Spaten

The brewery takes its current name from the Spatt family, who owned it between 1622 and 1704; "Spaten" means spade in German. Gabriel Sedlmayr acquired the brewery in 1807. Under his family, Spaten helped fund the first steam engine in Bavaria in 1821 and introduced steam power at the brewery in 1844. The company introduced the Märzen in 1841, the first amber-coloured lager in Continental Europe. By 1867, Spaten had become the largest brewery in Munich. In 1873, the brewery commissioned the first continuously operational refrigeration system, designed by Carl von Linde. In 1894, Spaten became the first Bavarian brewery to brew a light-hued lager, the style now known as Munich Helles. Jacob Christian Jacobsen, one of Spaten's protégés, went on to found the Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen using Spaten yeast.

Spaten is one of the six Munich breweries that brew beer for the Oktoberfest. The brewery merged with Franziskaner-Leist in 1922, combined with Löwenbräu in 1997, and was purchased in 2003 by the company now known as Anheuser-Busch InBev for 530 million euros. By 1992, annual production had passed one million hectolitres. Spaten had opened a London branch in 1891 and begun regular exports to the United States in 1909.

The alcohol-free lager in the range has won awards, making it a natural option for sober-curious drinkers seeking a familiar German lager name.