Brey (family)

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Request from Georg Brey to the King of Bavaria to be allowed to brew ale

Brey was a family of brewers from Munich who owned the Löwen brewery from 1818 to 1872 . The family comes from Deutenhausen near Weilheim in Upper Bavaria .

Georg Brey

Georg Brey (1784–1854) moved the small brewery he had acquired in 1818 to the Löwen ( Löwenbräu ) in 1827 from downtown Munich (Löwengrube 17) to Nymphenburger Straße . As a controversial spirit, he repeatedly came into conflict with the authorities and often prevailed, which earned him the respect of other brewers. From 1830 to 1841 he was head of the Munich Brewers' Association. Documents from other important Munich brewers, such as Mathias Pschorr's apprenticeship letter from 1834, bore his signature.

Georg Brey led the brewery to economic success. Under his leadership, the brewery's production volume increased tenfold by 1851. He died on September 3, 1854 in Munich. Initially buried in the Neuhauser Friedhof, his body was reburied a year later in the family crypt in the elegant Südfriedhof .

Georg Brey was married and had two daughters and two sons. His son Ludwig Brey took over the brewery in 1851.

Ludwig Brey

Ludwig Brey was born in 1821. From 1838 he learned the craft of brewing in his father's business. In 1846 he became master brewer at the Löwen Brewery, which he took over in 1851. In the same year he married his wife Anna.

Since the full commercial freedom was achieved in Bavaria in 1868, the operation had to deal with to lease and purchase of the brewing rights to be extended. Ludwig Brey consistently followed this path. In 1863 he bought Lodererbräu , with which the brewery reached a quarter of the beer output in the city, which at that time had over 60 breweries .

In 1856 the Munich brewers exported just 2% of their beer output, almost all of which were Löwenbräu. Brey was able to increase exports in the following years. In 1857 about 17% of the beer was exported to other European countries, 66% to northern Germany, the rest to the southern German states. Until 1871, all other German states were also considered foreign countries.

In 1871, with the establishment of the German Empire, the units of measurement were also changed from bushels of malt to hectoliters . Gabriel Sedlmayr came to 134,924 hl, Brey with the Löwenbräu to 91,030 hl. Löwenbräu fell behind Spatenbräu in terms of production . In this situation, Brey withdrew from the brewery and converted the operation into a public company . To this day it is unclear whether financial problems caused by acquisitions prompted him to take this step.

Ludwig Brey remained responsible for operations as technical manager for a while, but withdrew from the business. He died on December 1, 1897 on his island in the Staffelsee , where he had retired as a privateer . He found his final resting place in the family crypt in Munich's Südfriedhof, where his wife Anna, who died in 1893, was buried.

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  • Munich City Archives

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