Birell
Birell
The Czech Birell is the best-selling alcohol-free beer in the Czech Republic – a brand with a fascinating transnational history that began in 1991, when employees of the Radegast Brewery in Nošovice made contact with the Zurich brewery Hürlimann, which had been offering a world-famous alcohol-free beer under the same name since 1972. Based on the legendary Hürlimann recipe – developed by a brewery that had been the first in the world to produce a successfully marketed alcohol-free beer – Radegast launched its own Birell in 1991 and thereby created the Czech version of a Swiss pioneering drink that had founded the alcohol-free beer culture worldwide. The choice of name was no coincidence, but a deliberate homage to a recipe and a philosophy that Radegast wanted to adopt from the very beginning as the best that the world had to offer in the alcohol-free beer category.
Czech Birell is distinguished by all the characteristic properties that define a genuine Czech lager of the Pilsner brewing style – pronounced bitterness, fine foam, a clean and malt-forward aroma without extraneous flavour compounds and a refreshingly clean finish that clearly sets it apart from most Western European alcohol-free beers and places it firmly in the first league of the alcohol-free beer world. With an alcohol content of 0.49% – just below the legal Czech limit of 0.5% for alcohol-free beers – Birell offers a full-bodied beer experience that need not fear comparison with its alcoholic siblings and is appreciated equally by beer enthusiasts and casual drinkers alike.
Today Birell is produced by Plzeňský Prazdroj and Šariš – both part of the international Asahi Group – and encompasses alongside the classic pale standard variant also a dark Birell, an India Pale Ale variant and radlers in various flavours, with which the brand maps the full diversity of modern alcohol-free beer culture. As a brand built on the heritage of two great brewing traditions – the Swiss pioneering achievement of Hürlimann and the Moravian brewing craft of Radegast – Czech Birell stands today as the most convincing and best-selling testament to the fact that Czech brewing craft sets standards in the alcohol-free segment that are second to none anywhere in the world.