Today was the day we decided to take a tour. There were several to choose from but we wanted to get out of town and do something inside because of the weather (it was snowing again, of course). This helped narrow our options. We settled on a combined all-day glass factory and brewery tour (which included lunch). The only downside to this tour was that we had to get up at 7:30am.
Perhaps because of the weather, and the low tourist season, there were only four of us on the tour. Karl, me and a British mother and daughter (Linda and Lizzie). It was quite nice actually. It felt like a private tour. We were able to go at our own pace for the most part.
Our first stop was the Ruckl glass factory in Nizbor, about 25 miles outside of Prague. This was the closest factory to Prague and we really wanted to see how glass/crystal was made. The Ruckl factory is very “old school.” Everything is still done by hand.
Inside the production plant it was really warm. There are a series of ovens that run 24 hours a day at temperatures above 1000 degrees C. The workers wore limited clothing despite the risk of burn. Inside the ovens was a mixture of sand and lead, which was melted to form the molten glass (we learned that the main difference between crystal and glass is that crystal has lead in it…they make mostly crystal here with 20%+ lead content). It was really cool to watch the process. Basically a guy sticks a long metal “blowing” stick into the molten material and swirls on a glob of the glass goop (the size depends on what he is making). He then rotates the stick and uses a shaping tool to form the basic shape before it is put into a mold where he blows the material to form its final shape. The shaping tool is either made of pear tree wood or steel. From there some fine tuning and chipping of excess material takes place before it is set to cool. It then moves on to quality control, design and polishing and then quality control again. Up to 15% of the products are rejected along the way due to defects, from small bubbles in the crystal to imperfections in the shape. The good news is that the crystal can simply be tossed back into the ovens and recycled. When we walked through the quality control section we were surprised whenever a piece was deemed poor quality and unceremoniously thrown into a huge bin with an enormous crash.
We couldn’t help but notice nobody wore protective clothing, masks or safety glasses. It makes you wonder about the injury rate and life expectancy of a glass worker. After our tour finished we had some time to look around the factory retail store before leaving.
From the glass factory we headed to Plzen to visit the Pilsner Urquell brewery. The beer type “pilsner” originates from this area. Plzen is a historic town that was occupied by the German Nazis leading up to and during WWII. During the build up to WWI and WWII it was an industrial area that manufactured, among other things, weapons for the German army. There were some pretty cool looking buildings in the town center, but we only saw them from the van and didn't have an opportunity to take pictures (damn tinted windows). Also near the town center were two memorial columns from the end of WWII that literally said “thank you America” for liberating the town in 1945 (one was written in English, the other in Czech). Apparently they also celebrate their liberation each May.
The brewery site is massive. It is the largest one in Europe, and is now owned by SAB Miller (some South African company and Miller Brewing of the US). It produces about 8 different brands (mostly Czech) from this location. The brewing history in Czech dates way back to the 1200s. Originally it was done by common citizens of Plzen but as brewing standards improved outside the regionin the mid 1800s, people were no longer happy with low quality of local beer. The individual brewers decided to form one larger brewery that used new and better methods for brewing better beer. The current facility was built on the original Pilsner site and many of the old pieces of equipment still existed, including a huge old copper mixing pan that was actually buried during the war to prevent it from being destroyed during the bombing or from being melted down to make bullets (it is important to have priorities).
All of the mixing and boiling of the ingredients is still done in large copper “kettles” just like the early days but the fermentation now takes place in large stainless steel tanks for both efficiency and quality control. Some interesting tid bits we learned along the way….a bottling operation can fill up to 60,000 bottles per hour…canning about 35,000 cans an hour….bottles make up only 4% of total output, cans less than 1%, the rest is all in keg form (apparently this it typical for Europe with all the pubs…not sure about the US).
Probably the coolest part of the tour (other than sampling the beer) was going down into the original cellars where the beer was once stored during the fermentation process (up to 12 weeks). The cellars comprised of nearly 5 miles of hand-dug tunnels and caverns filled with old wooden barrels. It was in the cellar where we sampled some brew. Drawn from a large wooden barrel, we were served raw beer (it hadn't been through the final filtration after the fermentation). It was a bit cloudy but tasted good. We stood around a small table chatting a little bit, sharing stories of life, travel and career with our tour mates and guide.
After the tour we went to a local restaurant in Plzen for lunch (at 3pm). There we had a good chat and got to know Linda and Lizzie a bit more, and, of course, enjoyed some more fine Pilsner beer. We were served local food of pork and dumplings that wasn't very good, but we weren't expecting it to be. Not a great day of eating, but at least we filled our bellies with beer.
Around 4:30 we headed back to Prague. It was snowing even more now and we got stuck in the “traffic hour” as we approached the city. It took less than an hour to get there…more than 2 hours to get back. Oh well.
Absolutely starving by now (since we barely ate any lunch) we were fortunate enough to have been dropped off near our favorite Mexican restaurant. We grabbed a quick meal then headed back to the apartment for some quality tv time before calling it a day.
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