The Czechs are one of the few peoples who have their own brewery — a national brewery. For some, it may be a relic. But for the director of Budějovický Budvar, Petr Dvořák, it is more of a tradition as well as unique. “Beer is our national drink, and beer is part of our national culture. We understand beer. We export beer. And we have our national brewery. That makes us unique.”
You have been the head of the national brewery for over four years. What does that mean to you?
Budvar is becoming more and more interesting for me. It has always been one of the producers of excellent Czech beer, among the top breweries and the elite. At the same time, what is great about it is that it has never succumbed to the tendencies that have infi ltrated the Czech brewing industry from the outside. We, as a nation, determined brewing trends and tendencies, and it was here that certain types of beer were created, which were then adopted by the whole world. For a long time, the Czech beer style was considered inspiring. I often regretted that we adopted foreign approaches and processes instead here. All of a sudden, about eighty percent of breweries are in the hands of foreign investors. Budvar is currently the largest purely Czech brewery, which is a strong commitment for us. We want to develop the Czech brewing industry further and remain an icon at home and abroad.
How did Budvar fare during the pandemic?
Despite all the complications of the coronavirus crisis, last year was a successful one for Budvar. Overall, we even brewed 51,000 more hectolitres of beer last year and achieved record brewery production. Budvar did well in business despite losing tens of millions of Czech crowns the previous year due to the crisis. Traditionally, our sales were driven by the growth of exports in key markets. The good news is the more than 2% increase in the volume of our beer sold on the domestic market, where the new Budvar 33 helped us a lot.
Have you noticed any trends in beer drinking in recent years?
We are moving from quantity to quality. We are drinking less beer (per capita consumption is decreasing) but more quality beer, more lagers, more beers from microbreweries and craft breweries, as well as less cheap beer. That is a good trend. But we are also drinking less draft beer and more packaged beer. I do not think that is such a great trend for a lot of reasons. Draft beer is the benchmark for quality and experience. Achieving a properly tapped beer with a thick head in a cold, wet glass is very difficult at home. Draft beer has a strong social dimension. Beer and the pub have always connected us across social groups. And that is what we are losing. Among other things, draught beer is also more environmentally friendly; a returnable keg needs minimal additional packaging and shipping materials.
As a national brewery, do you want to change the way Czechs perceive beer?
In the domestic market, we compete only in the premium beer segment. The way of quality, craft, service and diversity is definitely something we will support. At the same time, let us not forget that we are predominantly an export brewery. In our mission and vision as a national brewery, we want to support the way Czech beer is perceived abroad. We want Czech lager to be perceived as a strong and recognised category in important export markets. We want to contribute to raising the tide, to increasing the popularity of Czech lager, which will lift all boats.
Thank you for the interview.
Budějovický Budvar is a national brewery with more than 125 years of tradition. It still produces lagers using the classic two-phase technology — fermentation and maturation in lager tanks. The brewery prides itself on not shortening or combining these processes into a single step. Few people know that Budvar has the largest capacity of lager tanks in the Czech Republic and almost all of Europe, and is one of the few larger breweries still investing in their expansion. In this way, it wants to preserve the craft and traditional process of brewing Czech lager, which is supposed to be — without a doubt — stored (the term “lager” comes from the German for “storage”).
