A complaint, a strong beer and a feast day.

Paulaner takes its name from the Paulaner Order, the friars known elsewhere as the Minims, who were founded by Francis of Paola in southern Italy. German Wikipedia says the order took over the monastery of Neudeck ob der Au, in what is now Munich’s Au district, in 1627–29. The friars brewed for themselves, and the date the brewery counts as its founding is 24 February 1634: on that day, the company says, Munich’s civic brewers complained to the city council about competition from the monastery, which had begun selling its beer. The letter is the first document in the brewery’s history.

The beer the friars became known for was a strong beer for Lent, today’s Salvator. In 1751 they were officially allowed to serve it in public on the feast of their founder, and, the company says, they invited the Elector of Bavaria to take the first sip. The custom survives: at the start of the spring strong-beer season the head of the brewery hands the first litre of Salvator to the Bavarian minister-president. English Wikipedia, citing the Süddeutsche Zeitung, says the name grew out of “Sankt Vater Bier,” the holy father’s beer. In 1773 a friar from the Amberg monastery, Valentin Stephan Still, known as Brother Barnabas, became brewmaster; the company says his recipe is still the basis of Salvator.

The monastery was dissolved in 1799, during the secularisation of Bavaria, and in 1806 the brewer Franz Xaver Zacherl took over its brewery and carried on the Salvator tradition. After Zacherl, German Wikipedia says, citing a 1984 company history, the business passed to the Schmederer family as the Gebrüder Schmederer Aktienbrauerei, and in 1861 the Salvatorkeller opened on the nearby Nockherberg. The name Salvator was entered as a trademark in Berlin in 1896, and the firm became the Paulaner-Salvator-Brauerei. A 1928 merger with the Thomas brewery made it Paulaner Salvator Thomas Bräu.

Oktoberfest tents, a new brewery and a family owner.

Paulaner is one of the six Munich breweries that supply the Oktoberfest, according to Conrad Seidl in The Oxford Companion to Beer. It serves three of the large tents, including its own Paulaner Festzelt, the Winzerer Fähndl, which was rebuilt for the festival’s 200th anniversary in 2010; the company says it was the first beer tent supplied by a central pipeline buried in the ground. Bombing in 1944 destroyed most of the brewery, and it was rebuilt by 1950, the company says.

The ownership that shapes Paulaner today dates from 1979, when the Munich Schörghuber family took a majority stake. German Wikipedia says Schörghuber took over both Paulaner and Hacker-Pschorr that year and bundled its brewing interests into a holding company, which in 2001 formed a joint venture with Heineken called Brau Holding International. On 4 July 2017, the company announced, Paulaner Brauerei was merged with that holding company to form the Paulaner Brauerei Gruppe, which German Wikipedia says is 70% owned by Schörghuber and 30% by Heineken International. The group also includes Hacker-Pschorr, Hoepfner and Fürstenberg, and a majority of the listed Kulmbacher brewery.

Paulaner beer is brewed in Munich, in a new brewery in the Langwied district. The foundation stone was laid in 2014; the company says the first beer was bottled there on 15 September 2015, and German Wikipedia says full production moved there in February 2016. In December 2016 the administration returned to the old Zacherl building in the Au. The company says its hops come mostly from the Hallertau, its malt from the area around Munich and its water from deep wells, and that it keeps its own yeast. In 2016, it says, it exported one million hectolitres for the first time, to more than 80 countries. It also bought Oettinger’s brewery in Gotha from the start of 2023, German Wikipedia says, citing Bayerischer Rundfunk.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all German beer brands: Beck’s, Krombacher, Warsteiner, Bitburger, Paulaner, Erdinger and Radeberger. German beer brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to much larger brewing and drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket shelf.

A beer brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a bottle, a label, a name and the town it comes from, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its beer is actually brewed and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its beer is brewed and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A slogan, a garden and a strong-beer stage.

Paulaner’s voice has been steady for six decades. German Wikipedia says its slogan, “Gut. Besser. Paulaner.” (Good. Better. Paulaner.), was coined in 1964 by Dieter Hanitzsch. Its long-running TV series Geschichten aus dem Paulanergarten, short spots staging improbable beer-garden scenes, featured the sports presenter Waldemar Hartmann and the former goalkeeper Oliver Kahn, and German Wikipedia says the format gave German social-media slang the word “Paulaner” for a story that sounds made up.

The brewery’s biggest stage is the Salvator-Probe on the Nockherberg, the opening of the spring strong-beer festival, where a speaker in the role of a lenten preacher and a satirical musical poke fun at Bavarian politicians. German Wikipedia says Bayerischer Rundfunk has televised excerpts since 1982 and broadcast it live since 2009. Packaging has also looked back: since early 2021, German Wikipedia says, Münchner Hell has again been sold in the Euro bottle and a red retro crate. The range runs from wheat beers and Munich lagers to Salvator and the seasonal Oktoberfest Bier, and the company says it brewed the first alcohol-free wheat beer, the Waitzinger Weisse, in 1986. In Germany it also sells Paulaner Spezi, a cola-and-orange soft drink whose name, German Wikipedia says, it licenses permanently from the Augsburg brewery Riegele; the drink is called Paulaner Sunset in the United States.

For a design guide, Paulaner shows how a brewery can keep a monastic founding story, a feast-day ritual and a single slogan in use for generations while its ownership changes around it. Compare the Erdinger brand guidelines, another Bavarian wheat-beer name, and the Stiegl brand guidelines from Salzburg; for lettering, see what font Paulaner uses. For this guide we use monastery blue, Salvator gold and wheat cream with a classical serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Paulaner’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.