After 24 years as the master brewer at Budweiser Budvar Josef Tolar relinquished this role on Friday (Jan 9). He is pictured here investing his successor, Adam Broz with the Budvar master brewer’s wand of office- the thermometer used by the brewery’s first master brewer Antonin Holecek in 1895. This has subsequently been passed on, a sign of initiation to this august office, to each successive head brewer, of which Broz becomes the tenth.
The decision to relinquish the thermometer of power was Tolar’s own decision. “I have worked for the brewery since I left university in 1965” he said “and just felt that the time had come to step back from the 24./7 kind of life that’s the lot of the dedicated brewmaster”. When one considers that he has been responsible for brewing 22 million hectolitres of beer during his reign the decision becomes understandable. Tolar fans ,of which he has many in the UK, will be glad to know that he is far from disappearing from the scene, continuing as a Budvar main board member with a special responsibility for brewery development, an appointment which recognises that the production capacity of Budvar has increased three-fold under his supervision.
Nor will the change herald any reverse in the rigorous concern for the maintenance of quality and traditional brewing methods that have characterised the Tolar regime. This is because new master brewer Broz has been a pupil of Tolar’s since he graduated from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague in 1999 and since 2006 has been Tolar’s No.2
Budvar fans will be glad to hear that in accepting his new role at the initiation ceremony in the Budvar brewhouse Broz pledged to retain “ the exclusivity of Budvar by maintaining the longstanding traditions of previous generations” (ends)
