Technologies

Ingredients

For Czech type beer Czech hops from the Žatec area and malt from Moravia (by Raven company) are used.

For brewing of beer specials, ingredients of the given style are used, like smoked malt by Weyermann from Bamberk in Bayern, English hops by Fuggels, Northern Brewer or Challanger. American hops are used, such as Cascade, Chinook, Centennial or Columbus for IPA and American Pale Ales. Hops are used in the form of granules.

Water
We use our local water for brewing. It is of high quality, there is no need to modify it.

Brewing

There are different types of brewing for different beer types.
To brew lagers of Bohemian Pilsner type, we use the decoction method, the traditional way of brewing local beers. For ales we use the fusion method, with a step by step increase of temperatures (the only exception is weizen beer, where we also use decoction).

Our brew kettle is of a size of 6,5 hectos per batch, but we are installing a new one (well, 50 years old, all copper) to start operation this June..

Fermentation

In Kocour we brew bottom (lagers) and top fermented (ales – stout, saison, weizen) beers. In principle the technology is the same, the main difference is in use of different strains of yeast and higher fermentation and maturation temperatures for top-fermented beers. To avoid unwanted interaction between different yeast strains, we use “closed fermentation”. The yeast is supplied to us by Pivo Praha company, for the top-fermentation by The Brewing Science Institute in Colorado, USA..

Maturation

Beer maturation takes place in closed stand up tanks with 13hl capacity. The minimum period of maturation of Czech style lagers is 4 weeks, for top fermented beers it varies.

Distribution

You can buy Kocour beer almost in all of the Czech Republic. The beer is distributed in kegs and bottles to restaurants that can be described as being "beer geek restaurants"- they offer many different types of beer from different breweries. More information can be found in the section "WHERE TO BUY".

The Kocour Brewery offers its beer in 1/3 litre non refundable glass bottles, in PET litre bottles and in 20, 30 and 50 litre kegs.