Tasting Note: Schilling Beer Co.'s Karlův 13º Černé Pivo

Schilling's Karlův 13º

Karlův 13º is a Černé Pivo, or Czech Dark Lager, from Schilling Beer Company of Littleton, New Hampshire.  It comes in at 5.3% alcohol by volume.

The beer is named for the Karlův Most, or Charles Bridge, the massive, wide, 670-year old, pedestrian-only crossing over the Vltava/Moldau River in the center of the city.  The Bridge was all-important until at least 1841, since it was the only river crossing in Prague until that time.

Czech Darks have become quite the rage in American craft brewing for the past couple of years.  Many of them tend to be dominated by excessive sweetness and/or rich coffee flavors, more akin to  a Porter, Stout or Wee Heavy.  True Czech dark lagers are quite dry, with more of a cocoa powder taste to them than processed chocolate or coffee.  But achieving that complexity is expensive, and the resulting beer is not always as broad a crowd-pleaser.

U Dvou koček: the beer-producing Dark & Light "Cats."

U Dvou koček (“The Two Cats”), the renowned brewery and restaurant in Prague where I first experienced this beer, brews only two beers in-house: the “Kočka tmavá,” or Dark Cat / Dark Pilsner, and the “Kočka světlá,” or Light Cat / Light Pilsner.  Pilsner Urquell is the third beer on the menu, which is a bit like serving Coke at the Pepsi headquarters cafeteria, but I chalked it up to  reassuring brand-sensitive tourists.

In case you’re wondering, “tmavá” means “dark” in Czech, whereas “černé” means “black.”  Both are used to refer to the same style, though “černé” has probably become the default adjective in most American breweries.

The Tmavá in Prague surprised me right off the bat because it was dry and had quite light body.  I almost dismissed it as flat beer, but by mid-palate, the flavor was coming on, and the carbonation was filling my mouth.  Rye flavors, pumpernickel, and powdery dark chocolate.

U Dvou Koček’s menu is filled with hearty, traditional meat dishes like pork neck with cabbage, pork knuckle, and smoked collar, but since I had already lunched on pork knee and dumplings, I went for the relatively staid beef goulash.  It also happened to go very well with a dark lager.  Go figure…

So that was the ur-experience that has informed my take on Czech Dark Lagers ever since.  In that regard, Schilling's Karlův 13º was a very pleasing revelation, since it replicates the Dark Czech Lager style so uncannily.  It has a rich black color, with beautiful light body, yet it maintains flavor density, as well as the back-of-mouth bitterness I find only in Czech Lagers.  The kind of fragile bitterness that becomes too pronounced on, for example, Pilsner Urquell’s trip in bottle across the Atlantic.

The Záhlinice Malthouse

The quality of this beer is no coincidence.  Munich and black malts dominate the mash bill, but Karlův 13º is most distinguished by its floor-malted pilsner malt from Záhlinice, in the southern, Moravian half of Czechia.  The Malthouse is one of the few facilities that still practice floor malting. Its products are highly prized.  Using this malt bespeaks concern for high quality, and a willingness to spare no expense.  Floor malting imparts nutty, toasty aromas and complex flavors that come, in part, from surface microbes not found in automated malting.

As importantly, Karlův 13º is decoction mashed, which also raises the malt’s flavor and body, including deep brown colors and more complex caramel flavors produced by the decoction's Maillard reaction.

Excessive sweetness is a concern when using such malts, as well as when decocting, since the caramel and toasty flavors partly have their origins in the sugars in the malt. Moreover, Karlův 13º contains the classic Hallertau and Tettnanger noble hops, whose extremely subtle, spicy flavors are very prized, but whose low alpha acids mean that a beer may not have sufficient bitterness to balance the sweetness.  The solution?  More hops!  But these aren’t exactly cheap….

In sum, this beer shows its brewer’s skill at balancing many different considerations, and the brewery’s willingness to support such projects.

Karlův 13º is an eye-opening experience in many ways.