Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan
Brewing began at what would become Weihensephan Monastery Brewery about a thousand years ago, when Abbot Arnold received a license from the city of Freising to brew and sell beer. Built on a tradition that had begun at the Benedictine Monastery almost 300 years earlier, it was the beginning a long brewing legacy amid challenges that lasted centuries.
Between 1085 and 1463 the Weihenstephan Monastery burned down completely four times and was destroyed or depopulated by three plagues, various famines and an earthquake. Each time, the monks rebuilt the monastery and brewery and continued refining their brewing art. What these natural disasters could not take away, the state did in 1803 when, in a wave of secularization, it dissolved the monastery and confiscated all its possessions and dissolved all rights. The brewery, however, remained and continued under secular supervision.
In 1852, Bavaria’s Central Agricultural School and its brewing students moved to Weihenstephan. The school became the University of Agriculture and Brewing in 1919 and then the Bavarian State Brewery Weihenstephan two years later. By 1930, it was incorporated with the Technical University of Munich and became the center of world brewing technology.
Weihenstephan today is the oldest brewery in the world, yet it is also one of the most modern, with a unique combination of tradition and state-of-the-art science contributing to its top-quality brews, such as Weihenstephaner Original (Munich Helles Lager), Korbinian (Doppelbock), Kristall Weissbier, Hefe Weissbier, Hefe Weissbier Dark, and Vitus. (www.brauerei-weihenstephan.de)
