Long before craft beer and multi-tap pubs were invented, trips abroad involved being a bit more adventurous on the hunt for ‘new’ beers. One such trip back in 2007 was to Pivovar Medlešice, not far from Pardubice with my chum Jeremy. As the interwebs wasn’t as widely used then, planning was a bit of fun too.
The first exciting bit (for those interested in train travel) was that the railcar to take us to Medlešice was attached to the rear of a long distance train to take us up the hill to Pardubice Rosice nad Labem station where we were then detached with the other train carrying on and us reversing along the branch line.
We soon arrived at Medlešice and got off at the single platform station, although the words ‘platform’ and ‘station’ should be taken with a pinch of salt. After a walk down a dirt road, we arrived at where we thought was the right place but the door was well and truly bolted. It had started to rain so we huddled in the doorway. A few minutes later and we were inside.
It was a bit of a strange place – not very pub / brewery tap-like but more of a community centre and seemed to have people dropping in and out but the most curious thing was the small piece of hosepipe behind the bar – the was used to attach to one of the taps and fill customer’s own empty bottles!
Prices were excellent – 12CZK (about 30p) per half litre in 2007 and still only 31CZK in 2024 (£1)!
Looking at photos on Google and their website (which incidentally was created in 2009 and doesn’t look to have changed that much since), it looks pretty much the same inside but has definitely been tidied up outside.
Last visited: September 2007.
