Today is the birthday of Carl Sedlmayr (November 4, 1847-February 1, 1915). Carl was the grandson of Gabriel Sedlmayr and the third son of Gabriel Sedlmayr II. Carl’s father inherited the Spaten Brewery, along with his brother, when his father died, but Gabriel became sole owner after his brother Joseph left to start his own brewery, Franziskaner. Two of Carl’s older brothers died before their father, so when Gabriel II passed away, he and his two brothers Johann and Anton inherited the family brewery.
Spaten Brewery in Munich launched a pale lager in 1894. Their brewer at that time was Carl Sedlmayr, son of the renowned brewmaster Gabriel Sedlmayr Jr. who was an advocate of the use of the steam engine in the brewery. Along with the Austrian brewer Anton Dreher he had toured dynamic England and Scotland in 1833 and managed to gain access to a few breweries. The visitors were fascinated by the industrial methods they observed and the fact that British brewers could produce beers of consistent strength, achieved with the aid of the saccharometer. Dreher’s Schwechater Brewery in Vienna became the first to brew bottom-fermented Vienna-style lager in 1841, which soon proved very popular.
