Brauerei Beck & Co.

Brauerei Beck & Co.

Am Deich 18-19
2800 Bremen 01
Germany
(421) 509 40
Fax: (421) 509 46 67

Private Company
Incorporated: 1873
Employees: 4,257
Sales: DM 1.30 billion (US$762 million)
SICs: 2082 Malt Beverages

Brauerei Beck & Co. is the world’s largest exporter of beer, accounting for more than one-third of the total exports of the beverage from Germany. Sold in 140 countries, the company’s products have long been the most widely recognized beers from a nation known for its breweries. Indeed, Beck’s beer cases are labeled with the phrase “Found on Five Continents.” Even in its highly competitive German home market, Beck’s claims the highest brand awareness and largest distribution of any beer. The privately held firm also benefits from holdings of glass manufacturing concerns and a bottling concession with Coca-Cola Co.

The original breweries that today comprise the corporate entity of Beck & Co. have roots that reach back to medieval times in Bremen, a major port on the Weser River. The city-state of Bremen was an important member of the Hanseatic League, a powerful federation formed by German merchants in the Middle Ages for trading and defense. Bremen’s merchant class tightly controlled Northern European shipping and commerce for two centuries and influenced it for many more.

One of the largest exports out of the Bremen harbor during the Middle Ages was beer from the city’s breweries, of which there were more than 300. As early as the thirteenth century, this beer was exported to Scandinavia, England, and Holland, and in 1489 the city’s breweries formed the Bremen Brewers’ Society to regulate the production and export of the beverage. As foreign markets clamored for Bremen’s beers in subsequent centuries, competition increased, and only the brewers whose products consistently withstood long sea journeys survived. By 1870 only 30 of the original 350 members of the Bremen Brewer’s Society remained, including the Beck Brewery, which had altered the chemical formulation of its beer to produce a heavy barley ale that survived the rigors of the trade routes. Until modern brewing technology was developed in the nineteenth century, this type of ale was a standard Beck product.

In the late nineteenth century, prominent Bremen business leader Lueder Rutenberg incorporated the company that is today known as Brauerei Beck & Co. after the Beck brewery was merged with two other local breweries, Bierbrauerei Wil-helm Remmer and Hemelinger Aktienbrauerei. In 1921 Beck & Co. formed a cooperative agreement with another Bremen brewery, the Brauerei C. H. Haake & Co. Control of the market was divided between Beck & Co. and Haake, with Brauerei Beck & Co. agreeing to produce beer for the export market under the brand name of Beck’s, while Haake-Beck Brauerei AG would sell its products under the names Haake-Beck, Remmer, and Hemelinger in the domestic German market. Haake-Beck Brauerei was later made a subsidiary of Beck & Co., making Brauerei Beck the largest privately owned brewery in Germany.

The location of Beck & Co. in the port city of Bremen contributed to its success and played an influential role in many outward aspects of the firm. Bremen’s status as a major player in North European commerce facilitated Beck’s delivery to several foreign ports. The reputation of the Bremen brewers solidified the beer’s potential to hold and maintain increasing shares of foreign markets. Although the beer was at first shipped in the traditional barrels, Beck & Co. began exporting bottles sheathed in straw and packed in weighty wooden crates to withstand high seas.

In its advertising Beck & Co. features an important aspect of its history—the Reinheitsgebot, or Purity Law, enacted by the Bavarian Court of Duke Wilhelm IV in 1516. The law specified that only malted barley, yeast, hops, and water could be used in beer brewed in Germany for the German market. German beer exporters stress this law in citing the long tradition of excellence of German beers, but not all brew their export beer in compliance with the statute. All of Beck’s beers, according to the company’s literature, contain only hops grown in the nearby Tettnag and Hallertau regions, water from Geest-area springs and the reservoirs of the Harz mountains, and a particular strain of yeast cultivated for decades by the brew masters at the Bremen plant.

Each year the city of Bremen holds the Schaffermahl, a formal dinner held in mid-February that dates back to the sixteenth century when the Haus Seefahrt Foundation established the gathering to raise money for needy sailors. Prominent guests gather in the city hall, smoke traditional white clay pipes, and dine on a meal of dried fish and smoked pork. The most important part of the dinner, however, is the beer brewed by Beck & Co. especially for the occasion and drunk from pewter tankards. This is a version of the company’s original Seefahrts-bier, the extremely strong quaff that could withstand long sea voyages.

The evolution of lager beers (“lager” being German for “to store”) was spurred by technological developments, including research into yeast cultures and fermentation as well as the invention of refrigeration. In bottom-fermented beer, the yeast sinks to the bottom, which makes for a clearer beer that is less likely to sour, but which needs to be stored and cooled longer than top-fermented ales. Beck & Co., like the other major German breweries, began producing lager beers late in the nineteenth century.

Because of its chemistry, beer had a relatively short shelf life, until modern brewing and storing methods improved matters. Beck & Co. has continually invested in state-of-the-art brewing facilities, applying technological innovations to improve product quality. For instance, Beck & Co. managed to greatly reduce the oxygen count of its product to give it a longer shelf life. Beck & Co. was also one of the first breweries to use the modern keg. These have been improved by using stainless steel containers as well as a hygienic tap system that helps lengthen the amount of time beer can be stored and reduces the risk of contamination involved in pouring draft beers.

Today Beck & Co. is the last brewer remaining in the city of Bremen. However, the brand name of Beck’s is found only on bottles exported out of Germany; the company’s Haake-Beck, Remmer, and Hemelinger lines are brewed specifically for domestic consumers. These three brands retain their vestigial names to help differentiate them in a large and diverse home market and remind drinkers of Bremen’s long brewing history. Each of them, while targeting different domestic markets, also represents a distinct product, reflecting the dissimilar tastes of Germans for their beer. Haake-Beck’s beer is distributed throughout all of Germany, while the Hemelinger and Remmer brands are part of the tradition of local specialty beers found in and around Bremen. Also carrying the Remmer brand name is a light beer with a lower alcohol and calorie content that is distributed throughout Germany.

On the international market, Beck & Co. attempts to appeal to the widest range of tastes while still adhering to German brewing standards. The Beck’s beer sold in North America, for instance, is a much lighter version of a traditional German brew. Here, the products found under the Beck’s label, in addition to the flagship lager, include Beck’s Dark, Beck’s Light, and Haake-Beck. These are imported by Dribeck Importers Inc. of Greenwich, Connecticut, a subsidiary founded in 1964.

Although there are several thousand breweries producing regional beers, Beck & Co. is one of the few that distributes throughout all of reunified Germany. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 opened up a huge new market of consumers for German companies. Beer brewed in the former East Germany by state-owned breweries was poor in quality due to a shortage of raw materials and antiquated machinery. Frequently adulterated with corn or rice, East German beer required additives to enhance shelf-life and therefore did not meet Reinheitsgebot standards.

Shortly after trade between the two Germanics was fully reestablished, Beck & Co. began selling its products in the former East German states and achieved remarkable gains in sales, due in part to the novelty of West German beer among consumers there. In April of 1991 Beck & Co. acquired the Rostocker Brauerei VEB, formerly a state-owned company in Rostock, a port on the Baltic Sea. Although Beck & Co. had to invest heavily to upgrade the brewery’s equipment, it gave the company an excellent position from which to target the East German market, brewing a new and improved Rostocker for East Germans consumers. In addition, the geographical location of the newly acquired brewery permitted easier access for exports of Beck’s beer to areas within the former Soviet Union. By 1992 Beck’s products were sold in most of the former Eastern Bloc countries.

Consumers around the globe are drawn to import beers for their sophisticated edge. Beck & Co. has sought to position itself as part of a centuries-old tradition of German brewing excellence, stressing both the company’s longevity and the quality of its product. In the 1980s, however, a North American trend toward moderation in alcohol consumption had a significant impact on import sales, while a weakened U.S. dollar also made it difficult for foreign companies such as Beck & Co. to keep prices low. Competition in the beer market became fierce as consumers’ palates became more discriminating. The company’s inroads into Eastern Europe did help offset the decrease in import sales by its Dribeck subsidiary in the United States. In addition, Brauerei Beck & Co. expected a unified Germany to provide great opportunity for expansion and profit.

Principal Subsidiaries

Nienburger Glas GmbH & Co. KG (92%); Bremer Erfrischungsgetraenke-GmbH; Rostocker Brauerei GmbH; Haake-Beck Brauerei AG (95.17%); Dribeck Importers Inc. (U.S.A.).

Further Reading

Anderson, Will, From Beer to Eternity: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Beer, Lexington, MA: Stephen Greene Press, 1987.

“Beck’s Counts Itself Among German Gems,” New York Times, November 21, 1992, p. D19.

“Bulging Beck’s,” Food and Beverage Marketing, April 1992, p. 43.

Dennis, Darienne L., “How About a Beer?” Fortune, August 1, 1988, p. 8.

Fahey, Alison, “Party Hardly,” Adweek’s Brandweek, October 26, 1992, pp. 24-25.

Finch, Christopher, Beer: A Connoisseur’s Guide to the World’s Best, New York: Abbeville Press, 1989.

Gorman, John, “Beer Lovers Spread the Word: Beck’s,” Chicago Tribune, May 17, 1985, sec. 3, pp. 1-2.

Hemphill, Gary A., “Imports: A Taste of Reality,” Beverage Industry, September 1989, pp. 1-26.

Jackson, Michael, ed., The World Guide to Beer, New York: Prentice-Hall, 1977.

—Carol Brennan