Budějovický Budvar is a brewing company based in České Budějovice that presents on its website the development of brewing in the town from 1265 as its history.
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Budějovický Budvar is a brewing company based in České Budějovice. In the history section of its website it gives 1265 as the beginning of the brewing tradition in the town, the year in which King Ottokar II of Bohemia founded České Budějovice and granted its inhabitants a number of privileges, among them the right to brew beer.[1]
The mile right
On 4 May 1351 King Charles IV granted the inhabitants of České Budějovice the so-called mile right. From then on no outside inns were allowed within a radius of about ten kilometres of the town.[1] On 20 June 1410 King Wenceslaus IV extended this right so that no outside malthouses, breweries or craft workshops were allowed to operate within one mile of the town either.[1] In 1464 the burghers also enforced observance of the mile right by force of arms and abolished the outside malthouses and breweries around the town.[1]
Founding of the municipal brewery
After lengthy negotiations with the burghers, the České Budějovice town council was able in 1495 to build its own brewery, called the Great Brewery. Under the agreement with the burghers, this brewery brewed white wheat beer, while individual burghers continued to brew dark barley beer themselves.[1] In 1532 King Ferdinand I, King of the Romans and of Bohemia, praised the special quality of the bread and beer produced in Budějovice.[1] In 1547 Ferdinand I ordered the people of Budějovice to send a local brewer with his family to his imperial court in Augsburg, to brew beer directly for him.[1]
The Small Brewery and property disputes
From the beginning of the 18th century the burghers sought the right to brew beer, which had belonged to them under the agreement since 1495. The town council granted them this right in 1722, but they had to stop brewing beer in their own houses. For this purpose they bought a brewery house from the brewer Matěj Konvička and set up the so-called Small Brewery. The town council, however, declared the building its own property, so from then on the town owned two breweries, the Great Brewery at the Rožnov Gate and the Small Brewery at the corner of Karla IV. and Kanovnická streets.[1] The dispute over ownership continued until 1795, when the town handed both breweries over to the burghers and the so-called Burghers' Brewery came into being.[1]
Relocation of the brewery and export abroad
The equipment of the two original breweries gradually could not keep up with the growth in beer production, despite repeated reconstructions. In 1847 it was decided to build a new cooling cellar in the Linz suburb, and in 1851 and 1852 a new brewery was built there.[1] In 1872 the export of beer from České Budějovice to the United States of America began, where European emigrants, in their own words, had brought a taste for beer from the old homeland.[1]