#morana

Morana: Tmave's Birthday in America

This Thursday is the 15th anniversary of the day I spent at Devils Backbone Basecamp brewing the first ever batch of Morana , a Czech style dark lager that I designed for them. I had spent the previous months diving into archives, emailing with multiple brewers, and beer experts, in various languages - English, German, Czech, and Slovak - to learn everything I could about a family of beers that at the time only consisted of about 5% of Czech beer production. Obviously, having only fairly recently decamped from Prague to Virginia, I was also relying on my own remembrances of beers that I had got a taste for in the last couple of years there, when I moved beyond the realms of Gambrinus, Staropramen, and Velkopopovivký Kozel. My go-to dark lagers at the time were brewed by Kout na Šumavě and available at the fantastic U Slovanské lipy , but it was the 14° version that I was using as my model for Morana. They also had an 18° that as a 0.3l malé pivo made for a wonderful nightcap. Back in 2