South Bohemian microbreweries coped with covid, but they now deliver less to pubs

A few weeks ago, the small Chotoviny brewery in Tborsko closed down. According to the sled Peter Admek, the post-covid era in combination with the wolf to Ukraine was to blame for this. At the latest, it is one of the small breweries in the region that has disappeared. And what’s more, a number of them are available, even when due to public health, people leave the pubs and focus more on cheaper beers of big brands.

Josef Boh, the owner of the Transformer brewery in Hlavatce, Tborsk, is relatively satisfied, although he admits that the brewery had to go a little against the current situation.

We grow and think that this is proof that we can do it. It is true, however, that it is far more difficult for the people to drive for small barrels. I see it as an echo of the covid pandemic, when beer drinkers brewed their own beer at home. We are trying to get through this black economy, because it is one of the places where we can find an outlet, thank God.

Not only in Transformer, but also in other small breweries, you have to constantly fight with all the competition. Understandably, people prefer to look for cheaper beer, so we have to pay for the prices. You can only afford to go to nearby pubs. But, for example, the healers in Prazdroj helped us somewhat paradoxically, because their medicine reaches a similar relationship as our beer, God continues.

You don’t have a reason to worry even in the Vlachovo Bez Manor Brewery on Prachaticka, which has a Goat-free sign. Owner Radek Arnot even praises the pandemic in return. We have only been in operation for a month and this has completely opened up the market for us. People have been looking for various alternatives that can be offered mainly by small breweries. It may sound strange, but covid was easy for us, says Arnot.

At the same time, he stated that his brewery was targeting a different segment, not the one most affected by the effects of the pandemic. We mainly focus on tourist centers and small towns. There is no guest apartment to talk about. On the other hand, I realize that in villages where signs have been introduced, the difference is noticeable. After the waves of health care, people there don’t leave much of their pension for beer, added Arnot.

We want people to meet in restaurants

Michal Voldich, the president of the Esko-Moravian Association of Small Breweries, does not consider the current situation as an existential crisis for small breweries. But he points out that rising VAT and the general price of all beers have a negative impact on the entire brewing industry. In this regard, he sees breweries as the most threatened, focusing on immediate consumption.

Ten years ago, about half of the production went straight to restaurants and pubs, today it is barely ten percent. This means that drinking in pubs is on the rise, and the number of pubs is also decreasing. We cannot allow people to go to garages and buy barrels there. We want them to meet in restaurants and maintain social contacts, says Voldich, who is also the owner of Zvkov Brewery in the village of the same name in Psecko.

Jaroslav Zeman, the owner of the Popeln brewery in Jindichohradecky, agrees with him. According to him, the cultivation should compete with the breweries the most, because they cannot keep the price of beer at their level.

In addition to our own pub, let’s go five miles away and sales will steadily decrease. In addition, they started bringing cheaper beer from large companies to the city. We don’t have day laborers or employees, we get everything ourselves, we can do it, Zeman explains.

Sewerage lines are like railways

Microbreweries could thus send their sales of beer to bottles and cans. It’s just so expensive and not worth it. So we thought about it, only the cheapest line costs a million. In the end, such an investment wouldn’t even bother him, says Zeman.

One of the possibilities is equal cooperation with the municipalities themselves. st brewery therefore agrees with them so that they can offer their own products at local events.

It works flawlessly for us, we strengthen relations with the town hall, for which I am proud. I think that municipalities should strive for a brewery and a pub. They are probably the only places where people can meet in everything, Arnot from Vlachov Bez thinks.

And because of this, the South Bohemian Region declared the South Bohemian Pub a cultural phenomenon last year. According to Voldich, such an initiative means more than just an ordinary gesture.

We must not allow the beer culture to fall into oblivion. When I say it is exaggerated, ada dleitch vc in eskch djinch decided on beer. It makes sense to support the operation of pubs as is the case with village shops, he suggests.