Augustiner Bräu is Munich’s oldest brewery. Founded as an Augustinian monastery in 1294, the site has been a brewery at least since 1328. The original brewing license allowed the monks to make beer for their own consumption as well as to sell it tax exempt for profit. The brewery remained in monastic hands until 1803, when Napoleon Bonaparte forced all church holdings in Bavaria to be passed into the hands of local secular authorities, and the Augustinian monastery became the property of the State of Bavaria. In March 1829, Anton and Therese Wagner purchased the dormant Augustinian brewing license and turned the brewery into a private commercial enterprise. Today, four of the six major Munich beer brands (Spaten, Löwenbräu, Paulaner, and Hacker-Pschorr) are wholly or partially owned by international brewing concerns, and the Hofbräuhaus is owned by the State of Bavaria. Only Augustiner is still independent. It is a closely held corporation, majority owned by the Edith-Haberland-Wagner Foundation, a charitable trust set up in 1996 by the last Wagner heir, a great-granddaughter of the founder. Augustiner is also unique in others ways: the brewery does not advertise at all and, unlike most other German breweries, it does not make light or low-alcohol beers or any sorts of beer mixes. In its brewery vaults, it still has a rare 19th-century floor-malting operation, which contributes pale malt to several of its eight classic Bavarian beers. Finally, much of its draught beer is still dispensed from traditional wooden casks, even at the annual Munich Oktoberfest. These unorthodox business practices have made Augustiner-Bräu a modern paragon of Munich’s vibrant, traditional beer culture.
Postcard, c. 1920, depicting the Augustiner Bräu brewing complex. On-site brewing operations date back to at least 1328. pike microbrewery museum, seattle, wa
