U Fleků: Brewing Since 1499
Why is it significant?
Walk under the big sign that hangs out over Křemencova and into the courtyard of U Fleků: beer garden, long halls, painted beams, and waiters carrying trays of tall glasses filled with a beer almost black. There is only one beer on offer here, and there has been for a very long time.
Key Facts
| Place | U Fleků: Brewing Since 1499 |
|---|---|
| Address | Křemencova 11, 110 00 Praha 1, Czechia |
| Geo Coordinates | 50.07890, 14.41700 |
| Part of Walk | Dark Lager and Dumplings: Prague's Historic Beer Halls & Food Markets |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk under the big sign that hangs out over Křemencova and into the courtyard of U Fleků: beer garden, long halls, painted beams, and waiters carrying trays of tall glasses filled with a beer almost black. There is only one beer on offer here, and there has been for a very long time.
Brewing in this house is recorded from 1499, when a maltster named Vít Skřemenec bought it. That makes U Fleků one of the oldest brewery taverns in Europe, and it claims to have brewed beer continuously ever since, through the Thirty Years' War, the Habsburgs, two world wars and forty years of communism. The name came later, in 1762, when the house was bought by Jakub Flekovský and his wife. Prague people started saying they were going U Fleků, to the Fleks, and the name stuck.
The beer is a dark lager of thirteen degrees, brewed on the premises and served nowhere else. It is malty, slightly sweet, with a hint of coffee and caramel, and much lighter on the tongue than its colour suggests. Dark beer is an old Prague taste: before Plzeň's golden revolution, most Czech beer was dark or cloudy.
Fair warning about the rituals. Waiters here may set down a glass without asking, and they may come round with a tray of herbal liqueur shots. Neither is compulsory. A clear no thank you, ne děkuji, works perfectly. And if an accordion player starts a polka, the halls full of strangers often end up singing together, which is exactly what this place has been for since the fifteenth century.
What to eat with a dark lager? Goulash, the Czech kind, thicker and milder than the Hungarian original, soaked up with bread dumplings. Or roast pork with sauerkraut and dumplings, vepřo knedlo zelo, which Czechs pronounce almost as one word and treat as a national monument. From U Fleků, walk east through the side streets to the vast expanse of Charles Square, Karlovo náměstí.