Story of Anton Dreher and the “Polgári Sör” Kőbányai Beer is one of the best-known brands in the Hungarian beer market. If we ask 100 consumers what beer brands they are aware of, 60 will spontaneously mention Kőbányai Sör. This name is a real legend - having quenched big thirst for almost 60 years now. It has been a tradition all over Europe for breweries to name their “basic” beer after their home town. This is how the “basic” beer of Kőbánya Brewery was named ‘Kőbányai Világos’ in 1948. And before? In the success story of Dreher beer, the year 1796 is the first significant date. This was the time when the name of the family first cropped up in the history of beer making. Franz Anton Dreher (1735-1820) bought the Klein-Schwechat municipal beer house that had been founded in 1632. The breweries of Pest and Buda settled in the nearness of the Danube river until the mid 19th century, since the river provided the water needed for unlimited beer and malt making. The attention turned to Kőbánya because of a beer made by a brewer master from Pest who studied in Munich, by the name of Peter Schmidt. Schmidt had a huge success with his beer matured in his rock cellar in Kőbánya. Later it turned out that the water found in the wells of Kőbánya by deep-drilling technology is perfectly suitable for beer making, and the cellars provide an steady cool temperature that is ideal for maturation and for storage - in other words, for the production of low fermentation temperature beer: lager. The upswing of the Kőbánya beer production attracted the attention of Anton Dreher as well, partially because these beers meant serious competition for him. He visited Pest-Buda on several occasions between 1856 and 1860 and by 1862 he was able to buy brewery of the Kobánya Brewery Company that struggled with Czech, Austrian and Bavarian competitors. He purchased further plots of land for expansion, but because of his death (1863), it was his son’s task to implement his father’s plans. Anton Dreher Jr. (1849-1920) was only 14 years old when his father died, therefore he was able to take over the leadership of the four Dreher breweries only in 1870 (Schwechat, Kőbánya, Triest, Michelob). He developed the technology and capacity of his factories, and Kobánya soon became the largest brewery of Hungary. Though other new breweries (1892: Polgár; 1894: Király; 1910: Haggenmacher; 1912: Municipal Brewery) were built one after another, they were not able to break the development of Anton Dreher’s brewery. The concern that consisted of four factories produced 1,2 million hectoliters of the foaming liquid by 1890. After World War II production restarted quickly, but the property of the family kept in Hungary was taken into state ownership in March 1948. A year later the Dreher-Haggenmacher first Hungarian Brewery Corporation was merged with the Polgár and the Municipal Brewery, with the Export Hungarian Malt Factory, and the Kanizsa Royal Brewery. This is how Dreher, with its huge history, became the Kőbánya Brewery. After the Kõbánya Brewery was converted into a shareholding company in 1992, in November 1993 it became a member of the South African Breweries (SAB), which was then the major brewer in South Africa, and the fifth largest brewing group globally. In July 1997, SAB merged its Kõbánya Brewery and the Kanizsa Brewery to create Dreher Breweries. The South African parent company and the American Miller Brewing Company were merged in 2003, and today the SABMiller group is the second biggest brewing enterprise in the world. waymarking/waymarks/WM9MEZ_Dreher_Breweries_Ltd_Budapest budapestbug.tumblr/post/107308415333/story-of-anton-dreher-and-the-polgari-sor
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 12:24:13 +0000
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