Haake-Beck

Haake-Beck

Haake-Beck is one of the oldest, most traditional and culturally most deeply rooted beer brands in northern Germany – founded on 20 May 1826 by the then only 24-year-old Cord Hinrich Haake in Bremen's Wachtstrasse, who as the son of an innkeeper and brewer continued his family's artisanal brewing heritage with visionary entrepreneurial spirit and became the first brewer in Bremen to consistently produce bottom-fermented beer in the Pilsner style – an innovation that made his beer more durable, more transportable and more widely marketable, earning it a market share of around 20 percent of the entire Bremen beer production by the time of the founder's death in 1845. In 1921 the company merged with the Kaiserbrauerei Beck & Co. to form the Haake-Beck Brauerei AG, with Haake-Beck henceforth taking over the beer for the German domestic market while Beck's was destined for export – a division of labour that allowed both brands to become icons of their respective markets. Following the acquisition by Interbrew in 2001 – the predecessor of Anheuser-Busch InBev – Haake-Beck became part of the world's largest brewing group and is today brewed together with Beck's in Bremen, where the brand celebrates its 200th anniversary this year.

What has made Haake-Beck a cult brand of Bremen and northern German beer culture over two centuries is its unshakeable connection to the Hanseatic city and its region – symbolised by the legendary slogan «Der Kuss des Nordens» – «The Kiss of the North» – introduced in 1996 that condenses the unmistakably Hanseatic identity of the brand into three words. Particularly formative was the introduction of the naturally hazy Haake-Beck Kräusen Pils in 1950, which as one of the first naturally hazy draught Pilsners in Germany became a brand signature product that lastingly shaped Bremen's beer culture. To this day Haake-Beck is the official beer at Werder Bremen's Weser Stadium and thereby inseparably linked with the football and sporting culture of the Hanseatic city.

The Haake-Beck range encompasses the classic Haake-Beck Pils, the naturally hazy Haake-Beck Kräusen, a Haake-Beck Dunkel and Haake-Beck 12 – a beer developed especially for Werder Bremen fans that expresses the brand's deep roots in Bremen's civic society in a particularly charming way. As a beer brand that has stood for 200 years for Bremen brewing craft, Hanseatic character and northern German groundedness, and whose history mirrors the entire development of German beer culture from the artisanal small business to the global corporate portfolio, Haake-Beck is far more than a regional beer – it is a living chapter of Bremen's city history.