Küppers Kölsch brewery
Küppers Kölsch was first brought onto the market in 1962 by the Wicküler brewery from Wuppertal - Elberfeld .
In July 1893, the company opened a branch in Brunostraße ( Cologne-Altstadt-Süd ) to sell its bottled export beer and in 1913 acquired a 4000 m² property with a siding on Alteburger Straße in Cologne-Bayenthal .
A Kölsch from the Küppers Kölsch brand was then offered from May 20, 1962. Initially, it was wage brew from the Peter Josef Früh brewery . When Wicküler began brewing Küppers Kölsch himself in Wuppertal in 1964 , the Cologne brewers successfully counteracted this: at least in Cologne, a not inconsiderable part of the "relevant public" understood the term "Kölsch" not only as a reference to a beer type, but as a such on a production of the beer in Cologne. Years later, the Cologne Higher Regional Court (6 U 17/77) also followed this view with a judgment of October 1, 1980. However, as early as 1964, Wicküler had built a brewery on the site of Alteburger Strasse 142 with a brewing capacity of 1.4 million hectoliters, which started production in 1965.
Contrary to what was usual for Kölsch up to then, Küppers Kölsch was not only bottled in barrels for restaurants, but mainly in bottles for the end consumer. Although it was denied that the top-fermented, less durable Kölsch is suitable for this, this sales channel prevailed. Until then, only about 35 percent of the beer drunk in and around Cologne was Kölsch, this proportion increased to 75 percent by 1970 and to 90 percent by 1980.
In 1990 the Küppers Kölsch brewery in Cologne was sold with the Wicküler brewery to the Dutch Grolsch brewery group and in 1994 further to the Dortmund brewery and fountain group. The facilities on Alteburger Strasse were taken over in October 2001 by the Dom brewery , which continued the production of Küppers Kölsch until 2004 as a wage brew. Since then, Küppers Kölsch has been made in the Kölscher Brewing Tradition House (formerly Kölner Verbund Brauereien GmbH) of the Radeberger Group in Bergisch-Gladbacher-Str. 116–134 brewed in Cologne-Mülheim. In 2005 the Dom brewery stopped production on Alteburger Straße. The site was sold in 2006 and has since been leveled.
Küppers was one of the first Kölsch breweries to export its beer abroad (France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands). In the mid-1980s it was the first Kölsch brewery to export Kölsch to the USA (via Fremarques Ltd. from Westport, CT).
Web links
- Koelsch-net.de
- Who brews which beer where in Cologne . ksta.de October 14, 2015