Erdinger

A wheat beer brewery was first recorded in Erding, in old Bavaria northeast of Munich, in 1886. It was called the Weisse Brauhaus and it supplied the town and not much further.

It changed hands several times before Franz Brombach, by then the manager, bought it in 1935 and gave it the name it still carries. His son Werner joined in 1965 with the idea that a Bavarian wheat beer could be a national brand rather than a local one, took the brewery over in 1975, and was proved right.

It remains privately held and it brews essentially one thing. Erdinger does not license production: every bottle and can comes from Erding, and goes out to more than a hundred countries from there. The wheat beer is still matured in the bottle, which takes weeks rather than days.