Region & History

North Moravia is beer country caught between fertile grain plains and coal country. In eastern Czechia lie the fertile Haná region around Olomouc (Olmütz), the Beskids with the Radegast brewery, and the industrial city of Ostrava (Ostrau).

Brewing here goes back a long way. Litovel points to a brewing charter supposedly granted to the town by King Wenceslaus II in 1291. In 1770, a communal brewery with its own malthouse was established there, running for a full century.

Barley tipped the scales. According to one count, in 1880 the Haná region was home to 70 of Austria-Hungary's 99 export malthouses, and the name "Haná" became a seal of quality for malt. On this foundation, Czech farmers founded a joint-stock brewery with its own malthouse in Litovel on November 12, 1893. During the First Republic era, their beer was known as "the Moravian Pilsner."

In Ostrava, a Czech joint-stock brewery was founded in 1897 as a counterpart to the German Strassmann brewery, with the first brew following in 1898. It's the forerunner of today's Ostravar brewery, which joined the Staropramen group in 1997 after merging with Pražské pivovary, the Prague breweries, and still brews in the city today.

The newest major facility stands in Nošovice. The foundation stone was laid in 1965, the first brew flowed on December 3, 1970, and a year later the beer was named Radegast, after the Slavic god of sun, fire, and hospitality. It was meant to supply the industrial region around it and now belongs to Plzeňský Prazdroj, and thus to the Asahi group.

North Moravia has no protected designation of its own. Its beer falls under the 2008 PGI "České pivo." Since October 1, 2021, Litovel has belonged to the Pivovary CZ Group, as have Přerov and Holba in Hanušovice, where brewing has continued since 1874.