We took a choppy 3-hour bus ride to the city of Ceske Budejovice to visit the Budweiser Budvar brewery. The Czech Republic is most proud of this brewery as it was the country’s first beer — and if their name sounds familiar, it’s because of the American beer with the same name. The Czech Budweiser claims they were the first company, and the Americans claims theirs was first. The two companies are still locked up in trademark disputes (however, I suspect the Czechs were first…but what do I know.)

The brewery tour was great, since we got to see all parts of the factory. They produce 70,000 bottles per hour, which is a lot of beer. Here is one of their huge outdoor stacks of beer cases.

The best part of the tour was sampling some unpasteurized and unfiltered beer directly from their fermentation tanks…pretty special, since they don’t sell this stage of the beer anywhere!