Oldest Breweries in the World

Founded as the Eagle Brewery by German immigrant David Yuengling (born Jüngling) almost two centuries ago, Yuengling is still a newcomer compared to many of its European counterparts — but it’s the oldest brewery in the United States, and so merits inclusion here. It’s also the nation’s largest craft brewery and the sixth-largest brewery overall, though the recent acquisition of Bell’s Brewery by the Asahi-owned Lion Little World Beverages, whose portfolio also includes New Belgium, might challenge those titles.

The oldest brewery in North America was established by a young Englishman named John Molson, who recognized a market for inexpensive beer in what was then a British colony. Molson went on to become a successful businessman, with a steamship line and a bank, among other enterprises. His family continued to run the business (as it does to this day), but in 2005, Molson merged with the Adolph Coors Company to form the Molson-Coors Beverage Company.

St. James’s Gate is better known by the last name of its founder — Irishman Arthur Guinness — who used an inheritance from his godfather to establish a brewery in County Kildare in 1755. Four years later, he moved operations to Dublin, where he optimistically signed a 9,000-year lease on a four-acre brewery property, for an annual rent of £45 (about $12,500 today). The lease, alas, has since been voided, but Guinness, now part of Diageo, is one of the most famous beer brands in the world.

A tavern called Den Hoorn (The Horn) opened in Leuven, east of Brussels, in 1366. Brewing its own beer, it catered in particular to hunters — the horn in question being a hunting horn. One Sébastian Artois became head brewer in 1708, buying the place in 1717 and renaming it Brouwerij (Brewery) Artois. “Stella” — meaning “star” — was added to the name in 1926, when the brewery launched a Christmastime beer. Stella’s origins are recalled by the hunting horn and the legend “Anno 1366” at the top of its logo.

Three Tuns is Great Britain’s oldest brewery, in Bishop’s Castle, Shropshire, near the English-Welsh border. It has expanded its facilities over the years, but portions of the brewery complex date from its founding (though the main building, a Victorian clock tower, was built around 1888). Pale ale is the specialty.

The Dutch city of Groenlo was known locally as Grolle, so when brewer Willem Neerfeldt started making beer there in 1615, he called it Grolsch, meaning “from Grolle.” In 1895, a brewing family from nearby Enschede, coincidentally named de Groen, bought it. Today, under the ownership of Japan’s Asahi Breweries, its main facility is in Enschede, but there is a restaurant and museum on the site of the original brewery.

Nobody knows exactly when this revered Austrian brewery was established, but a “Prewhaws” (brewhouse) on the site was first mentioned in print the year that Columbus sailed to the New World. It became known as Das Haus Bey der Stiegen — The House by the Steps — and eventually as Stiegl. By the mid-1600s, it had become Salzburg’s biggest brewery. It remains privately owned to this day.

Ladislaus the Posthumous, the mid-15th-century Duke of Austria and King of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia, granted brewing rights to the city of Laa, and beer was produced there for centuries. In 1847, Laa’s mayor, Anton Kühtreiber bought those rights and the town brewery, and his family has run it privately ever since.

Tax records mention a brewer named Hans Welser in a Munich address in 1397. His brewery changed hands frequently over the centuries and was owned between 1622 and 1704 by the Späth family — from which it took the name Spaten. In 1807, it was purchased by Gabriel Sedlmayr, former brewmaster to the Bavarian Royal Court, and he built it into one of Munich’s largest breweries. Spaten merged with Löwenbräu in 1997 and was acquired by Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2003. The brewery giant is said to be considering selling off Spaten as of late 2021.

This Bohemian brewery traces its origins back to brewmasters in Broumov’s Benedictine monastery. The original facility was lost to fire, and subsequent blazes destroyed several of its replacements. Finally, around 1712, church authorities decided to construct a new brewery outside the monastery walls. Though it has been renovated and modernized over the years, Broumov beer is still produced there.

Like many breweries whose history began in medieval times, Augustiner has monastic origins, in this case a brewery in an Augustinian cloister outside the old walls of Munich. The Wagner family from nearby Freising bought the facility in the early 1800s, and their descendents ran it until the death of the last Wagner family member in 1996. There’s still a Wagner connection, though: 51% of the brewery is owned by the Edith Haberland Wagner Foundation.

In 1266, the Lord of Myllendonk, an important German nobleman of the period, granted one Heinrich der Brauer (Heinrich the Brewer) the right to make beer at the Kraushof, or Kraus farm, in Korschenbroich. Around 1519, the brewery was taken over by the Bolten family, which gave it its modern-day name and ran it into the early years of the 21st century. The Kraushof is still its home.

Six Belgian knights, retiring from the battlefield, took holy orders in 1062, subsequently erecting a monastery and beginning to brew beer at least partially (so the story goes) because the local water wasn’t safe to drink. Their successors were expelled, and some of the buildings were razed by French invaders in 1796, but the abbey was revived around 1870. In 1956, the monks formed a partnership with a brewery in nearby Opwijk, and the brewery operation expanded. Today, Affligem is owned by the massive Dutch brewing company Heineken N.V.

Though the claim is disputed by the Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan (see below), Weltenburger calls itself the world’s oldest monastery brewery. The monastery itself is said to have been founded by two Scottish-Irish monks around 617. A brewery wasn’t added until 1050, however. Since 1973, the Weltenburger beers have been brewed (on the original site) by the Brauerei Bischofshof in nearby Regensburg. According to Untappd, Weltenburger’s Barock Dunkel is the oldest dark beer in the world.

While Weihenstephan, like Weltenburger (see above), describes itself as the world’s oldest brewery, besting its competitor by a decade, the claim has been questioned. Until the 1950s, Weihenstephan cited 1146 as its founding date. Then a document was found purporting to show that the local bishop had given the abbey brewing rights 106 years earlier — but an article in the leading German newspaper Die Zeit in 2012 says that the document “was later exposed by historians as a crude forgery from the 17th century.” The first authenticated mention of the brewery dates only from 1675. Weihenstephan counters that there is a record of hops growing in the area as early as 768, so beer must have been made there around that time. In any case, the original abbey was decommissioned in 1803, and the brewery on the site is now owned by the state of Bavaria.