If you think you know what to expect from us, maybe you should reconsider this.
Or, maybe you should know that if something is soulful and honest and great, if we can, we will try and support. Also, as it happens, we love beer and it is our collective opinion that Luc LaFontaine is an absolute master of this craft, producing what we believe are the some of the greatest beers in North America. We especially fell for his Lagers and Pilsners that are effortlessly drinkable – light yet fiercely aromatic and sharp from fresh hops with just the perfect delicate touch mid-palate from malt.
This is beer as something so perfectly essential – nothing more than is needed without any of the gimmicks of modern beer-craft. Beer as it used to be?
As chance would have it, a few months after we began to sell Godspeed’s beers, Bohemia’s Pilsner Urquell, one of the iconic houses of Pilsner, would offer for the first time in its history two of their massive lagering casks to another brewery. Luc was the fortunate recipient. With these casks, Luc would begin brewing a beer in Toronto in loving homage to this old-style Urquell.
And thus we come to today’s offer: Sklepník, a cask-conditioned “old Plzeň”-style Pilsner – an ode to a rare style of Urquell that could only be tasted in their home cellars… until now.
Today we are offering, on pre-order only for shipping in May, a mixed 12-pack of Skelpník and their other nod to Czech Brewing Tradition, their calling-card Lager Světlý Ležák 12º for $72. We understand this is not a small sum of money for cans of beer. On the other hand, we also believe for the quality of this beer, the depth of the craft and the process, this is a steal.
Sorry, sometimes life is complicated.
How will all this work? It’s easy: Just write to orders@vomboden.com and include how many 12-pack cases you would like and your address. Unfortunately at this time, our retail partner for this offer cannot ship to the following states: AL, AK, HI, ME, MS, MT, SD, UT, VT, ND, WY.
If you are in the drinks business in New York, New Jersey or Illinois and wish to stock the cans or have kegs of Godspeed, please reach out to your respective vom Boden operator!
In Pilsner Urquell’s 175+ year storied history, this is the first time that any of their 40,000-liter, green-rimmed oak casks from the forests of the Czech Republic (complete with their in-house cooperage) have ever been offered to an outsider. These casks are comprised of thick staves that require eight years of curing and mellowing, as has been the tradition for centuries. The finished barrels are lined with a special pine resin called pitch, which aids in the retention of carbonation. The beer rests in these for a cool and slow eight weeks, the necessary time to build up the natural carbonation from fermentation, and kegging/canning is done directly without filtration.
The entire process beyond brewing and racking takes place simply (or is this the complex part?) in these barrels.
The result is an ode to the old style Pilsner Urquell, once tasted only in the cellars below the brewery in Plzeň. The beer is exceedingly fresh, with a vibrant, heady tops and a melange of just-cut aromatics. The beer has a mid-palate that is so stripped down it defies gravity and presents as nearly weightless, lighter even than water. A singular reverberating tone of spicy and lightly herbal hop that reads like a single bell chime in the distance, cutting yet never overbearing and slowly meandering away. There is a certain mid-palate buoy that ties the whole miraculous thing together – first a flush of very fine petillance that gives way to an ever-so-slight waxiness. Perhaps it is the resin and the cohesion of all the individual parts, resulting from eight weeks in the barrel. The effervescence is unmistakably fine and interwoven, and one cannot help but notice the abrasive quality of forced-carbonation on most beers.
It is a peculiar thing, experiencing a beer of such epic provenance for the first time; in certain ways the lack of a climactic hill was at first startling. But you soon realize that your brain is tricking you – the beauty comes not from anything showy or forward but rather the lack of any element that is out of place.
Nothing is superfluous, nor is anything missing – harmonious equilibrium centered around balance.
And this is, all along, where the truly profound lies, in beer, in wine and beyond…