SPIRITED INDULGENCE
Soak up and down the goodness of beer at Prague’s Beer Spa – an unusual and memorable experience
Just a few minutes from Prague’s Old Town Square on Rybna Street, in one of the cheerful yellow old buildings, is tucked away a little entrance from inside which a wall of bright green light beckons. In the courtyard, a short flight of stairs leads to one of Prague’s most unusual experiences, the Beer Spa.
For beer lovers, the whole experience is like a dream come true. There’s unlimited dark and light beer throughout the session – from the Czech brand Krusovice – while you soak in wooden casks of beer and eat beer bread. But the process is so much fun that even non beer-lovers find it enjoyable. It begins at the reception where an assistant demonstrates how to pull a pint. Inside, a spacious, exposed-brick room with mood lighting has two large royal oak tubs separated by a platform with a set of beer taps. The tubs contain 1,000 litres of warm water to which another assistant adds a mix of hops and malt to get the beer going. Each tub turns into a bubbling jacuzzi and the seats at either end are convenient for sitting while letting the whole concoction work its magic.
Soaking in the tub is a bit surreal, but also rather therapeutic. As the bubbling continues, the room fills with the distinct but mild aroma of beer while the liquid itself is textured with the powdery residue of the hops mixture. The mildly abrasive nature of the mixture along with the oil and the herbal qualities of the ingredients are strangely soothing. It is, of course, aided by the copious amounts of beer that flow from the tap, soaked up by slices of dark and intense beer bread set next to the taps. The experience is even more fun with companions, with laughter and good cheer flowing as freely as the beer.
After 25 minutes, it is time to move from the tub to a comfortable bed in the corner of the room filled with wheat straw for a relaxing stretch. The lie-down is meant to allow the body to absorb the vitamins and extracts from the bath. A bath is recommended only after a few hours, but, strangely, it does not feel smelly or sticky. Instead, a walk around Old Town after the session is wonderfully relaxing and rather fairy-tale like. Or it could just be all the beer! Either way, it is undoubtedly memorable.