Region & History

How many breweries are there in Sachsen-Anhalt? It depends on how you count: directories list anywhere from 17 to more than 30 operations. After reunification, one count put the number at just about twelve, but it later rose significantly, mainly thanks to small brewpubs.

In Halle an der Saale, the town council allowed around 200 citizens to brew brown or white beer in 1698. By around 1900, some 40 breweries were supplying the city. Five old Halle breweries, including the Feldschlößchen brewery founded in 1860, later merged into a large site that, during the GDR era, belonged to VEB Brauhaus Halle. The Böllberger Brauerei in the south of the city kept bottling until 1993, when it closed for good.

Magdeburg is home to the state capital's oldest industrial brewery. August Leberecht Bodenstein founded it on 8 August 1823 on Sieverstorstraße, and it was an early adopter of the steam engine and the ice machine. The Magdeburger Diamant-Brauhaus, founded in 1841, reached around 500,000 hectoliters a year under the GDR. The last beer rolled off the line there in 1991.

Gose, too, is part of the state's history. Brewmaster Johann Philipp Ledermann brought the recipe from Goslar and began brewing it from 1824 at the Döllnitz manor estate near Halle. From there, nineteenth-century Gose breweries supplied mainly taverns in Leipzig and Halle.

Today the situation is tough. The family-run Landsberg brewery, taken over by the Thormann family in 1996, says it ended production at the close of 2025 due to high energy costs and declining beer consumption. The Colbitzer Heide-Brauerei, founded in 1816, also became insolvent in July 2026 after its Braunschweig parent company, Hofbrauhaus Wolters, went bankrupt; according to press reports, its operations are expected to end by late 2026.

There is no EU designation of origin for any beer from Sachsen-Anhalt; Gose and Pils are simply style names. Only the hops are protected: since 2014, "Elbe-Saale Hopfen" has carried the PGI (protected geographical indication) label. Hasseröder from Wernigerode is the state's best-known brand, and its story is told in Goslar & Harz.