I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when my Czech friend Jaroslav suggested a trip to a secret spa. Not exactly a speakeasy, it was, he said, tucked away behind Prague’s iconic castle, in a district far off the main tourist track. An odd location, maybe, but he said there was good reason for it: the space had once been the place where a Habsburg king commissioned an alchemist to find hidden, healing, magical powers of what’s now the country’s very favorite beverage: beer.
I was in Prague, which is probably the world’s greatest city for getting a good brew. Capital of the Czech Republic, the people here have long loved the good stuff. Some of the best beer ingredients on earth are grown in this country, and Czechs drink more beer, per capita, than anyone else in the world….