Giesinger Bräu - former new kid on the block, but now a serious player on the Munich beer scene

Sometimes just cracking open a particular bottle of beer can bring back memories, transporting the drinker back to a place, or a time that constituted a significant moment in the life of that person. More often than not though, the pleasant memories associated with a particular beer, are just that, happy thoughts of a special moment, lost in time. Quite often, opening that bottle can lead a person off in a totally different direction, as happened to me, the other evening, when I opened up a bottle that had been lurking for a while, at the back of the fridge.

The beer in question was Giesinger Märzen, a beer I acquired following a visit to Fuggles Bottle Shop, a month, or possibly more, ago, and whilst the beer itself didn’t conjure up, too many memories at first, the label on the bottle certainly did. In the end, it set me off on a trail of exploration that saw me delving into the founding, and subsequent expansion of a brewery that, for many local drinkers, is a very welcome addition to the beer scene in its home city of Munich.

Giesinger Bräu  began production in 2007, starting out in a converted double-garage, in a residential area at Untergiesing, in the south of Munich, producing around 300 hectoliters of beer. By 2009, that figure had increased to an impressive 750 hectoliters of beer, and just two years later, after hitting the magic figure of 1,000 hectoliters, the small garage brewery had reached its limit. There was no room for further expansion of the plant, and space at the cramped backyard site was completely exhausted. A new location was needed, and plans for an ambitious expansion were put in place.

None of this was known to Matthew and me, when we called in at the brewery, during a visit to Munich in the summer of 2014. We’d stopped by to pick up a few bottles, after I’d seen a few ads, plus an article informing drinkers about this welcome new addition to the Munich beer scene. We hadn’t realised at the time that Geisinger had ran out of space and were just a few months away from moving to a new site, with a greatly increased capacity. The demand for the brewery’s carefully crafted beers had become too great, and space at the garage site was simply too tight.

A few months after returning home, I read about the opening of the new brewery, with its 20 fermentation and storage tanks, compared to just four at the garage. Almost overnight, Giesinger became the second largest private brewery in Munich, with the capability of producing up to 12,000 hectoliters of beer per year - more than ten times as much as the previous site!

Inspired by what I had read, I was determined to take a closer look, so when our next visit to Munich came about, in February 2017, it was the perfect opportunity to experience what Giesinger had created in their new home. An obvious improvement on the garage site, was the provision of a combined Bräustüberl and restaurant, which would enabled us to sample some of the beers and have a bite to eat. After taking the U2 U Bahn line to Silberhorn Straße, in the south of the city, it didn’t take long to find the Giesinger Bräu complex, which occupied two levels of a building, overlooking a yard.

Virtually opposite the brewery, is the impressive Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche – the red-brick church which acts as the Giesinger Brewery logo. We sat in the bright and modern upstairs restaurant, despite having decided not to eat. This was because we would be meeting up for an evening meal, with Matthew’s friend Will, who would be flying out to Munich later that day. The food looked good, and tempting too, and this combined with the excellent beer, meant it didn’t take long for the place to start filling up.

There were around a dozen beers advertised on the board behind us, although as we discovered, not all of them were available. This included the Smoky Fox, which was a shame, as I am a big fan of smoked beers. Instead, I started with that rarest of German beer styles a Märzen which was both amber in colour and malt driven. With hindsight, memories of this beer, especially its strong malt character, did come flooding back the other night, when I cracked open that bottle. 

Back at Giesinger, Matthew went for the Feines Pilschen - an authentic Pilsner-style beer, that is unfiltered, as are virtually all of Giesinger’s beers. Next up, I went for the Dunkles and, had it been later in the day, I would probably have tried the bottled Baltic Rye Porter as well. We had a quick look at the brewery on the way out. This is housed on the ground floor, where there is also a facility for the sale of brewery merchandise, and beer for home consumption.

This could be where the story ends, but there is another, larger and even more intriguing chapter to Giesinger’s quest to become a major player on the Munich beer scene. As demand for their beers continued to increase, the company looked around for a further site that would enable them to grow further, but in a more environmentally friendly and sustainable way. This led to the construction of a much larger brewery, occupying a 4,700 square metre site in Munich’s northern suburb of Lerchenau. This opened in the summer of 2020, but with the new location compromising the Giesinger name, the previous location in Obergiesing was retained as the company headquarters.

As part of the new brewery, the company also sank a well plunging 152 metres into the ground, and costing €1m (£840,000). The well is used to extract pure Munich water, which allows Giesinger to produce Münchener Bier, a term protected under EU Law since 1998, and one which requires the use of real Munich water, rather than stuff that comes out of the tap. This expensive gesture is the first in a series of steps designed to allow Giesinger Münchener Bier to be served at Munich’s world-famous Oktoberfest, thereby breaking the 100-year-old monopoly held by the city’s big six breweries - Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbrau, Lowenbrau, Paulaner and Spaten. who have operated the event as a rather cosy cartel.

Like I said, the brewery well is just the first step in a whole series of moves necessary to achieve Giesinger’s founder, and Managing Director, Steffen Marx’s dream of pouring his own beer at Oktoberfest.  You can learn more about the obstacles he faces, the opposition to his plans, and more about the man and his brewery, by clicking on the link to this article by Will Hawkes, which appeared in the well-researched and informative, Pellicle Magazine.