However, they also differed from each other. Upon their return, they each adapted the progressive British ale-making techniques to their own lager-making, which resulted in the revolutionary Vienna and Märzen lagers.īoth brews were of medium body and, in typical Central European fashion, had plenty of malty notes. In fact, some beer historians accuse the two friends of outright industrial espionage. Dreher and Sedlmayr became interested in this new British brew and in 1833 they set off on a fact-finding mission to the United Kingdom to learn all they could about making this pale beer. This allowed for the reliable production of pale malt, which, in turn, gave rise to a new beer style, the pale ale. It dried the malt using heated air, not fire. In Britain, on the other hand, in the early 1800s, a new, indirect-fired kiln had come into use. The resulting malt tended to be rather uneven, with some kernels barely dried, and others soundly roasted, and even scorched. This is because the malt kilns in use in those days were direct-fired, with the combustion gases from the kiln’s fuel drying the malt. In central Europe, virtually all beers prior to the appearance of the Vienna, Märzen, and pilsner lagers in the 1840s were some shade of dark brown. In the United States, too, Vienna lager has found a solid following among craft beer aficionados. This may well be a result of the odd period from 1864 to 1867 when Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph of Austria ruled as Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico. Strangely, this beer style is perhaps most popular nowadays in Mexico, where somewhat bowdlerized versions are made on an industrial scale. While the Märzen beer is still fairly popular in much of the modern world, the Vienna lager is now rarely brewed, even in the city for which it is named. Both breweries were making mostly dark lagers, or dunkels, at the time. Sedlmayr was the owner of the Spaten Brewery in Munich. Dreher was the owner of the Schwechat Brewery near Vienna, which was part of his family’s vast brewing holdings, the largest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with sites from Trieste on the Adriatic to Budapest, Hungary. The concurrence of the introduction of the Vienna and Märzen lagers was no accident, because the two brewers who created these styles, Anton Dreher and Gabriel Sedlmayr, were close friends and had cooperated in their development. To put that date in perspective, the world’s first golden blond lager, the pilsner, was developed in Plzen, in the Czech Republic, a year later, in 1842. Both the Vienna lager and the Märzen were first brought to market in 1841. Vienna Lager is an amber-reddish Austrian beer style that closely resembles the golden-amber Märzen style of Munich, Bavaria.

Vienna lager beers