Hello- I have just found a volume of "unofficial" samizdat stories and essays from the old regime (in translation, I only read English and French). In one, a boy is bringing home a pitcher of beer to his father. It is referred to as "12%" (Jiri Grusa, "Uncle Anton's Coat"). I have seen this descriptive before. In the United States, we label beers at a percentage of alcohol, i.e., a 5.2% Lager is a normal alcohol level, and anything over 7% is generally referred to as "strong ale", 10% or more can be "barley wines", etc. A 12% would be an enormously strong beer; I cannot believe this would be just an every day thirst quencher. What does that percentage mean? Have I missed something in translation? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated, I hate having loose ends in my reading.
Beer is measured here with degrees, according to the method devised by Professor Balling in the 17th century. The degree sign caused some confusion for consumers in the past, as international norms used it to signify the temperature of brewing and other things. So it was changed to a percentage sign, which causes confusion among consumers today. Many think that the percent is the amount of alcohol, but it's actually the amount of malt extract used in the brewing process. The percentage of alcohol is about a quarter of the "percent" shown on the bottle, so 12% beer is roughly 3.1% alcohol, though it's often higher. Czech beer comes in degrees from 6-19%, but 10% and 12% are the most common. The highest degree is Pernstein from Pardubice. It's from this article: http://archiv.radio.cz/beer/beer2.html
Most of the bottle beers now don't bear this traditional "malt" percentage, but all have to indicate the alcohol content, which is usually stated in low letters somewhere on the back of the bottle. The traditional % you find more often with draught beer. Usually it is more than a quarter, usually almost half (about 41%). Just a few examples: Drak 15% - 6.0% alc Klášter 12% - 5.1% alc Kozel 11% - 4.6% alc I remeber that there were two export 12% Prazdroj beers having different alcohol content to meet the Sweedish law. Both were exported to Sweden, but the one with higher alcohol content could be baught in Systembolaget only.
