We welcomed representatives of Serbian craft brewers in Žatec town on Monday, March 13 within the incoming mission organized by the Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic. We presented our activities and our interesting supply of Czech hop varieties. Visit to warehouses and the processing line in our mother company CHMELERSTVI, cooperative Žatec went softly. The processing is limited and almost ended up due to poor harvest in 2022.
Serbia is affected by the German and Czech beer culture from a historical view, which is why lagers are widely stand. Lagers are mostly supplied by the big breweries operating there to the market. Craft breweries try to find a way in supplying other beer styles primarily top-fermented beers like Ale, IPA, NE IPA, APA, or others like Porter and Sour beers. You can also find the Pilsner in their offering. Czech hops well known in Serbia are Saaz as the fine aroma hops and flavor variety Kazbek.
According to the official report from UKZUZ from December 1st, the total hop production in the Czech Republic reached 4452 t. In comparison to the above-average crop 2021 the production decreased by 3 853,38 t (2021 harvest was 8 305,72 t), which is a decrease of 46,39 %.
The vegetation was marked by long dry periods with very high temperatures and only short periods of rain. Higher rainfall with few storms came only in the second half of August.This was already too late for the plant and cone development and it also complicated the harvest operations.
The alpha acid content of the Saaz variety in 2022 was lower than the long-term average but other Czech hop varieties recorded values around the long-term average or in some cases above it.
The development of the weather, alpha contents, the acreage of hop gardens, chemical protection of the hops during the vegetation period can be checked out in the Final hop report - crop 2022.
Read more: Czech Republic hop certification system introduced new hop variety and hop region codes
The IHGC congress returned to Zatec and Prague after 25 years in the last week of July. Almost 200 hop growers from 11 countries took part at the congress – Germany, USA, Slovenia, Great Britain, Poland, France, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and Czech republic.
One whole day of the congress was devoted to a visit of the Saaz hop growing region with CHMELARSTVI and Bohemia Hop as the main congress partners. The hop growers from around the wolrd had a chance to visit 4 hop farms – Loužek, s.r.o., Agrofarma Karel Dittrich Lenešice, Emil Bureš Hopservis Holedeč and Jaroslav Šůma, Tuchořice. At all the farms they saw hop picking technology produced by CHMELARSTVI and had an expert guide.
The lunch and early afternoon programme was hosted by CHMELARSTVI directly in the hop storage and hop processing facility. This part was started by the cooperative chairman Mr. Zdenek Rosa with the introduction of all departments and their heads – Mr. Podsednik, Mr. Hajek, Mr. Strnad, Mr. Roska and the director Mr. Maršíček.
The tour of the facility included introduction of the hop processing into pellets type 90 and type 45, cold storages for hops and hop products and there was also an exhibition of special hop machinery produced by CHMELARSTVI at the courtyard.
The visit of Zatec continued with the welcome from the town mayor and Zatec hop defense group in the main square and a walk to Hop museum that is also owned and run by CHMELARSTVI. The evening programme took place in the gardens of Steknik chateau which are surrounded by hop fields.
The expert guides for the day came from Bohemia Hop and CHMELARSTVI.
Bohemia Hop visited during the third week of May Japan. Next to traditional visits of the main breweries in Japan (Kirin, Asahi, Sapporo and Suntory) Bohemia Hop took a crucial role in organization of educational seminar for Japanese craft brewers in Sakai.
This event was hosted and organized by the Czech Embassy in Tokyo, Ministry of Agriculture, Czech consulate in Sakai and several Japanese trading companies.
The seminar was started by the Czech Agriculture Ambassador in Japan Mrs. Irena Leopoldova with Mr. Jan Holub representing the Ministry of Agriculture. The expert part of the seminar started with a movie about Czech hop growing industry with Japanese subtitles which was followed by a presentation from Mr. Zdenek Rosa from Bohemia Hop on Czech hop growing industry and Czech hop varieties. Samples of Czech hops were also presented to brewers during the event. The next part connected Czech hops with Czech beer and during an on-line session a presentation was given by Mr. Havrda from Pioneer Beer brewery and Mr. Jan Hervert from the experimental brewery of the Hop research institute with many examples of their beers using Czech hop varieties. The seminar was closed by a wonderful presentation from Mr. Seigo Hideshima from Suntory brewery with details of a great relationship between Japanese breweries and Saaz hops.
The presentations were followed by tasting of Czech beers using several Czech hop varieties and also a sample of Premium Malts from Suntory.
