Franconian Beer Message Board
Drei Rittmayer Brauereien |
| Posted by Nick B. on 2012-05-29 23:25:36 |
| Not only a different beer, but a different brewery. There *were* three Rittmayer breweries within a few km of each other until some years ago when the Willersdorfer one ceased brewing and began having their beer brewed by Lieberth in Hallerndorf. So now there are the two in Hallerndorf and Aisch. The one in Willersdorf still advertises itself as a "Brauerei" with their "own beer", though when asked, they admit that it's brewed under licence by Lieberth. Still a bit sketchy practice IMO. http://www.rittmayer.com/brauerei/ says that they brew the beer themselves, but that their brewery has been converted into a restaurant. Indeed, you can sit and eat in the converted old Brauhaus, which is pretty cool. All three are related, going back to some minor nobility in the early 15th century, but they've grown apart over the centuries. There was some sort of large dust-up between the Willersdorfer and Hallerndorfer Rittmayers a century or two ago, hence Lieberth brewing the Willersdorfer beer instead of Rittmayer. Surprisingly, it has fallen to *me* to educate some locals at Roppelt's Keller, who couldn't believe that there's no active brewing in Willersdorf, and they had to go ask Franz (Roppelt) to confirm that I wasn't just making it up. Ah, I see from http://www.rittmayer.de/brauerei/ that the Earl of Kulmbach raised the family to knighthood and bestowed a coat of arms on them based on the excellence of their beer. That's pretty cool. http://www.rittmayer.com/ueber-uns/familien-chronik/ has a bit more detail, explaining that Ruprecht Rittmayer sold the brewery in Aisch to his sister in 1698 and bought the Willersdorfer brewery from Christoff Weimann for the proud sum of 690 Gulden. In 1846, the Willersdorfer Johann Rittmayer married the woman who'd inherited the Hallerndorfer brewery Starkgraff und Rauh, and so it became the latest of the three Rittmayer breweries. But I don't see anything about a quarrel between Willersdorf and Hallerndorf. IMO the helles Hausbier I had last week at Aisch was the best of the three: the Hallerndorfer Landbier and the Willersdorfer (brewed by Lieberth) Kellerbier. The latter two are nearly identical (and a bit bland compared to other pale Kellerbier(s), and the Aischer Hausbier is simply a bit richer and hoppier, but also served bayerisch Anstich, not with CO2. That helps as well. |
| Followups: |
 Drei Rittmayer Brauereien by Nick B. on 2012-05-30 00:03:51 |
| Drei Rittmayer Brauereien by Mark Andersen on 2012-05-30 05:34:15 |