Brewing Is Documented at the Site of Schlenkerla

By 1538, brewing was taking place at the House of the Blue Lion in Bamberg, the property at Dominikanerstraße 6 later known as Schlenkerla. The brewery’s chronology identifies Asmus Schneider as its innkeeper, cooper, and brewer that year. The house itself had been documented in 1405. Brewing may reach back to 1485, when the Vogler brothers are recorded as coopers at the property: in Bamberg, coopers traditionally also brewed beer, although their occupation alone does not establish a definite brewing start date. No founding charter is known, and Schlenkerla has no securely established foundation date. The frequently cited year 1678 refers to a documentary mention of the brewhouse as an independent property with its own brewing and serving rights. Records around that time name Martin Bachalt and Jakob Schneider as owners; they do not establish either man as the brewery’s original founder. These later records belong to the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War. Schlenkerla’s house chronicle records that Jakob Stengel bought the partially destroyed property in 1649. Matthias Trum of Schlenkerla explains that many documents were lost during the war and reissued afterward, so the later references to brewing and serving rights must be understood in that context rather than treated as evidence that brewing began in 1678. The brewery later became Hellerbräu and eventually acquired the popular name Schlenkerla through the Graser family. It preserved the traditional Bamberg practice of drying malt over an open wood fire even after smoke-free kilns became widespread. Together with Brauerei Spezial, Schlenkerla became one of the principal custodians of Bamberg Rauchbier and its distinctive smoked-malt tradition.