Travels With Nate

Day 3 started much the same as any other with us moaning about hangovers before making sandwiches at the apartment before heading out. We decided to head up to Letna Park because we'd not been there before and we'd heard it has great views over the city (also, beer gardens. We jumped off the tram somewhere in Holesovice near the Generali Arena where AC Sparta Prague play, and for a team that I've seen play champions league games I was surprised how small their stadium is. I guess ice hockey is more their thing since the TipSport Arena where HC Sparta Prague play is massive. We wandered through the greenest space we'd seen in Prague, the large Letna Park and found the Metronome where there was skateboarding and the universal sign for "You wanna buy drugs, fam?" and holy shit, the view was incredible. A wide unobstructed view of the city I love in all its glory. Afterwards we took a short wander and accidentally found a Staropramen beer garden serving T...

Waking up with irresponsibly sore heads, we had some breakfast at the apartment and caught the train to Pilsen, a city of a little over 150,000 about an hour and a half on the train from Prague. I'd been to Pilsen once before, back in 2015 to do the Pilsner Urquell brewery tour which I didn't fancy doing again so this was a trip to see the town and visit some pubs. First stop was actually the Pilsner Urquell  brewery where they were preparing for a performance art festival later that evening. As it was a nice, though somewhat blustery day, we sat outside drinking their ubiquitous beer which I'm sure I don't need to introduce by now. After that we took a wander over the river, taking in the sights of the beautiful city and found Na Parkanu , a pub I'd heard so much about before since they sell Unfiltered Pilsner Urquell , probably the only place to do so. I'd had it once before, directly in the cellars beneath the brewery but I was underwhelmed with this an...

Ah, the now annual trip to Prague. A wonderful occasion as it's one of my favourite cities. The old world style buildings, mixed with modern architecture. I love it. Usually we don't arrive until quite late at night but this time we opted for an early flight meaning we could get there in time to enjoy our first day. Obviously an early flight means a mandatory 6am pint of Adnams Mosaic at the airport too, which is always a delight. We landed at around 11:30am and got an Uber to the apartment we were staying in, but we were too early for Check-In so we decided to pop to our local for the week...  Smíchovská Krčma . It's a small, and cheap, pub and restaurant with a half constructed back garden in shade of the sun. The beer selection is the same that you'd find in many Prague pubs with the likes of Pilsner Urquell , Radegast, Kozel Cerny and Gambrinus of course. Obviously I opted for the crisp and refreshing Pilsner Urquell which was probably the cheapest PU of the tri...

This weekend Good Beer Hunting broke the news that an AB Inbev owned investment firm has bought a stake in popular beer ratings website, Ratebeer . This led to a #Hopinions poll by my friends at Beer O'Clock show asking whether it's a good or bad thing. Here is the poll and my response: I honestly cannot decide. I actually think it's neither because it happened ages ago and nobody noticed any difference so far. — Nathaniel Southwood (@NateDawg27) June 4, 2017 Now I thought long and hard about this after I tweeted it and realised that it's a terrible thing; not for the industry but for the people within the beer community. The Irrelevant Reason There was a lot flying around on twitter about how AB InBev will now have access to all of this big data and market insights which is a bad thing, but it's not. They already had access to it. Everyone did. Anyone can harvest data from Ratebeer to tell you what the most popular beers are in a given region. Beside...