Olbernhauer

The history of the Olbernhauer brewery goes back to the year 1896. The founder Karl Gerlach first brewed in the manor until the new, modern brewing facility at Blumenauer Strasse 25 was completed. After his death, the city of Olbernhau bought the building for 400,000 marks. From the entry in the commercial register in 1908, the brewery had the official name “Stadtbrauerei Olbernhau vormals Karl Gerlach”. In 1955 the brewery was nationalized. 6 years later the Neuhausen brewery was taken over. In 1968 the Olbernhau brewery was integrated into the VEB Beverage Combine Karl-Marx-Stadt. In 1972 the Rechenberg brewery was incorporated into the Olbernhauer brewery as "Plant III". From then on, bottled beer was bottled in Olbernhau and only draft beer in the Rechenberger brewery. Up to 10,000 hectoliters were brewed in record times in both breweries. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Rechenberger Brewery has been an independent family business again. Due to the lack of a bottling plant, the beer is only bottled in kegs, just like in GDR times. The smallest unit is the 5 liter party keg, which can also be bought on the Internet. In 1980 the company AF Reichel was taken over to also produce non-alcoholic drinks such as selter water, fruit juice and lemonades. These were also sold under the name "Olbernhauer". Like most GDR operations, the Olbernhauer brewery also came to the Treuhandanstalt with the fall of the Wall. In 1992 it was privatized as "Stadtbrauerei Olbernhau GmbH". But only 9 years later the company went bankrupt. Because instead of investing money in new brewing technology, as did the Rechenberg brewery in 1995, it was bogged down in dubious places. Several 100,000 DM were spent on creating a new company logo. The white horse with blond mane, which jumped through a blue square, only brought a lot of spot and teasing. In the same year Günter Tippman bought the brewery from the bankruptcy estate. In the summer of 2006 around 2 million euros were invested in a new brewhouse for the fermentation and maturation production step, as well as in filtration and bottling. In autumn 2008 bankruptcy had to be filed again. In the spring the entire brewery was sold and dismantled. The trademark rights of the Olbernhauer beer today belong to the "Olbernhauer Getränke-Vertriebs-GmbH" for short OGV. Since then, they have had the beer brewed in a brewery in Worbis in Echsfelder Land, Thuringia, according to an Olbernhauer recipe. In 2013, 1.8 million bottles were sold. In 2014, the 10,000 hectolitre limit is said to have been exceeded. This enabled the same sales to be achieved as in the Rechenberg brewery. But can the beer actually be called Olbernhauer if it is not brewed in Olbernhau, not even in Saxony? Is a smoker original Erzgebirge if it is produced in Bavaria? Everyone has to deal with that for themselves. For this reason, most of the Olbernhauer refuse the not really local beer. Despite everything, the Olbernhauer beer is represented in some restaurants and retail outlets. For example in the Sachsenland drinking paradise in Olbernhau. You can try it in the restaurant "Fuchsbau" or in the sports casino Olbernhau. The "Erzgebirgs Premium" variety is also served in Pfaffroda / Dörnthal, Forchheim andLengefeld Marienberg and many other places. The sales market extends all the way to the federal state of Brandenburg, which mostly sells draft beer. The plan to revive the brewery is still in place. The experience of brewing beer should be brought back to the people of Olbernhau and guests. At the moment, 8 different varieties with the Olbernhauer label are brewed in Worbis