The world seems to have gone beer-haiku crazy: just 24 hours after our month-long reader contest was announced and we’ve already spawned a lengthy and very funny beer-haiku thread at Ratebeer, got a shout-out from Nunc Scio (cool) and the always-excellent Beer Haiku Daily (those guys are pros) and been challenged to a beer-poetry-contest-contest by A Good Beer Blog.

And we already have our first winners.

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Since the EU entry of Poland and the Czech Republic in 2004, many Czech brewers have been expanding their exports to the north, and just about every year a sizeable contingent from the Polish Bractwo Piwne comes south to check out the winners at the Czechs’ SPP beer awards. However, both cases are about Poles enjoying Czech beers, and the interest does not appear to cross the border in both directions: the Czech Republic does not import many beers of any kind, and certainly very few come from the land of Lech.

However, a few Polish brews have showed up recently at Pivovarský klub, so I picked up bottles of Perła and Ciechan Miedowe Niefiltrowane for a tasting.

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For this year’s SPP awards, most of us in Prague first met for breakfast at Hotel Beránek, near metro station I.P. Pavlova. Before getting on the bus, we were able to try Hotel Beránek’s house beer, brewed and bottled for the hotel by Chodovar.

What a great idea, I thought. Why don’t more places have their own beers? Of course a bottle of beer is fairly hard to fold, but it would still make an interesting holiday card. Or a thank-you gift. (Personally, I’d love to use one as my business card, but that would present logistical problems involving pockets, weight and my own thirst that I shouldn’t go into here.) Homebrewing’s easy enough. How hard could it be to have a beer made, maybe just for a special occasion?

And then before Christmas, I was told that my local, Pivovarský klub, had a new beer coming out for its regular customers and friends of the house. Called Florenc 14:14, it’s a polotmavý (half-dark) lager brewed from three kinds of malt at 14° Balling, lagered for more than a month and finishing with 5.5% ABV, produced in a limited run of less than 70 bottles of 330 centiliters. (more…)