Bohem Brewery: Showing London what good lager tastes like
Bohem Brewery is a London-based Czech brewery that does more than just brew authentic Czech lager. It also runs two pubs and a taproom, all with a wider mission in mind: to teach Britons what good lager can taste and look like.
I visited one of Bohem’s pubs, the Nicholas Nickleby in North London, to meet the people behind the beer. The brewers immediately offered me a small ‘desítka’ – a ‘ten-degree’ beer, the lowest in alcohol by Czech standards. It tasted unmistakably Czech, and noticeably different from what you might find in a typical British pub just around the corner. The most striking difference is the generous head of foam – something that still surprises many British pub-goers.
Bohem started as a home-brewer’s dream. Petr Skoček and Zdeněk Kudr, two Czech expats living in London, founded it in early 2017. Finding British pub beer too expensive, Skoček had started home-brewing back in 2012. After meeting Kudr, the pair decided to turn the hobby into a business and launched Bohem Brewery. However, Kudr left Bohem in 2019, and Skoček returned to the Czech Republic in 2020.
Today, Bohem’s beer in London is brewed mainly by two other Czechs: head brewer Matěj Křížek and brewer Honza Svatek. Together, they run the Bohem brewery in Tottenham, just north of the Nicholas Nickleby pub. I asked Matěj to tell me more about the beer they produce.
“We focus on Czech beer only and it's all brewed with respect to traditional Czech lagers. We don't make any IPAs or sours or any other now popular beer styles. We focus only on a proper lager brewed with Czech ingredients. We even had the entire brew house and all the tanks brought over from the Czech Republic.”
Their commitment to Czech tradition helps Bohem stand out against English lagers. Honza expanded on what makes the beer’s flavour stand out.
“The beer is unique because we use Czech malt and Czech hops. We do use English water, but we soften it, because the hard water in England isn’t suitable for brewing lagers. We don’t use any chemicals or anything like that – just Czech ingredients, including fresh Czech hops, such as Saaz, which is the best hop in the world. That’s why the beer tastes so good.”
Czech ingredients and Czech brewers make for a good Czech lager. Bohem’s dedication to quality even extends to a so-called ‘lager manifesto.’ I asked Matěj about it.
“The history of lager in England is quite difficult. Traditionally, it was all about real ales and ales. That’s where the idea of English beer being warm and flat comes from, because that’s what the traditional English pint looked like. Then, in the 1980s and 90s, lagers tended to be cheap, bad, low in ABV (alcohol by volume) and heavily carbonated. For many people, that’s still what lager means today.
“They don't think that lager can have a good body, can be well balanced and properly served. So that's something we are still fighting for even now.The manifesto is really about the basics: how beer should be brewed, what it should be brewed from, and just the basic stuff for a Czech brewer. It’s about how to recognise a well-made lager. That's what the manifesto is about: how to spot the well done lager.“
And one of the signs of a well-made lager is its foam. Honza is passionate about this point.
“Beer with foam is better because the foam acts as protection from oxidation. The foam is creamy – we don’t have any bubbly foam here. It’s like cream. You can drink it. It’s sweet, it’s good. It’s wet, creamy foam. That’s what we’re trying to teach people, but I have to say that it’s really hard.”
Getting that foam right is a shared responsibility between brewer and bartender. At Bohem, everyone agrees that beer is only complete once it has been properly poured. There is even a saying that Matěj told me: good beer comes from two parts – the brewer who brews it and the tapster who serves it. Without either one, it simply does not work.
Jakub Mikusinec manages both the Nicholas Nickleby and Bohem’s newer pub, the Queen’s Arms in Battersea. With years of experience behind the bar, he knows exactly how important the tapster’s role is.
“We really care about the beer and how it’s poured – clean glasses, cold glasses, the temperature of the beer, the taps themselves. Pouring a pint properly takes practice like anything else. You just have to pour many, many pints, and then essentially you'll get used to it.“
“The hardest part is teaching new customers that we serve beer with foam.”
For many Londoners, the biggest adjustment is accepting a pint topped with a generous layer of foamas Honza explained:
“The hardest part is teaching new customers that we serve beer with foam, because that’s how it’s meant to be. Here in England, people drink beer without foam, filled right up to the rim of the glass. Then they think we’re cheating them when we give them foam. But when a skilled bartender explains that we do it for a reason, about 85 or maybe 90% of people understand. And when they come back the next day, they actually ask for beer with foam, because it really has something to it.”
Regulars at the Nicholas Nickleby now know what to expect. The pub attracts a mix of locals, beer enthusiasts and plenty of Czechs living in London who miss a proper Czech lager.
“It's well known that the whole beer community is really nice.”
I also learned about the sense of community among brewers themselves. With around one hundred commercial breweries across London, there are plenty of brewers to meet and exchange ideas with. Matěj summed it up with a smile.
“It's well known that the whole beer community is really nice and really friendly to each other because it's not like, for example, in finance where everybody's competing with each other and they can't talk to each other at lunch. We're really friendly. If you go to a brewery, they're going to welcome you, show you everything, give you free samples to try, and you're probably going to have a really nice chat and a horrible hangover in the morning.“
As I sampled more of Bohem’s lagers and chatted to the brewers, it was clear he was right.
The breadth of Bohem‘s range means there is something for everyone. Over the years, they have even brewed more unconventional styles, including a vanilla dark lager and a chilli lager.
So, if you are a Czech living in London and feeling homesick – or if you simply want to experience authentic Czech lager without travelling to the Czech Republic – Bohem Brewery is well worth a visit.
To hear more from the brewers and explore the story in greater depth, listen to the full feature.
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