Countries with long brewing traditions tend to stick with what works—until, eventually, the ground shifts.
For centuries, people in the Czech lands consumed far more 10°P than 12°P lager—the desítka often being 4 percent ABV, while dvanáctka is around 5 percent. Over the past few years, however, those longstanding preferences have flipped, and the stronger pale lagers are now outselling what once were the daily drinkers.
And at the same time, a new trend is emerging: highly hopped lagers brewed at 7°P or 8°P, generally ending up with an ABV in the neighborhood of 3 percent. More Czech brewers are introducing these lower-strength beers and finding a receptive audience.
Bucking Tradition
Lukáš Provazník is a homebrewer, consultant, and competition judge who owns the beer bars Ochutnávková Pivnice and Malt Worm in Brno, Czechia’s second-largest city. A few years back, he ordered his first keg of 8°P lager from Pivovar Kamenice, a small brewery in the country’s upland Vysočina region. At the time, he feared it might not go over well with more tradition-minded—and price-conscious—customers.
“But we sold out the keg in like five hours or something,” he says. “So, yeah—there is demand.”
Like Kamenice’s 8°P beer, many of the other light lagers are coming from smaller breweries known for making highly charismatic, full-strength beers—breweries such as Pivovar Hostomice, located in a small village southwest of Prague. Last year, that brewery released its first 7°P Fabián pale lager, joining a small flock of beers around the same strength, including the 8°P lager from Únětický Pivovar, just north of the Czech capital. Únětický’s first hit the market back in 2019.
With more than 40 IBUs but only about 3 percent ABV, Únětický’s version might be the apex of the hoppy-but-light trend. Hostomice’s 7°P Fabián clocks in with a similarly humulone-heavy ratio of 33 IBUs and just 2.9 percent ABV.
At Pivovar Bubeneč in Prague, an 8°P lager with about 32 IBUs has been a standard warm-weather offering for about five years. Brewer Prokop Jeřábek says it fits the brewery’s guiding philosophy.
“In general, our beers are focused on bitterness, or maybe I should say ‘hoppiness,’” he says. “I think that especially with this kind of slightly weaker beer, there’s no point in trying to create a strong malt body.”
A relatively thin body is a big swerve away from the typical flavor profile of Czech pints. And while some of the new light lagers are clearly being made with an eye on tradition, a few key elements of this emerging style are challenging longstanding ideas about how Czech beers are supposed to be made.
Lighter in Body
To start, there’s decoction mashing, a process so deeply ingrained in the Czech tradition that it ranks among the legal requirements for the use of the term “Czech beer” as a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) in the European Union.
At tradition-minded Hostomice, brewer Štěpán Kříž uses a standard double-decoction mash for his Fabián 7°P.
“If a brewer in America wanted to do something similar, I’d definitely recommend two decoctions,” he says. “That produces the body of the beer, even if you’re not using very much malt.”
Other brewers see things differently. At Bubeneč, Jeřábek uses an infusion mash—which is rarely employed in Czechia, at least when it comes to bottom-fermented beers.
“We use infusion to preserve the lightness of the body, so that the maltiness is not too pronounced,” he says.
Únětický’s 8°P lager undergoes a similar process. Like the brewery’s other beers, the Osmička (or “Number Eight”) certainly could be made with decoction, says brewer Jan Lumbert. But in light of the brewery’s setting on a popular bike trail, that approach seems unnecessary. After an hour or so of pedaling out from Prague on a hot, sunny day, the visitors who arrive on two wheels are mostly looking for “light” and “refreshing,” and often in several servings.
“We use single, double, and triple decoction on our other beers,” Lumbert says. “I think the 8°P is our only infusion.”
Both breweries are working with what Jeřábek humorously calls “Czech infusion,” where the multistep process hits the same temperature rests as a standard decoction schedule, but without boiling part of the mash to get there. Bubeneč applies that process to a mix of mostly pilsner malt with a portion of light Munich. Únětický goes with a similar grist, though with a touch more Munich I, as well as a small amount of melanoidin malt for a hint of Czech-style sweetness. Hostomice includes the same three malts in its double-decocted version.
Despite the differences in mashing technique and grain bills, all three beers share a similar lightness in body, and all retain a touch of residual sweetness.
Hopping for Bittersweet Balance
A lasting kiss of malt is essential to balance the bitterness that makes many of these beers stand up and shout, “Drink me!”
For Provazník, lower-strength Czech lagers really benefit from increased bittersweet character.
“If you have a weak beer with low alcohol content, you have to add something more to the flavor, in my opinion,” he says. “If you put [in] enough hops, it could be malty and rich with pronounced bitterness, and a 7°P or an 8°P may taste like a 10°P or an 11°P.”
Hostomice finishes its 7°P Fabián with the same whole-cone Saaz hops as the brewery’s classic pale and dark lagers—though Kříž uses a relatively new Czech hop, Vital, for the first two additions. Released in 2008, that Saaz-descended, myrcene-heavy Czech cultivar was originally bred for pharmaceutical and biomedical purposes, offering high alpha acids (11 to 16 percent) and rich notes of licorice and spice. (For more varieties, see Czech Hop Fields Have More to Offer than Saaz.) The result is complex, but it’s still familiar to drinkers of standard Czech lagers.
Other brewers take more of a “craft” approach, adding flavors and aromas that drinkers might recognize from IPAs. Though Provazník says he generally prefers Old World landrace hops in his lagers, he suggests that the cool, minty aroma of German-bred Polaris could work well in a low-alcohol summer version.
“I think that could really enhance the complexity of the beer,” he says. “If you want to add a twist to a Czech pale lager with some fruity hops, that’s completely okay by me.”
At Bubeneč, Jeřábek takes a single-hop approach, splitting the difference between Old World and New World flavors with three additions of Kazbek. Descended from Saaz and an unnamed Russian wild hop, Kazbek sometimes displays a Cascade-like pine character as well as notes of citrus, lemon balm, tropical fruit, and melon.
“It’s completely and richly hopped with Kazbek,” Jeřábek says. “You can’t really call Kazbek a new Noble hop, but it is a traditional Czech hop which adds those strong citrus tones.”
Using the typical Czech approach, Jeřábek adds his hops in equal thirds, with the final addition at knockout, followed by a whirlpool.
Kazbek also plays a role in the 8°P lager at Únětický. First, Lumbert bitters with higher-alpha, Saaz-descended Sládek, adding it just before the start of a traditional 90-minute boil. After an hour, Kazbek goes in as the flavor addition. At the end, Lumbert adds a relative rarity in Czechia: a big dose of Citra.
“It’s kind of like a cross between a Czech lager and a low-gravity pale ale,” he says. “The Citra adds those lemony aromas, and the Kazbek gives it a lot of spice. You can find everything in there.”
After letting unorthodox influences creep into recipe and process, it’s time for a return to tradition. At Únětický, that means an open fermentation with a standard 34/70 yeast strain. It takes up to 10 days for primary fermentation followed by cold conditioning for 15 to 20 days at temperatures just above freezing.
“Don’t rush anything,” Lumbert says. “We give that beer the same amount of time as our 10°P lager.”
With an eye on complete fermentation, Jeřábek pitches a dried Swiss lager strain—Fermentis SafLager S-189—which takes five or six days to complete primary. After pitching at 48°F (9°C), he allows the temperature to rise freely up to 54°F (12°C).
“I really try to ferment it all the way out to be quite dry, to something like 95 percent attenuation,” Jeřábek says.
Echoing the Past
The trend of highly hopped, often fruit-forward 7°P and 8°P lagers might seem completely new in the Czech lands, but it also echoes an aspect of the country’s lengthy brewing history. In earlier generations, beers that light were more common, often served as refreshments for on-the-clock factory workers.
“They were first brewed mainly for industrial enterprises, like steel mills and glass factories—places that were really hot—for the people who worked there,” Jeřábek says. “Then they completely disappeared, either just before or soon after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. I think they only started to come back in the last few years.”
In fact, one of the first to reappear was from Pivovar Harrachov, a North Bohemian brewery that opened inside a historic glass factory a little more than a decade after the revolution. Customers at the brewery restaurant can drink the same low-alcohol 8°P Huťské pivo as the glass blowers—who are visible through the restaurant’s windows, toiling in Sahara-like temperatures next to glowing open furnaces.
Other than that example, most of the new 7°P and 8°P lagers are unlikely to cause OSHA violations. In particular, brewers seem to love them. Hostomice’s Kříž has been surprised at how quickly his 7°P lager sells, both at the brewery itself and at its small taproom in Prague—though he admits that it also suits his personal preferences.
Jeřábek says that light lagers are especially practical in summer heat. “They’re just really drinkable,” he says. “You can sit there, drinking them for hours, and not get completely wrecked.”
