About us, history and Obazd'n

The history ...

In 724, St. Korbinian and twelve companions founded a Benedictine monastery on the Nährberg near Freising and thus, consciously or unconsciously, established the art of brewing in Weihenstephan. Because where there was a monastery in the Middle Ages, there was also brewing. Until 1040, however, the Weihenstephan monks did this in competition with the Freising monks themselves. In that year, however, Abbot Arnold succeeded in wresting the brewing and licensing rights from the neighbours. The Weihenstephan monastery brewery was founded. And there, on the Nährberg, it still stands today - after almost a thousand eventful years.

In 955, the Huns overran and destroyed the monastery. Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian (1336), the Swedes and the French in the Thirty Years' War and the Austrians in the War of the Spanish Succession also did similar things. But that was not all: between 1085 and 1463, Weihenstephan Monastery was completely burnt down four more times, destroyed or depopulated by three plague epidemics, various famines and a great earthquake in 1348. With Bavarian tenacity, however, the Benedictines rebuilt the monastery and brewery again and again, refining their art of brewing.

... the brewery

State-owned since 1803 - What all the catastrophes in the thousand-year history of the Weihenstephan monastery could not achieve was accomplished with a stroke of the pen on 24 March 1803: its dissolution. In the course of secularisation, all properties and rights of the monastery were transferred to the Bavarian state. But this did not affect the brewery. It was administered from the royal state estate of Schleißheim.

In 1852, the central agricultural school moved from Schleißheim to Weihenstephan and with it the Bavarian brewing students. In 1895 the school was elevated to an academy and in 1919 to a university for agriculture and brewing, to be merged into the Technical University of Munich in 1930. Weihenstephan thus developed into the centre of brewing technology in Germany, indeed worldwide.

After the war, the production of the time-honoured brewery grew so much that it soon became too cramped in the old buildings. The brewhouse, fermentation tanks and cellar buildings were extensively renovated and today guarantee excellent beer products with state-of-the-art technology.

Obazdn

The birthplace of the Obazdn is here in the Bräustüberl Weihenstephan. Until over 60 years ago (1920 - 1958), Mrs. Katharina Eisenreich was the landlady at the "Nährberg". She didn't know what to do with the countless Camembert loaves.

Then the chef had the idea to mix the cheese with some spices, mix in onions and refine the whole thing with a shot of Weihenstephan beer.

Ever since she put a portion of Obazdn on the table for her morning pub and snack guests to play Schafkopfen and Tarocken, it has become indispensable in Bavarian beer gardens and has also developed into a classic Bavarian bread speciality. The industrial production of Obazdn for the world market still takes place exclusively in Bavaria.