Beer and biking at the local brewery in Ostravice.

On my recent visit to the Czech Republic, I was pleasantly surprised to see how beer and biking go hand in hand in this country.

I have always been a very keen cyclist. I have been tour cycling in more than 40 countries over the years. But I am also a great lover of craft beer. I couldn’t care less for shabby bad quality beer like Heineken, Carlsberg, Budweiser and such.  Handcrafted beer is what really matters to me.

Fantastic beer from Prachatice.

The Czech Republic is full of small beer producers. They have been brewing beer for hundreds of years in the Czech Republic. In recent years, even more breweries have been popping up. This means that this fairly small country now has more than 500 breweries. Most of them are small companies that care more about quality than quantity.

Nice little brewery inside a national park.

I visited several small breweries during my two weeks in the Czech Republic. And I just loved how there were bicycles parked outside almost all of them. Especially if they had a bar/restaurant in connection with the brewery. I was told that technically it’s not allowed to cycle after drinking beer in the Czech Republic. But this is something that the local police are usually not bothered with as long as you do not get overly drunk.

While the Czechs are the biggest beer drinkers in the world, they rarely get drunk to the point where they start shouting, fighting and such. The beer quality is simply so good that it attracts the kinda beer drinkers that are civilised.

Ready for some beer and biking

If the combination of beer and biking sounds right to you, then I would suggest the Czech Republic. It’s a country that truly loves beer. It’s also a nation of outdoor lovers. Because of that, many people jump on their bike when they want to go for a beer.

Bicycle statue in Prachatice.

The Czech Republic is beer and biking at it’s very best 🙂

Another fantastic Czech beer.

WARNING: Drinking beer can cause great pleasure and give you many new friends 🙂

Cheers from the Czech countryside.