First, the basics
Walk into a Czech hospoda and ask for "a beer" and you'll get one — usually the pub's světlý ležák, a pale lager, in a half-litre glass. In many traditional places you barely need to ask: sit down, make eye contact with the waiter, and a beer appears. When it's getting low, another appears.
This continues until you put your beer mat on top of your glass — the international Czech signal for "I surrender." Your tab is usually a paper slip on the table with a pencil mark for each round. Don't lose it.
The pour is everything
Here's the thing visitors miss: in the Czech Republic, how the beer is poured matters as much as what's in the barrel. A proper Czech pour has a dense, wet, creamy foam — not the sad thin fizz you get elsewhere. The foam protects the beer, and it's meant to be drunk through. Which brings us to the menu of pours:
Hladinka
Three-quarters beer topped with a smooth cap of thick foam. Order "a beer" and this is what you should get — in a good pub, a thing of beauty.
Šnyt
A smaller measure in a big glass with a generous head. Somewhere between "one more" and "I really should go." Ordering one makes you look like you know what you're doing.
Mlíko
Means "milk" — a glass of wet foam, drunk in a few gulps while it's still sweet and creamy. Sounds like a scam, tastes like a revelation.
A tiny bit of vocabulary
You don't need Czech to drink here, but a little goes a long way:
Where to try a proper pour
The gold standard is a tankovna — a pub serving unpasteurised tank beer, fresher than anything you'll get from a bottle.
That's the honest version. The full story's in the film ↑