Augustiner-Bräu Traces Its Founding To 1328

Augustinian friars began settling on the Haberfeld outside Munich’s gates in 1294, and their monastery was completed within the city walls in the early fourteenth century. Augustiner-Bräu uses 1328 as its founding year and states that the monastery brewery was first mentioned by name in that year. The precise documentary basis for 1328 has nevertheless been questioned. One traditional explanation connects the date to an unconfirmed account that, after Munich’s great fire of 1327, the bakers’ journeymen’s brotherhood transferred its meeting place from the destroyed Holy Spirit Hospital to the Augustinians’ tavern. Brewing at the monastery is securely documented by 1411. On the basis of its traditional founding date and continued history, Augustiner-Bräu is regarded as Munich’s oldest surviving brewery and one of the city’s oldest continuing commercial enterprises.