An excellent Czech brewer has passed away
After Vladimír Černohorský
(*19. 7. 1941 – †8. 8. 2015)
He used to say that each beer should have an unmistakable character and that he would rather always work as a “hitman” than build his own brewery. Perhaps the most famous is his poetic exaggeration that beer is the second most important liquid in the human body after blood. In recent years, the name of the brewer Vladimír Černohorský has stuck also in the minds of those who have tasted beers according to his recipes, which quickly established the renewed Únětice brewery among lovers of quality beer. Vladimír Černohorský came from Prague, but he also traced his roots to Chodsko (an area around the town of Domažlice), and his even older ancestors from Českobrodsko were already brewing beer in the 19th century somewhere in the vicinity of Yaroslavl, Russia. After graduating from the food industry college, he got a placement at the Pilsen breweries at the time, and he thus got to know the operations in Stod, Kout in Šumava, Cheb, Český Krumlov, Karlovy Vary, and Chodová Planá. After the war, he returned to Prague, to Smíchov, and then learned to make malt at the Vinohrady Brewery. He studied remotely at the University of Chemical Technology and began a 23-year career as a researcher. With a fresh diploma in his pocket, he came to the experimental and development center of the Brewing and Malting Research Institute in Braník. He was at the birth of the first Czechoslovak non-alcoholic beer and the first beer for diabetics. In 1992, he became a freelancer, because he always wanted to go out into the world, but not as an emigrant, as he emphasized. For a while, he commuted between Prague and three German microbreweries. Then he received an offer from the Austrian Schlossbrauerei in Weinberg, with which he worked until his death, in addition to other orders for Czech breweries and microbreweries. He trained brewers and introduced operation in the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Kazakhstan, Austria, and Spain. His fulfilled dream was to rehabilitate the “good Czech Tenner”, which he successfully completed in Únětice. Excellent beer theorist, experienced practitioner, consultant, author of several patents, excellent brewer, technologist, taster, father of three daughters, recipient of the Lifetime Contribution to Brewing Award of the Czech and Moravian Brewing Academy from 2013, and laureate of the Hall of Fame of Czech and Moravian Brewing and Malting since 2014. In short, a brewer with body and soul who will be missed by Czech beer.
Author: Otakar Gembala | GastroProfesor server