Region & History

Where does the Karlsberg Brewery get its name? From the Karlsberg hill, at the foot of which the Jacoby brothers built a brewery in Homburg in 1858 and 1859. On May 28, 1878, the operation was auctioned off at Carl Cappel's inn. The winning bid came from Christian Weber, a wholesale merchant for imported goods, who outbid several rivals using his savings.

His descendants still run the company today, now in its fifth generation. Karlsberg has remained a family brewery ever since. Ur-Pils sells especially well in the western German states, and if you order a pilsner in the Saarland, this is often what you'll get.

Older still is the G. A. Bruch brewery in Saarbrücken-St. Johann. It traces its roots back to 1702 and is often called the oldest brewery in the Saarland. That's a claim made by the brewery itself, but it fits with a long family history. Since 2018, press reports say the brewery has faced insolvency more than once, and both the Stiefel brewhouse on St. Johanner Markt and the brewing site itself were sold off. According to press reports, Bruch beer has been brewed since 2023 at the Kirner Privatbrauerei in the Hunsrück.

In the Palatinate lies Pirmasens, home to the Parkbrauerei, which says it has been brewing since 1888. Today it also runs a site in Bellheim and counts among the mid-sized regional breweries. In the northern Palatinate, in Winnweiler, sits the private Bischoff brewery, which brews pilsner, wheat beer and specialty styles.

Neither region holds its own protected designation of origin. The EU register lists no beer from the Saarland or the Palatinate, only other German names like Kölsch or Bavarian Beer. Brewers here follow the national rules of German beer law and compete against a very strong local wine industry.