Is it a steam fired kettle? They're not getting the wort up to 600F obviously, do you know how they were measuring the temperature?
No it is a Gas fired kettle. Most likely they are talking about the bottom of it and would not say how they were taking the temp. or go into much detail about the process. When the questions got to deep the guide sort of changed the subject or could not comment at all and smiled.
What I could get out of her was its a gas fired kettle at 600 degrees, a single malt is used and they still use a 3 step decoction that takes 3 hours to finish and it goes through a 90 min boil with just 3 hop additions but I could not get the times or amounts of hops..
As far as water is concern. Pilsner style beer is brewed all over Czech and Slovak Republic. It might be tru that Plzen has a soft water but other cities might not. Because Czech and Slovak repoblic are on continental divide water is from soft to moderate in hardness. What I am trying to say is do not loose sleep over the water and do not go crazy with destilled / RO water. After all you are making "Bohemian" beer.
I have to agree with this. I would not fuss to much over the water and worry more about the malts and hops used. My self I think I'm going to have to back down a bit on the Sazz next time around as it's a little over powering in my last batch. I normaly use 4 oz of hops but I think I'll back the flavor and aroma down by half and see what comes up. A decoction mash may be a good idea as well. The 90 min. boil has worked nicely to pull out the malt but I think adding a decoction mash will help improve the malt taste and bring out a deeper color. Well hope everyone liked the pics and info as for me I had a blast. On and no pics were to be taken so I had to do a little stelth work to get them. LOL... Darn Americans....