Region & History

Where does Vienna Lager come from? From Schwechat, a town just beyond Vienna's city limits. There, in 1841, Anton Dreher brewed a pale, bottom-fermented beer and let it mature for months in cold cellars. Because it lagered for so long, he called it a Lagerbier, and that word lives on as a style name to this day.

Dreher had learned new techniques on his travels to England. Back home, he built an ice cellar and, using English technology, produced a comparatively pale malt. Matured at around freezing point, the beer turned out clear, mild, and stable. It could be brewed in winter and still poured in summer. Austria's brewing industry celebrates it, for this reason, as the world's first pale lager beer.

Success drew visitors. In the late 1840s, Dreher had excursion trains of the young railway run out to Kledering, a district of Schwechat. From there, carriages carried thirsty Viennese on to his brewery inn.

In the city itself, the Ottakringer Brewery began in 1837 under the master miller Heinrich Plank, who soon went bankrupt. In 1850 the Kuffner family took over the operation and built it into one of Vienna's great breweries. Ottakringer is regarded today as the city's last independent large brewery.

There's no protected designation of origin here: no Austrian beer entry appears in the EU register, and "Vienna Lager" is an unprotected style name. Schwechater now belongs to Brau Union Österreich, a subsidiary of Heineken, and continues to brew in Schwechat.