A brewery against wine
Until the seventeenth century the court of the prince-provost bought its beer from Kaltenhausen, near Salzburg, because there was no brewery in the valley. An inquiry in 1614 found that the population drank mainly imported wine, which was expensive and left the money outside the territory. Beer, brewed at home, was the cheaper and more patriotic answer. For a small territory that was a statement: the prince-provost was buying independence from Salzburg's beer.
In 1645 Prince-Provost Ferdinand of Bavaria acquired the Preustat zu Pfister, below the royal castle, and built the Hofbräuhaus there. The brewery is documented from 1610, so a brewhouse already stood on the site; what Ferdinand added was the court's own works, with the right to supply the territory. The Hof in the name dates from that arrangement. The site has not moved since; only the buildings are younger.
Output at the time was around 7,000 hectolitres a year, which for a valley of a few thousand people was a serious industry. The brewery also bought two beer houses with the property, one of them the Bier Adam on the Marktplatz, which is still pouring. That is how a brewery works in a small place: it owns the taps. The Bier Adam is older than the brewery that bought it: it appears in a purchase letter of 1546.
Private since 1808
The prince-provost's territory was secularised in 1803, and the brewery passed to Austria in 1805. In 1808 it was auctioned. The buyer was Anton Wurm, a hop merchant, and the brewery stayed with his family until 1833. Then came Haller and Wannerstorfer, and the Wannerstorfers held it, through changes of name, until 1970. The brewery has been privately held ever since, which is unusual for a house with a Hof in its name.
Rudolf Kriß senior rebuilt the brewery and the Bräustüberl in 1906 and 1907, and the buildings have survived almost unchanged; 1910 is given as the founding year of the pub as it stands today. Thurn und Taxis bought the business in 1970, Spaten-Löwenbräu held it from 1989 to 2008, and since then it has belonged to Sedlmayr Grund und Immobilien and the managing director. The Wannerstorfers had run it for more than 130 years by then, and the sale ended that.
None of this shows in the glass, and that is the point of a valley brewery. It stayed small enough to belong to the place, kept buying malt and hops as a house of its size does, and kept the same beer in the same pubs. Almost every Wirtshaus and Alm in the five communes pours it, and there is a folk song about exactly that. The delivery radius is the valley and a little beyond, which is why the beer tastes fresher here than in a city.
The beer and the room
The core is Helles and Dunkel, with a Pils, a Festbier in autumn and a Böckei, a Christmas bock, in Advent. There is a Königsseer Helles for the lake end of the valley, a Radler, and a Pfiff. Judge the brewery by the Helles: pale, softly bitter, and built to be drunk in quantity after a walk. The Helles is the one you will see on every table in the valley.
The Bräustüberl next door, at Bräuhausstraße 13, is the room that belongs to the beer. Walter Bankhammer took it on in 2002 and closes it on 3 January 2027, which is worth knowing before you plan an evening around it. Until then it is the best place in town to drink this beer where it is made. The Bankhammers are moving back to their two houses in Salzburg, which is where the regulars will follow.
The brewery shop sells bottles and crates, and the beer travels no further than it has to. In a valley where the same beer is in every pub, the difference is freshness and the view: a Helles at 600 metres, with the Watzmann in front of you, is a different drink from the same bottle at home. The shop also sells glasses and the usual brewery merchandise, which is useful if the Helles grows on you.