Region & History

How old is Salzburg beer? For the Stiegl brewery, the story begins in 1492: that's when Hans Peuntner bequeathed his brewhouse "auf der Gstätten" to his son's widow, and the deed records it for the first time. The brewery takes its name from the Stieglein, a small staircase that once led down to the water. Today Stiegl is considered Austria's largest private brewery and has belonged to the Kiener family for more than 120 years.

Hallein goes back even further. There, in 1475, the Salzburg merchant and mayor Hans Elsenheimer founded a brewery in Kaltenhausen that later became known as Hofbräu Kaltenhausen. Today it belongs to Brau Union Österreich, part of the Heineken group. The Kaiser beer brand was once brewed there, though main production later moved to Zipf and Wieselburg.

A turning point came in 1605. Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau brought Augustinian hermits from Munich to Salzburg, and with the monks came the art of brewing. At Kloster Mülln, beer has been brewed since 1621; in 1835 the Benedictine abbey of Michaelbeuern took over the operation. Walk through the gate today and you're standing in one of the last great monastery brewery taverns in the Alps.

Out in the countryside, a third path emerged. In Obertrum am See, beer has been brewed since 1601. In 1775, Josef Sigl, a hop merchant from Perlesreuth near Passau, acquired the inn along with its brewing rights. The family has run the business as Trumer Privatbrauerei ever since, now in its eighth generation.

There's no protected designation of origin for Salzburg beer the way there is for Kölsch; in fact, not a single Austrian beer appears in the EU register. What ties Salzburg beer together, then, isn't a legal framework but the close neighborhood of monastery, city brewery, and country brewery.