Built behind the inn
Johann Liebhard took over the family farm and inn, Zum Pfleger, in 1876; the estate had been in the family since about 1810. The inn already had the right to serve beer and a butcher's shop, but no brewhouse. He began building one behind the house in 1877, with a malt house and fermentation cellars, and hauled the equipment from Sauerlach station by horse and cart because Aying had no railway of its own.
The first beer was served on 2 February 1878. Liebhard was a farmer, not a brewer, so he hired Johann Radler as brewmaster. Brewing was a winter trade then, from Michaelmas on 29 September to St George's Day on 23 April, because there was no refrigeration; the rest of the year the cellars held ice cut from the ponds. The diary entry for the first day records two customers falling over ten times on the way home.
He bought the rival Sixthof in 1897 and became the only brewer in the village. The railway reached Aying in 1904, which made the Munich trade possible. After the Zehentmair era, August Zehentmair died in 1936 and his daughter Maria Kreszenz and her husband Franz Inselkammer took over; the family bought the Platzl in Munich, opposite the Hofbräuhaus, in 1953. The present brewhouse opened in 1999.
The beer
Jahrhundertbier, 5.5 per cent, was first brewed in 1978 for the brewery's centenary and never left: a pale export, malty and soft, with a bitterness that arrives late and does not stay. It is the beer to order first here, because it explains the house. Altbairisch Dunkel, 5.0 per cent, is the older Munich style, dark, clean and dry, and the one that tastes most of the village.
Celebrator, 6.7 per cent and 18.5 degrees Plato, is the doppelbock: dark, rich, with a long malt finish and enough strength to end a meal. Kirtabier, 5.8 per cent, appears around the parish fair in autumn. Jubiläumsbier, unfiltered at 5.0, is brewed to the anniversary recipe. Bräuweisse, Urweisse and Lager Hell cover the everyday orders, and all of it is brewed with water from the brewery's own well, 176 metres down.
The brewery is small by German standards, around 90,000 hectolitres a year, and exports a good share of it. That sets the tone: the beer is brewed to be clean and consistent rather than extreme, and the range has not chased fashion. The 1999 brewhouse was built to make the same beer more reliably, not a different one, which is a more interesting decision than it sounds.
The village
The Bräustüberl at Münchener Straße 2 is the old brewery inn: low rooms, a beer garden behind, and a menu of Bavarian cooking that does not try to be a city restaurant. Roast pork, dumplings, cold cuts, cheese, a strudel. The rooms are low and the light comes in from the street; in summer the garden is the only sensible place to sit. The Brauereigasthof around the corner has rooms, which is the sensible way to do this village without watching the last train.
The S5 from Marienplatz takes about forty minutes and runs every half hour; the station is a few minutes from the Bräustüberl, and the village is small enough to cross in ten. There is a church, a brewery and not much in between, and the walk from one to the other takes less time than reading the menu. The Sixthof, the rival brewery Liebhard bought in 1897, is now a local history museum.
The Bräukirta on the second weekend of October fills the village with a beer tent, a market and a fair, and is the one day the place is busy. Otherwise, go on a weekday, walk the single street, sit in the garden, and take the afternoon train back. The brewery shop sells bottles and crates, which is cheaper than carrying them from Munich. Check the shop's hours before making the trip; the village is quiet enough that they matter.