Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu Glauner GmbH & Co. KG

In the courtyard of the Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu brewery there is an old sign which says: "Emil stop!”. It originates from the time when beer was still delivered by horse and cart. In those days it was customary for the drayman to be served a glass of beer "as a refreshment" at each stop on his way. This sign was put up in order to help our "refreshed" driver Emil to pull his cart to a halt at the right place in the brewery yard for refilling. Because if he had drunk too much of the good brew and was not able to stop at the sign, that would certainly have been his last shift of the day! Still, it would be interesting to know whether Emil's horse ever learned to stop at the sign by itself…

The time-honoured monastery of Alpirsbach, which lies embedded between the green hills and woodlands of the Black Forest, could tell us a lot of quite different tales. For instance of Johann Gottfried Glauner, who decided in the year 1877, in the light of the forthcoming railway line and in anticipation of the increasing number of visitors it would bring, to put the local, closed-down brewery, back on its feet. He sent his son, Karl Albert, to Weihenstephan in Upper Bavaria to learn the skills of beer brewing. Karl returned in 1880 as a master of his trade and with all the energy of his young years, determined to brew "the best beer far and wide". It was indeed a beer destined to outlive its numerous local competitors. To this day the Alpirsbacher beers have lost nothing of their popularity... and the Glauner family continues to brew their excellent beer in Alpirsbach in the fourth generation.