Dalešice two years ago and liked it a lot, so I decide to stop there.

Freeland is supposed to be a trendy place, and inside there is a group of teenagers dancing and having fun. I trek towards the bar to see which beers are available.

There are four taps at Freeland. In addition to a Dalešice pale lager, you can buy draught beers from the Starobrno and Svijany breweries. There is also draugted Kofola, a Czech cola. I choose the Dalešice beer.

Dalešice's 11° pale lager is served with a large head and hardly any carbonation. There are nearly no aromas from the beer, but in the mouth I feel strawberries and some malt. The beer feels a little bit watery as well. I like the beer, but the Dalešice kvasnicove was a better beer.

From Freeland I once again enter the streets of Brno. In Vachova street I find another interesting place. Strakonický Dudák offers beers from the Strakonice brewery. That is interesting, so I walk inside.

At the bar there are several taps, and in addition to the Strakonice beers Strakonický Dudák also sells beers from Chotěboř and Měšťanský pivovar v Poličce. I choose the Polička beer and enjoy the 12° pale lager Záviš. I have tried it from bottle earlier, and it is an enjoyable beer.

After my half litre of Záviš I leave Strakonický Dudák thinking that it is a great place. There are better pubs in Brno, but a visitor could do worse than visiting Strakonický Dudák.

More Černá Hora beers

Being in Brno it is easy to take a pub crawl drinking quality beers from Czech breweries. There are many exciting breweries in the Czech Republic, and some of them are available in bars and pubs in Brno.

It is no secret that I am fond of the beers from the Černá Hora brewery. As I was walking past the tiny Pasáž Typos mall near Náměstí Svobody on an evening walk, I for some reason decided to enter. Inside I found a little pub advertising Černá Hora beers. I had to sit down there.

The little pub had no name, but the waitress called it Pivnice when I wanted to try the free wi-fi offered there. That was great. I could update myself on news and e-mails and drink a wonderful beer.

I went for a Moravské Sklepní. This excellent pale lager was served with a large head and nearly no carbonation. In the nose I felt a tiny hint of malts, but otherwise nothing. As usual that changed when I tasted the beer. Moravské Sklepní is delicious with tastes of malts, yeast and a tiny touch of lemon before a partly hoppy finish. A great beer!

I also had a glass of Kvasar. This is Černá Hora's honey beer, and it is very good. Moravské Sklepní is the better beer, but that did not matter. Both beers are fabulous. I would like to sit here for the rest of the evening, but there was no time. Other Brno pubs needed to be visited.

And on to Brno

There are several places for a visitor to Vienna to take a day trip. Sopron in Hungary is less than 90 minutes away by train. The same goes for Bratislava in Slovakia and Brno in the Czech Republic. I had been on a trip to Brno before, and I knew what to expect. I therefore chose to revisit the Moravian city.

I like to travel by train, and taking the train to Brno from Vienna was no problem at all. There are several trains a day, and the one I took was an express train to Prague that had Brno as one of its stops.

There are several train stations in Vienna. My Prague bound train went from the Meidling station. On the way through the city, the train passed the site of the old Südbahnhof. The Austrians are building a new main railway station for Vienna there, and right now it is nothing but a large construction site.

The hilly landscape between Vienna and the Czech border is beautiful. You see several small villages, and there is also some farm land.

Across the border the train stopped at Břeclav. I decided to walk into the station building to see if there was any beer available. One of the newsagents' was open, but for some reason it did not sell beer. The other was closed, but of course I could see through the window that various beer cans were available. I went back to the train without beer.

After a short while, the train arrived at Brno. Brno's railway station is a beautiful building. The same can be said about the city itself. It has a compact city centre, and it is easy to walk from the train station to many sights.

One of the most known buildings in Brno is the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul. The church can be found on the Czech 10 korona coins, and it can be seen from more or less everywhere in the city centre.


Náměstí Svobody is the main square of Brno. It is a short walk from the railway station, but lazy beer tourists can of course take the tram. The trams are the only traffic in the square, as it otherwise is a pedestrian area. That is great, as the square is a nice place without cars and buses.

One of the newest sights on Náměstí Svobody is Brnensky Orloj. This is a clock, believe it or not. From what I heard during my stay in Brno, the work is called the Brno dildo by locals.

When I got to Náměstí Svobody I was thirsty. I knew where to go. Černohorský sklep is based on the square, and it is possible to drink the very good beers from the Černá Hora brewery. It was sunny and warm weather, so a beer in the sun was a must.

I sat down and ordered a Moravské Sklepní pale lager. This is an unfiltered lager beer that I have enjoyed several times earlier. It went down quickly, and I enjoyed every drop of it. Then I had a glass of Kvasar. Kvasar is Černá Hora's honey beer. This is another lovely beer, but in the end it became sweeter than I preferred. I should have chosen another glass of Moravské Sklepní.

I then chose to go inside. The whole line-up of Černá Hora beers were available, and I found out that I would try the dark lager, Granát.

Granát was a nearly black beer with a large, solid head and a minimum of carbonation. There was a touch of coffee in the nose, while the taste was dominated by cold coffee and a touch of sweetness before a semi bitter finish. Once again I had found a lovely beer from Černá Hora, and I knew that there would be more possibilities to try more from the Moravian brewery during the next 24 hours.

New Czech pub guides

Last week two new pub guides to the Czech Republic were released. Both are e-books, and one is a guide to pubs and bars in Prague, while the other presents watering holes for beer drinkers in Brno.

Alistair Reece used to live in Prague. These days the man behind the beer blog Fuggled has moved to the United States. In his Pocket Pub Guide to Prague, Velky Al presents his 40 best places to get a beer in the Czech capital. The e-book is available through Lulu.com, and more information can be found on the guide's own web page.
Brno Now is a web page in English commited to the largest city in Moravia. Now the Brno Now people have published what they call a guide to beer, pubs and alehouses in Brno. You can find more information about the guide here.

Beers and flying horses

If you like beer, it is more or less impossible to be visiting Brno and not take a look inside Pegas. Pegas is both a hotel and a restaurant, but there is also a micro brewery on the premises.

I entered Pegas in the late afternoon, and the place was already packed. There was an available chair at a table, and I asked the couple sitting there if I could sit down.

Well placed in Pegas, I just enjoyed the atmosphere with people enjoying themselves and having fun. I decided to join in on the fun and ordered a pint of Pegas' own svetly lezak, pale lager. Also available was a weizen beer, a dark lager and a strong pale lager called Pegas Gold.

I had decided not to do any tasting notes at Pegas, but just sampling the beers. Well, I did not get very far. The pale lager was so good that I just continued drinking it for the next hours. It was a tasty brew with some carbonation and a large, lasting head. A great beer!

Before I had to head to the Brno railway station again, I felt that I had to try another beer. I decided to try the weizen, as I needed something different than lager. The wheat beer was cloudy and served with a slice of lemon. I felt the lemon slice was unneccessary, but I liked the citrus notes in the beer. But I never found out if the citrus was only from the slice or you could find it in the beer itself.

Pegas was a very nice restaurant, and I enjoyed every moment there. A return to Brno is not in my immediate plans, but if I do I will visit Pegas once again.

And on to Brno

Until October all I had seen of the Czech Republic was Prague and Prague airport. That changed in October, as I took a trip to Brno. Brno is the second largest city in the Czech Republic. It is placed in South Moravia, 250 kilometres away from Prague and has around 380,000 inhabitants.To get to Brno, I chose to take the train. I am very fond of train rides, and I have posted about my train ride through Norway earlier this year. There are several possibilities on how to get to Brno by train from Prague, but I decided to take the train from the main railway station, Hlavni nadrazi.

As I entered the railway station at half past eleven, I went to the ticket office and bought myself a return ticket to Brno. At below 600 CZK, I felt that was a good price. The next train was to leave within the next half hour, so I went to the platform and located my train.

The train started rolling, and I was alone in my cabin for most of the 3 and a half hour ride. The first major city the train stopped at, was Pardubice. I immediately started thinking of the local brewery's famous Pardubicky porter, which I unfortunately have not tasted so far. It is supposed to be a very good beer in the Baltic porter style.

As the train travelled through Bohemia and Moravia towards Brno, I spent a lot of time looking at the scenary. I felt it was interesting with woods, plains, hamlets, villages and new railway stations. Actually, it is one of the longer train rides I have had, where I did not get bored by the landscape.

It was a warm day, and the water bottle I had bought in Prague was empty very early. As the train rolled into Letovice, I was very thirsty. The local restaurant at the station gave me more thirst, as it had a Cerna Hora sign. At that moment I was tempted to leave the train for a pint of excellent Moravian lager beer.

Twenty minutes late, the train arrived in Brno. I left the car and went through the railway station.

Outside the station I found a map, and from there I went through Masarykova street towards Namesti Svobody, Brno's main square. It was not very far to walk, and suddenly the square appeared for me.

It was large and beautiful. The trams running through the square now and then only made the square more fascinating. The same did the statue.

I was both thirsty and hungry after the train ride, so I went down a side street to find a place to have some food and drink. A Starobrno sign showed where I could find the eatery Bufet Vesmir, and inside I went to try the city's own beer.

A bufet is like a canteen, but there are no chairs. You eat and drink standing, and the prices are normally very low. I did not see a menu, and the person serving the food only spoke Czech. My Czech is limited, but I managed to buy some sausage with horseradish and mustard. And to drink: A Starobrno lezak.

I have been drinking Starobrno before, but only from bottles. It is not my favorite, and I feel it is more or less a standard pale lager. The Starobrno did its job as a thirst quencher, but I felt that I would prefer other beers than this if there is a choice. After having days in Prague drinking lager beers like Kout na Sumave, Svijany, tankova Pilsner Urquell and Budvar, Starobrno was a letdown.

After the food it was time to find Namesti Svobody again. I had seen a Černa Hora place with outdoor tables, and decided to sit down there.

Černohorský sklep is first of all a cosy cellar restaurant, but in the nice weather it was much better to sit outside enjoying the sun.

The restaurant had six different Černa Hora beers from tap, and I decided to try an old favourite, Moravský Sklepní Nefiltrované.

Sklepni is an unfiltered and unpasteurized pale lager beer. It was served with a medium sized head and very little carbonation. The nose is flowery, and in the mouth there are citrus notes. There are also hops present, and in all it gives a nice, bitter finish. This is a really good lager beer, and it felt so much better than the Starobrno beer.

I had an appointment later that day, but as I had nearly an hour to spend before it, I went walking around Brno. I ended up outside the Zelená Kočka restaurant.

I saw that they offered beer from the Dalešice brewery, and that gave me a good reason to enter the restaurant.

Zelená Kočka was a really nice place to sit down. As I had only time for one beer, I asked for the Dalešice kvasnicove.

I do not know it was the best beer on offer, but what I was served was a beer I really liked. It was cloudy with a large head and some carbonation. In the nose there was malt and yeast, and the maltiness gave an extra punch in the mouth. Then there was a really nice aftertaste of strawberry. I would really like to have another half litre of the Dalešice beer, but there was no time. So instead I walked once again into the city of Brno.