Wilhelm Cürten Establishes the Uerige Brewery

On January 4, 1862, innkeeper and brewer Wilhelm Cürten purchased the Bergischer Hof on Berger Straße in Düsseldorf’s Old Town. He immediately installed a brewery in the cellars and rear buildings and began serving top-fermented beer in the public house on the ground floor. Cürten was nicknamed the “uerige Willem,” meaning roughly the grumpy or ill-tempered William in the local dialect, and the nickname became attached to the brewery itself. Uerige developed into one of the house breweries that define Düsseldorf’s modern Altbier tradition. Its continued production and service of top-fermented beer in the Old Town connect nineteenth-century urban brewpub culture with the city’s living Altbier identity.