Region & History

Where is the brewery behind Tyskie located? In Tychy, known in German as Tichau, in the south of Upper Silesia, just a few kilometers from the castle in Pszczyna. The town belongs to a conurbation around Katowice that was shaped by coal mining.

The brewery's founding is dated to 1629. At that time it belonged to the noble House of Promnitz, who resided in Pszczyna (known in German as Pless). The Princely Brewery of Tichau, as it was then called, was a possession of the house rather than a civic or monastic enterprise. The name Tyskie Browary Książęce, which the brewery still carries today, contains the Polish word for 'princely.'

The great leap forward came in 1861, when Prince Jan Henryk XI von Hochberg had the brewery rebuilt from the ground up, equipped with a steam engine. Brewmaster Julius Müller is credited with introducing the pale bottom-fermented beer in the 19th century that still defines the brewery's reputation today.

The region's history is told in two languages. Upper Silesia long belonged to Prussia and the German Empire; after the three Silesian Uprisings of 1919 to 1921 and the division of the territory in 1922, the eastern part, including Katowice, went to Poland. Tichau became Tychy, and the Princely Brewery became the Polish brewery Tyskie.

Today Tyskie belongs to Kompania Piwowarska, which was formed in 1999 from the breweries Lech in Poznań and Tyskie in Tychy. The group passed through SABMiller and AB InBev before joining the Japanese Asahi Group in 2017. Tyskie has no protected designation of origin — it is a brand, not a beer tied to a specific place.