A brown bottle with a white and red label and a crown on top: If you’ve ever picked up a Polish beer, it’s likely to have been a Tyskie, among the most widely available brands outside Poland.
But for decades after World War II, the pale lager was forced to give up the crown featured on its label and bottle tops. The new Communist authorities in post-war Poland told the brewery that the crown of the prince that once owned the brewery symbolised the “class enemy”.
Only in the 1980s was the crown allowed to return to this ‘Princely’ brewery in the southern Polish town of Tychy. It’s details like these you learn from four centuries of brewing history at the new museum dedicated to the Tyskie beers.
Visitors enter the building through a corridor of 11,000 bottles to reach the new exhibition about the Tyskie Browary Książęce, the largest brewery complex in Poland, first established in 1629.
You can also see the current production process in the brewery itself, still in full use, including the bottling plant. Things are of course rounded off with a freshly tapped ‘piwo’ at the museum’s pub the end of the tour.
The brewery museum, newly reopened after extensive refurbishments, is located south of the city of Katowice (known for its locations used in the Netflix series “The Witcher”) and is open from Tuesdays to Saturdays. Tickets start at 19 zloty (€4.40 or $4.70). Anyone under the age of 18 must be accompanied by an adult.
If you’re already on a boozy tour of the region, then further north Warsaw’s Polish Vodka Museum might be your next stop. In the former factory, located in the now trendy district of Praga, visitors get to know the distillation process of Poland’s national drink while discovering bartender tricks and the role vodka has played in national politics.
Visitors also learn all about how Polish vodka gained its prestigious international reputation. You also can put your new-found knowledge to the test with a tasting at the on-site bar and restaurant.
West of the Tyskie brewery however, you enter the Czech Republic, and head toward the historic brewery of Pilsner Urquell in Pilsen.
In the Tychy brewery’s museum, Poland’s beer-loving tourists can marvel at a corridor of 11,000 bottles. Tomek Fryszkiewicz/browarytyskie.pl/dpa
Tyskie. one of hundreds of brands ownder by the brewing giant ABInBev/SAB Miller, is known for the prince’s crown in its logo. Daniel Karmann / dpa
The Tyskie Browary Książęce is said to be the largest brewery complex in Poland. Tomek Fryszkiewicz/browarytyskie.pl/dpa
