Brewing city
Pilsen
Where the first pale lager was brewed in 1842, giving its name to the most imitated beer style in the world.
In Czechia.
Why it matters to beer
Pilsen water is among the softest used in commercial brewing, with very low mineral content across the board. Combined with pale malt and Saaz hops, it produced a beer whose clarity and colour were startling at the time — and which coincided with mass-produced glassware making that appearance visible to drinkers for the first time.
Styles from here
Beers brewed here
Breweries
The water
Among the softest brewing water in the world, with almost no mineral content — the reason a heavily-hopped pale lager tastes rounded rather than harsh.
Water is shown here as a property of the place rather than as the reason its beer turned out the way it did. The correlation between a city’s water and its style is real; the causal story is more contingent than it is usually told, and BeerHQ treats it as contested. See Pilsen water.
Elsewhere in the country
Last reviewed 2026-08-15.