Happily Single

It’s a Wednesday night in Prague and I’m sitting in a popular, newish beer hall just outside of the tourist zone. It’s packed with hundreds of young locals, seated at square tables, deep in conversation interrupted only by quick jolts of laughter at a joke told well. While it’s remarkable that almost no one is on a phone, there is one thing even more striking: everyone is drinking the same beer.

- Andy Crouch

The menu has only one beer, Pilsner Urquell, for sale. Technically, that’s not true. The place also serves a delicious dark beer, but no one is drinking it. Instead, everyone’s ordered fresh-from-the-tank Pilsner Urquell. It’s not the freshness of the beer they covet, though one local beer writer tells me it’s the best in town. It’s simply another night out with friends, where the beer plays but a small, unheralded role in the social experience. As each bulbous half-liter mug empties, the brusque Czech servers swing by with a foamy replacement and the pageant continues anew.