Region & History

Since when has beer been brewed in Alsace? The earliest trace leads to Hochfelden. For the year 870, a monastic brewery belonging to the Abbey of Weissenburg is documented there, in what was then Hochhuzen.

In Strasbourg, brewing became an official trade in 1268. Brewers worked right in the heart of the city, close to the waters of the Ill. In 1746, Jean Hatt founded the Espérance brewery on Rue des Veaux, one of the early Strasbourg family breweries.

A second line comes from Hochfelden. In 1640, Jean Klein founded the Brasserie de la Couronne there, on the very site where Brasserie Meteor stands today. In 1844, the Strasbourg brewer Martin Metzger bought the business. His daughter Marie-Louise married Louis Haag in 1898, whose family had been brewing in nearby Ingwiller since 1795. Since 1925 the brewery has been called Meteor, and the Haag family still runs it today, now in its seventh generation.

Kronenbourg traces its history to 1664. That year, Geronimus Hatt, a master brewer since 1649, brewed at Place du Corbeau in Strasbourg. Because of flooding from the Ill, the brewery moved in 1850 to higher ground in the Cronenbourg district, which is where the name comes from. In the 19th century, many brewers left the cramped old town and settled in the suburbs, especially in Schiltigheim.

In 1922, the Hatt brewery renamed itself after Tigre Bock, the best-known brand of a brewery it had acquired. Since 2008, Kronenbourg has belonged to the Danish Carlsberg Group, with the brand's production site in Obernai. According to the Obernai tourist office, five companies—Fischer, Heineken, Karlsbrau, Kronenbourg, and Meteor—produce more than half of all French beer. There is no EU protected designation of origin for an Alsatian beer.