Pilsner Fest 163 realised expectations

Organisers' approach to maximise visitor comfort pays off

This year's staging of the popular Pilsner Fest got off to an impressive start with a world record attempt at a beer toast in one place. On the evening of Friday, 30 September in the Square of the Republic in Pilsen, almost 8,500 cans of Pilsner Urquell beer were distributed in 20 minutes (which in itself may be some sort of record). Unfortunately, only 2,773 cans ended up in the containers for the official counting for inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records, which was performed by the Dobry Den agency from Pelhrimov. The Pilsen record of 2003, when 4,956 cans were counted, thus remains unbroken.  But breaking the record was not the most important thing. It was rather an attempt to create a good atmosphere, attract as many satisfied visitors as possible to the event and to start off the three-day program full of quality entertainment, good food and the best beer in the world in the best possible way.

The atmosphere in the brewery courtyard, where the organisers created a much bigger space for visitors, was outstanding, spontaneous and friendly. This was clearly one of the main features of this year's Pilsner Fest. A major attraction was the enormous Na Spilce restaurant pavilion, which at more than 640 m2 and at a height of 6 metres took up a large part of the courtyard, including tree and fountain. There were no queues, the beer flowed from 44 taps and the quality program entertained a really broad spectrum of visitors, from fans of big beat on Friday to the very large group of fans of brass-band music, who filled the main stage area with extraordinary energy throughout the rainy Sunday morning. Foreign tourists, particularly Germans and Russians, made up a large part of visitors to the brewery tour route.

The whole festival passed without any major problems, incidents or accidents.

Facts about Pilsner Fest 163:

• Attendance figures for the whole festival again reached 60 000 – the same as in 2004.
• 322 hl of Pilsner Urquell beer were served.
• The popular and closely watched competition for throwing a beer mat failed to beat the record set in 2002 – the best performance was a “mere” 25 metres.
• More than 3 300 people toured the brewery
• More than 800 people visited the Brewery Museum, of which 450 on Saturday alone – the Museum usually records an attendance of this size for the whole week.

Pilsen