Leading Czech brewery Plzeňský Prazdroj (Pilsner Urquell) announced it is raising prices of draft and bottled beer by 2.6%  on average effective from October 1 in the first such move since 2023.

The iconic Czech brewery is responding to rising costs of material and commodities in connection with the conflict in the Middle East.  

“It is mainly about rising costs of diesel, which get reflected in the costs on transportation, and also of the rising prices of aluminium, which has a significant impact on the increasingly more popular cans segment,” Prazdroj spokesperson Zdeněk Kovář was quoted as saying by Czech Press Agency on August 27 (CTK).

“The final price is always a decision of those who sell or tap beer,” Kovář also said, adding that “we cannot speak on behalf of restaurants or stores”.

The hike in prices reflects this year’s inflation, CTK noted, which the Czech National Bank projects to average at 2.2% this year.

Other major Czech beermakers, Budějovický Budvar (Budweiser) and the Prague Staropramen breweries, are yet to decide whether to respond to rising costs with a price hike, CTK also noted.

Czech beermakers are likely to cope with weak hops harvest this year as well, which is hit by severe drought. The country’s hops harvest is expected to shrink by about a quarter this year, down from the long-term average, because of this year’s heatwaves and persistent drought.

Farmers also expect this year’s hops to have a lower composition of the alfa bitter substances, which comes as bad news for the country’s breweries known internationally for their bitter, smooth lagers.

“So far we have experienced the lowest value in the year 2015, when it was 2.1% and I am afraid that the value this year will be very close or just above that,” Chairman of the Czech Unions of hops farmers Jiří Smetana was quoted as saying by CTK on August 26.

Smetana added that weather impacts the value of alfa bitter substances, and that watering systems at hops farms could improve the situation, though even that would not lead to an optimal harvest.

Only one quarter of hop-producing sites have a built-in system of watering, CTK also pointed out. “Watering is related to sufficient water levels and this year perhaps a third of these hops sites was watered on the needed scale,” Smetana said.