Paulaner, the Munich brewery and its beers

Paulaner belongs to the small circle of Munich breweries allowed to supply Oktoberfest, six in all, and its name goes back to the Paulaner friars, who brewed a strong beer in their monastery in the Au district. This guide follows the Paulaner brewery from the friars' Salvator to its modern brewhouse in Langwied, explains the best-known Paulaner beers from Hefe-Weizen to the Oktoberfest Bier, and lists the tents that serve it on the Wiesn.

Paulaner brewery history: friars in the Au

Paulaner's timeline starts with the monastery of Neudeck ob der Au. According to the brewery, the friars brewed a strong beer, kept part of it for themselves and passed the rest on to the needy or sold it in the monastery's own tavern. As more and more people in Munich bought it, the town's own brewers filed a protest with the council on February 24, 1634, against the rival in the cloister. Paulaner treats that complaint as the first written evidence of its brewery and counts it as its founding date. The city's Oktoberfest portal concludes from that year that Paulaner is the youngest of the breweries serving at the festival.

In 1751 the authorities let the friars serve the public on a feast day of their order, and according to Paulaner the Bavarian Electors were the first guests to taste the beer. Valentin Stephan Still, known in the order as Brother Barnabas, came to the monastery in 1773; his recipe, according to Paulaner, still underlies the Salvator of today. An unrestricted serving license followed in 1780. When the monastery had been dissolved, Franz Xaver Zacherl, a brewer, ran the business from 1806, modernized it and made it bigger; the brewery notes that it was often called the Zacherl brewery. In 1881 Paulaner put one of the first refrigeration machines by Carl von Linde to work, which made brewing possible all year round. A bombing raid in 1944 destroyed most of the brewery; reconstruction was finished by 1950.

Paulaner Salvator: the beer behind the strong beer season

The beer that started it all is Salvator, which the brewery's US website describes as an unfiltered, bottom-fermented Doppelbock with 18.3 percent original gravity and 7.9 percent alcohol by volume. Paulaner calls it both its most traditional and its strongest beer, says it has brewed it for more than 375 years, and stresses that no other brewery may use the name. What separates a bock from a Doppelbock, and how the friars' fasting beer turned into a whole season, is explained in Doppelbock and bock beer.

For a long time the brewery had its headquarters on the Nockherberg, a rise in the Au-Haidhausen district. According to oktoberfest.de, its inn still hosts the annual strong beer festival, where politicians are publicly roasted in a custom called Derblecken. The brewery describes a fixed gesture at the start of the festival: the head of the brewery hands the first one-liter mug of Salvator to the Bavarian minister-president. Brewing on a large scale no longer happens on the hill, but the inn has a small house brewery for seasonal beers that are only served there. The place itself is described on the German page Nockherberg, the season on Starkbierzeit.

Who owns the Paulaner brewery?

In 1979 the Munich entrepreneurial family Schörghuber took over the majority of Paulaner, and according to the brewery it has kept that majority to this day. The Dutch brewing group Heineken has had a say since 2001, first through a jointly founded holding company called Brau Holding International. After that holding was merged into the Paulaner brewery in 2017, the Schörghuber Group held 70 percent and Heineken 30 percent of the Paulaner Brauerei Gruppe, as the trade magazine Getränke News reported in July 2023.

The group includes further brands, among them Hacker-Pschorr, Auerbräu, Hopf and Chiemseer. According to oktoberfest.de, Hacker-Pschorr is brewed on the same premises as Paulaner today.

Where Paulaner beer is brewed today

The cornerstone for a new brewery in Langwied, a district of Munich, was laid in 2014. On September 15, 2015, the first beer flowed there and the brewery was officially opened. In December 2016 the management moved back into the old Zacherl building in the Au, the original headquarters. In 2016, the brewery says, it exported one million hectoliters for the first time, and Paulaner is now sold in more than 80 countries.

Paulaner beers: Hefe-Weizen, Salvator and Oktoberfest Bier

Paulaner's US website currently lists six beers: Hefe-Weizen, Münchner Lager, Oktoberfest Bier, Salvator, Grapefruit Radler and Pils. For three of them the brewery publishes original gravity and strength:

Paulaner Hefe-Weizen is brewed with wheat and barley malt. The brewery credits a technique it calls yeast suspension for the even, slightly cloudy look of the beer. Paulaner also claims a first in alcohol-free brewing: its Waitzinger Weissbier of 1986 was, by the brewery's account, the first non-alcoholic wheat beer in the world. What defines the style in general is explained on Hefeweizen.

Paulaner Oktoberfest Bier is a golden lager that, according to the brewery's US site, is brewed once a year and is the only beer served in Paulaner's tents. The published figures differ slightly: the product page and the city's tent portrait on oktoberfest.de list it at 6.0 percent alcohol from 13.7 percent wort, while muenchen.de gives 5.9 and 13.6 percent for the 2026 festival beer. Either way, about six percent. The difference between Märzen, Festbier and the American Oktoberfest style is covered in Oktoberfest beer.

Paulaner at Oktoberfest: the tents

The brewery's main tent on the Wiesn is the Paulaner Festzelt, which according to oktoberfest.de has been part of the festival since 1895 and is known for the giant beer mug on its roof. Until 2018 it was called Winzerer Fähndl; the new name was meant to prevent mix-ups with the Armbrustschützen tent, the base of a marksmen's guild that also bears the name Winzerer Fähndl. In 2010 it became the first tent with an underground ring pipeline for beer, which allows up to 15 pours per tap per minute. The city's portal lists 6,385 seats inside and 1,980 outside; since 2026 Christine and Lorenz Stiftl run it.

Paulaner's festival beer is also poured in the Armbrustschützen-Festzelt and the Käfer Wiesn-Schänke, in Kufflers Weinzelt as wheat beer until 9 p.m., and in several small tents, among them the Heinz Wurst- und Hühnerbraterei, the Münchner Knödelei and the Metzger Stubn. In 2026 a Maß, one liter or about 34 US fluid ounces, cost €15.80 in the Paulaner Festzelt and €15.90 in the Armbrustschützen-Festzelt. All tents are compared in Oktoberfest tents and Oktoberfest beer prices; dates and rules for the next festival are in Oktoberfest 2027. A liter of six percent beer is a lot: drink water in between and eat something with it.

How to find and buy Paulaner beer in the US

Paulaner runs a separate US website with its own product range and a store finder for locating retailers that carry its beers; the site is only open to visitors who confirm they are 21 or older. This page does not track shelves or prices. For a different kind of Bavarian brewery, owned by the state rather than a family, see Weihenstephaner.