EBG Rating: 8/10

Choice/Quality of Drinks:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
4/5 beers from Dalešice  including seasonal specials, which is a real treat. Typical back bar with a few premium options.

Style/Décor:
❤️❤️❤️❤️
Corner pub with L-shaped garden. Small taproom at the entrance with pub room to the back. Quite classical, with wood-strip panelling and Dalešice’s already old-school emblem festooned on the walls. There’s even basement seating downstairs.

Atmosphere/Character:
❤️❤️❤️❤️
Local life native to the district of Cerná Pole. Few if any tourists. A genuinely mixed crowd, young and old, male and female, owing to the friendly feel, modern food and drinks and captive audience.

Amenities/Events:
❤️❤️❤️❤️
Food, snacks, outdoor seating.

Value For Money:
❤️❤️❤️❤️
Decent value for money.

Description:
Somewhere around 2015-2025 beer from the village of Dalešice and its eponymous brewery 20 miles west of Brno really caught off not only here, but around Moravia to the point where it has become something of a gold standard for pale lager. Pilsner Urquell remains popular of course but Brno is a city where that beer, so dominant in Prague often sits behind brands like Poutnik, Kamenice, Mazak and Dalešice muscling in on a piece of the action.

Dalešice run a few pubs in and around Brno. Cerná Pole is a low-key district for Betlém (literally Bethlehem) to be situated.

The pub is very reminiscent of the likes of U Veverky in Prague. A corner pub with compact taproom in traditional style, a pub-restaurant but with a social focus.

Previously Betlém has operated a large menu but these days you’ll find the offering a little more stripped back. What hasn’t been is the drinks offering with 4/5 beers from Dalešice including seasonal specials, which is a real treat.

Summer will see the terrace full and the pub quiet, which flips around in winter where sub-zero temperatures can bite. This has a big effect on how much life you’ll find inside the pub, though even on warmer days lunchtimes can fill up inside.

Travelling here is sadly not direct – though you can take a tram and walk 15 minutes, but arriving direct via public transport requires a tram and a bus. However, that is no reason to rule it out, as proximity to another nice pub, U Václava, allows for a mini Cerná Pole pub crawl.

The interior of the pub is quite classical, with wood-strip panelling and Dalešice’s already old-school emblem festooned on the walls. There’s even basement seating downstairs for when it fills up on busy winter evenings, something difficult to imagine as I sat in the taproom while everyone else was outside.

Service was friendly and willing, although welcoming a little polite Czech speaking, we’d suggest.

With a huge number of viable options for beers in Brno you may opt for central options but quite honestly this is much more worthwhile than hanging out at the likes of Tomana, EFI, Poupe without any loss in quality of beer to enjoy, if that’s your focus. Spread your wings and make the trip.