Augustiner Stammhaus: Munich's Oldest Brewery Name

Why is it significant?

Stop in front of the tall facade with the painted gable and the deep arched doorway, and take a breath through the door. That warm smell of crackling pork, malt and wood is the Augustiner Stammhaus, the home tavern of the brewery that most Münchner, if you push them, will name as their favourite.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stop in front of the tall facade with the painted gable and the deep arched doorway, and take a breath through the door. That warm smell of crackling pork, malt and wood is the Augustiner Stammhaus, the home tavern of the brewery that most Münchner, if you push them, will name as their favourite.

The story begins with monks. In 1328 the Augustinian friars, whose monastery stood a little further east along this very street, are recorded brewing beer, and the Augustiner brewery counts its history from that year. That makes it the oldest of Munich's great brewery names. When Bavaria dissolved the monasteries in 1803, the brewery passed into secular hands, and it has stayed independent ever since. The friars' church is still there, by the way, a few steps away... it now houses the German Hunting and Fishing Museum.

Now for the law every Bavarian brewer still talks about. Munich already had its own beer regulation in 1487. Then in 1516, in Ingolstadt, the Bavarian dukes Wilhelm the Fourth and Ludwig the Tenth decreed that beer could contain only barley, hops and water. Today it is called the Reinheitsgebot, the purity law. Yeast is missing from the list for a simple reason: nobody yet understood what it was. And part of the point was bread... keeping wheat and rye for the bakers rather than the brewers.

The building you see was rebuilt at the end of the nineteenth century, when the brewing itself moved out to a larger site west of the centre. Inside are panelled halls, a courtyard with arcades and a little beer garden squeezed between the shops of one of the busiest pedestrian streets in Germany. Look at the tables: Munich families, office workers, and men in loden jackets who have sat at the same table for decades.

There is one more local legend. Augustiner is famous for doing almost no advertising, and people here like to say that the beer sells itself. Order a Helles and judge for yourself. Then cut south through the narrow lanes of the Hackenviertel to Sendlinger Straße, where a church is squeezed between the houses like a jewel box.