Ceske Budejovice and Its Brewing

The town has held brewing rights since the Middle Ages, and beer from here has carried its name abroad for a very long time. The modern brewery draws its water from deep artesian wells beneath the town, uses Saaz hops and lets the lager mature cold for months, which is unusual at this scale and is the whole argument for the way it tastes. A visit is honestly a walk through a working plant: brewhouse, bottling lines behind glass, and then down to the cellars, where you taste the beer unfiltered from a tank before it has seen a filter or a bottle. The arcaded main square in town carries the older brewing story.

The main sights

• The brewhouse - stainless and copper kettles running a full production day.
• The lagering cellars - tanks holding beer through months of cold maturation.
• The tank sample - unfiltered lager poured underground, cloudier and softer than the bottle.
• The artesian wells - the deep water source the brewery was built around.

When to go

Year round, with tours daily and fewer English departures than Czech ones, so book ahead in summer. Late spring and early autumn are pleasant for the square and the riverbank afterwards. The town is quiet in winter and many terraces close, though the brewery runs regardless of season.

Before you go

This is an industrial brewery and the tour looks like one: steel, conveyor belts, hearing protection and a lot of walking on concrete, with the cellar tasting as the payoff. English slots fill days ahead. The town itself is handsome but small, and two hours each way from Prague makes a long day for what amounts to a brewery and a square.

Nearby

Hluboka Castle is a short ride north; Cesky Krumlov is under an hour to the southwest.