Reutberg Monastery Brewery

Klosterbrauerei Reutberg eG
legal form	Registered cooperative
founding	1677
Seat	Sachsenkam , Germany
management	Stephan Höpfl (managing director) ; August Maerz (chairman of the board)
Number of employees	16 (as of 2019)
sales	€ 4.1 million (2018)
Branch	brewery
Website	www.klosterbrauerei-reutberg.de

The Reutberg eG monastery brewery is a brewery in Sachsenkam in the Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen district in Upper Bavaria and is located next to the Reutberg Franciscan monastery .

history

The Franciscan convent was founded in 1618. The first brewery was located there from 1677, mainly for feeding pilgrims. Barley and hops were grown themselves, the water came from the monastery's own springs . In 1786 a chronicler reported the large influx of impoverished rural folk and discharged soldiers, which led to complaints from nearby Tölz , a beer town with 22 breweries at the time, that the monastery abused its concession and ran a farmer's tavern, in which beer from morning to night be served and drunk.

After secularization , the monastery was rebuilt in 1835 and granted the "foreign brewing rights ". Secular brewers now ran the brewery and outside the monastery walls a tavern was opened and the beer was sold to the public. In 1901 the brewery was rebuilt at its current location, outside the monastery, but in 1904 it proved to be too small and did not meet the technical requirements of the time, which prompted the Franciscan Sisters to give up brewing . Due to the indignation of the population, the Ordinariate withdrew this decision and from then on leased the brewery and tavern. In 1906 this brewery was refurbished and modernized, for example with a refrigerated ship and modern grist mill, from 1913 with electric lighting and bottling .

However, the First World War and inflation hit the brewery hard. Under the priest Alois Daisenberger, farmers from Sachsenkam, Reichersbeuern and Greiling planned the establishment of a brewery cooperative in 1924 to give the locals access to affordable beer. On October 23, 1924, the monastery brewery Reutberg eG was founded by 42 comrades. Already in the first year the brewery produced an output of 3,364 hl and increased the number of members to 150 members, by 1929 the output rose to 9,000 hl.

Lauter tun and brew kettle

At the outbreak of World War II , the annual output was 12,000 hl of beer. After the war, the Weißen Bräu Bad Aibling was bought in 1950, and in 1953 the property of today's Reutberg-Stüberl in Bad Tölz. Production continued to rise and in 1968 reached an output of 35,000 hectoliters. In the 1960s a new storage cellar, a new empties hall and a bottle filling plant were built. In 1968, the production of non-alcoholic beverages, which reached 11,300 hl in 1974, began. The number of members of the brewery cooperative exceeded 2,000.

But mismanagement also meant a temporary decline. In order to avoid being taken over by a large Munich brewery , a merger with a Holzkirchner brewery was planned, but this could still be averted in 1987, for which Hans Kappelsberger was primarily responsible, whom Munich-based Merkur called "savior of Reutberg" when he died in 2017 . After the massive death of the brewery in Bad Tölz and the surrounding area from the 19th century, the Reutberg monastery brewery was temporarily the only remaining brewery in the district from 2005 and is still the last historical brewery today. The water still comes from its own sources, while the hops from the Hallertau .

In 2018 the brewery achieved an output of around 21,400 hl of beer. Automated barrel and bottle filling is done by hand in Reutberg; automated bottle filling has been carried out at the Aying brewery since 1991 . In 2017, the brewery invested in seven new stainless steel tanks to complement the aluminum tanks. Brewing is still done in the lauter tun and brew kettle made of solid copper from 1937.

2017 was the cooperative monastery brewery Reutberg from 5230 comrades, including Ilse Aigner and Friedrich Merz . The output in 2017 was more than 22,000 hl of beer, with twelve types. "Two to three shipping containers" are shipped to Santa Monica in the USA every year and from there mainly distributed in California. In 2018 the brewery was used as a filming location for the Hubert and Staller series (episode: female, evil, dead ).