Brewing commune
A brewing commune was a type of brewery in which the homeowners of a town were involved. The last brewing commune still in existence is in Freistadt in Upper Austria .
history
In many high medieval towns citizens in addition to could Hofbrauhäusern and monastery breweries the right to brew gain, which was usually tied to the possession of a townhouse. The homeowners with the right to brew the beer brewed the beer in their own house and poured it alternately on specified days ("row brewing"). From the 14th to the 16th century, more efficient communal breweries replaced domestic brewing activities, with either the citizens themselves brewing the beer or brewing masters commissioned by them. Such communal breweries are still in operation in Bavaria today.
A further development was the form of the brewing commune, in which brewing facilities were no longer used alternately, but the homeowners of a city were involved in a brewery they founded. Citizens with the right to brew beer were no longer involved in the brewing process or the serving, but only received an annual “ dividend ” in the form of natural produce (beer quotas). Brewing justice was still firmly tied to owning a house in the city center.
The decline of the brewing communities took place in the second half of the 19th century, which brought increasing demand, new production methods ( refrigeration technology , bottom-fermenting yeast ), new transport methods ( railways ) and expanded sales markets. The large investments in the expansion of the brewery building and the connection to the railway network required new financing instruments and legal entities such as the newly created joint stock breweries , which were better suited for this. For example, the Budweiser Bürgerbräu brewery, which was founded in 1795, was already outstripped in sales by the Budweiser Budvar share brewery , which was founded in 1895, just 10 years after it was founded.
In recent times, some hobby breweries have referred to themselves as "brewing communes". However, these breweries no longer have anything to do with municipalities in the sense of a regional authority, rather they are about shared brewing facilities, which can be compared more with the late medieval communal brewery.
Examples
- Brewing commune Klosterlausnitz (1696–1974), Thuringia, supposedly the first brewing commune in Germany
- Braucommune Freistadt (since 1770), Upper Austria, it is considered the last of its kind in Europe (149 participating houses).
- Budweis brewing community (1795–1948) in Budweis, South Bohemia (387 participating houses).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Braukommune Klosterlausnitz - the 1st in Germany, 1696 to 1974. Retrieved on January 5, 2019.