Region & History

The beer country south of Munich has three faces. In Aying, the family-owned Ayinger brewery has been brewing since 1878, now, by its own account, in the seventh generation of the Inselkammer family. The village lies only about 25 kilometers from downtown Munich, with brewery, brewery inn and Bräustüberl all close together.

At the Tegernsee, the history runs older and more noble. The Benedictine monastery was founded in 746, and today's brewery traces its roots back to predecessors around 1050, with documented history from 1675, when Abbot Bernhard Wenzel brought brewing rights from Holzkirchen to the lake. In 1817, King Max I Joseph bought the dissolved monastery along with its brewery; today the Herzoglich Bayerisches Brauhaus Tegernsee is run by the family of the Dukes in Bavaria.

Bad Tölz on the Isar was a brewing center in the 17th century. The first known Tölz brewer, Hans der Prew, is documented about forty years before the Reinheitsgebot of 1516, and at times 22 breweries operated side by side. In summer, their beer traveled down the Isar on rafts to Munich, which had hardly any cellars thanks to its warm, gravelly ground.

What does protected origin mean here? The region doesn't have its own designation. But all breweries can invoke the EU-protected "Bayerisches Bier" (PGI, registered 2001), and Aying also lies outside Munich's city limits, so it doesn't count among the Oktoberfest breweries.

Today a handful of family-run and aristocratic breweries shape the area, alongside small brewers in Bad Tölz like Mühlfeldbräu, Binder-Bräu and Steg-Bräu. We won't give an exact total number of Oberland breweries, as the map changes too often.