Schwechat Brewery Becomes A Major Industrial Lager Brewery

In 1898, the Dreher brewing business reached a new industrial scale when the Anton Dreher export brewery was founded in Saaz, now Žatec in the Czech Republic. According to the Mautner Markhof family history, the Dreher breweries then formed the world’s largest brewery group of a sole proprietorship. This development was the long-term industrial consequence of Anton Dreher senior’s work at Klein Schwechat. The brewery had become famous through bottom-fermented Schwechater Lagerbier and Vienna Lager, but its later expansion turned that technical and stylistic achievement into a large Central European brewing enterprise with sites and influence across Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary.