Czech beer has a long and important history. A brewery is known to have existed in 1118, Brno had a right to brew beer from the twelfth century, and the two cities most associated with Czech beer, Plzen and České Budějovice (Pilsen and Budweis in German), certainly had breweries in the thirteenth century.
Hops have been grown in the region for a long time, and were used in beer making and exported from here since the twelfth century.
In 1842 a brewery in Plzen employed Joseph Groll , a German brewer who was experienced in the new cold fermentation lager method. Their beer at the time was not of very good quality and they needed to compete. Groll developed a golden Pilsner beer, the first light coloured beer ever brewed. It became an immediate success, and was exported all over the Austrian Empire (a special train of beer was sent to Vienna every morning), and reached Paris and the US by 1874.
Originally Pilsner was a specific term for beers brewed in Plzen (with Pilsner Urquell being registered as a trademark by the first brewery, meaning "Original Source Pilsner"), and Budweiser for those brewed in Budweis (the most famous being Budweiser Budvar today). Both terms have lost their original meanings by different means, Pilsner because all the imitations of the original style (especially in Germany where the style became extremely common) used the name, Budweiser because of the American Budweiser brewery, set up by a Czech emigrant.
Czech beers are generally of very high quality. The German Reinheitsgebot was imposed when under German rule, and has been retained. Communism meant that the breweries, while nationalised, were not given funds for modernisation, so traditional methods were retained. Most beers are still Pilsners, but some wheat beer and dark lager is produced.