It will suffice to say that there is no better way to spend an evening in Prague than to be guided by a native through the city’s warren of ancient alleyways and archaic streets, past numerous watering holes, places where the malodorous Czech beer cheese can, at least in high summer, be smelled a block away: small, wood-paneled, smoke-stained places serving draft beers like Staropramen, Velkopopovický Kozel and Krušovice (little-known in America, but an excellent pilsner from the hop-growing area north of Prague).
It’s axiomatic: the Czechs know their beer. They also know their beer cheese. Traditionally those afflicted with hunger and thirst just sniffed their way from pub to pub, because the best beer cheese in Prague or České Budějovice advertised itself on the prevailing breeze.
The term ‘Beer Cheese’ is literally translated from the original German word for the Weisslacker cheese, ‘bierkäse’. Weisslacker is a stinky mild cheese which got its name from Germans who would dip a hunk of it into a glass of cold beer. In Bohemia, Professor Laxa, an eminent cheese expert, first mentions a beer cheese recipe similar to today’s pivní sýr in his 1924 cheese book.
Prague Morning elaborates…