Origins The origins of the Bavarian State Brewery Weihenstephan date back to the 720s, when a church dedicated to
Saint Stephen was founded in Freising. Near this church,
Saint Corbinian established a monastic cell. During the Middle Ages, beer was brewed in monasteries such as this one, and the brewing process was studied and further developed. Hop cultivation in the area surrounding the monastery can be traced back to the year 768. The name
Wihanstephane was first mentioned in a document issued by
Emperor Henry II in the year 1003, which described the Hungarian incursions of 909 and 955, during which the monastery was damaged. which is considered to be a forgery. The document links the brewery’s origins to a legal dispute from 1429 over wine-selling rights between the town of Freising and the monastery, which the monastery won. This event, originally well-documented in a 116-page legal manuscript, was retroactively reinterpreted by Abbot Georg Tanner between 1616 and 1640. He falsely claimed that Bishop
Otto I of Freising had transferred brewing and serving rights to the monastery in 1146, moving the events back by three centuries. The forgery was later published in the
Monumenta Boica in 1767. The document names Bishop Egilbert of Moosburg, who died in 1039, as the brewery’s founder, implying an even earlier origin. Abbot Arnold, who served from 1022 to 1041, is also frequently cited as having acquired the brewing rights, though no primary sources confirm this. Numerous records of hop tithes from the monastery's estates in the Hallertau region, documented in a charter from the mid-13th century, suggest that brewing activities in Weihenstephan may have begun earlier. Hop gardens in the Freising area have been mentioned since the 9th century, and a brewhouse in Freising is documented as early as 1160. Comparable evidence of monastic brewing from similar periods exists at the monasteries of St. Columban on
Lake Constance (7th century),
St. Gallen (10th/11th century), and
Tegernsee (9th century or earlier). The first officially recognised written evidence of a brewery in Weihenstephan dates from 1675, in the form of an electoral confirmation document, which was also presented to an investigative commission in 1723.
State brewery from 1803 The
Weihenstephan Monastery was dissolved in 1803 as part of the
German secularisation in Bavaria. The brewery that existed at the time became the property of the Bavarian State and operated under the name
Königlich Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan (Royal Bavarian State Brewery Weihenstephan). Around the same time, a central school was established in Weihenstephan, which also included the brewery. The central school was closed in 1807 and re-established in
Schleißheim in 1822, before being relocated back to Weihenstephan in 1852. Under his leadership, several expansions and modernisations were carried out in the following years. In 2003, the fermentation cellar for top-fermented beers was extended, and in December 2011, the brewery commissioned a new storage cellar equipped with 15 fermentation and maturation tanks. In 2017, construction began on a new logistics centre in Clemensänger (Freising), covering a roofed area of 10,700 square metres. The relocation of logistics was prompted by a lack of space on the Weihenstephan Hill. Before the new centre was built, this space shortage was temporarily managed by a service provider in
Unterschleißheim, from where the products were assembled, packaged and shipped. The construction of the Clemensänger logistics centre was completed at the end of May 2019, after a two-year building phase. It is the largest construction project in the brewery’s history, with an investment of approximately €16 million. In 2021, a larger dealcoholisation unit was acquired for the production of alcohol-free beers. During the
COVID-19 pandemic, the brewery temporarily produced
disinfectant for dentists in Bavaria using the
ethanol generated during the dealcoholisation process. From March 2023 to July 2024 a combined cellar housing 24 tanks and a yeast collection tank was constructed. The tanks, which can be used for fermentation, storage, and as pressure vessels, are each between 12 and 13 metres tall and hold between 680 and 1,040 hectolitres. == Corporate structure ==