Region & History

Sauerland and the neighboring Siegerland are regarded as the beer heartland of North Rhine-Westphalia. According to a Radio Sauerland report, around 60 percent of all beer brewed in NRW comes from the Arnsberg administrative district.

Three names carry this reputation: Warsteiner, Veltins, and Krombacher. Together they're often called the Sauerland Pilsner Triangle, even though Krombach near Kreuztal technically lies in Siegerland. All three brew mainly Pilsner, and all three remain, by their own accounts, family-owned to this day.

Warsteiner traces its roots back to 1753, when Antonius Cramer brewed and sold his own beer in Warstein. In 1802 a fire reduced Warstein to rubble, and the Cramer family home burned down with it. The family rebuilt it as an inn with its own brewery, and this Domschänke still stands in the town center today.

The brewery in Grevenstein near Meschede dates back to 1824, when Franz Kramer founded it. In 1852, Clemens Veltins took over the operation, which at the time brewed around 150 hectoliters a year. Krombacher cites 1803 as its founding year: that's when Johannes Haas was first documented, having set up a brewery in his father's inn.

None of these beers carry a protected designation of origin. The EU register lists Kölsch and Dortmunder beer, but no Sauerland beer, and in Germany Pilsner is a generic term that any brewery is free to use. What ties the region together, then, isn't a legal rule but location and tradition.

Alongside the big names, smaller houses exist too. In Arnsberg, the Arnsberger Mühlenbräu brews its beer in a listed building from 1814, serving it in its own pub.