Licher

Licher

The Licher Privatbrauerei Jhring-Melchior is a brewery in Lich in Upper Hesse, in the Wetterau, that has existed since 1854, and its beer is regarded as the market leader in the state of Hesse. It was founded by the journeyman brewer Johann Heinrich Ihring, for whom his father, a local innkeeper, built the brewery at the Licher Hardtberg in order to serve beer at the inn. A few years later the Melchior family built its own brewery in nearby Butzbach, and since the two families had been connected by marriage since 1919, they merged in 1922 and 1923 to form the Brauerei Ihring-Melchior based in Lich. The facilities survived the Second World War undamaged, and after the war's end the American occupation forces declared the brewery an «Army Brewery» producing exclusively for them, before the Ihring and de Groote families fundamentally renewed the equipment in the 1950s.

With growing output the brewery developed into one of the largest in Hesse, filling one million hectolitres in 1981 and holding market leadership in the state since 1988. The advertising slogan changed from «Auch für mich – ein Bier aus Lich» through «Aus dem Herzen von Hessen» in the 1960s to «Licher Bier, aus dem Herzen der Natur» in the early 1970s, and since the 1990s the kingfisher has stood as the brand emblem for purity, freshness and naturalness, before the Hessenmädchen returned as a label motif in 2020. In 1999 the brewery, until then family-run, went to the Holsten group, and in the course of Carlsberg's takeover of Holsten in 2004 Licher passed to the Bitburger Braugruppe, in the same year the brewery celebrated its 150th anniversary.

Today the Licher Privatbrauerei brews, alongside its own varieties, which are classic and straightforward in orientation, a large share of the Benediktiner Weissbiere for Benediktiner Weissbräu GmbH in Ettal since 2011, whose monks share their original recipe with the Licher master brewers. Licher beer is exported to more than 40 countries, and the brewery, firmly rooted in the region with around 186 employees and supply contracts with several thousand hospitality businesses in Hesse, stands for beer from the green heart of Hesse. With more than 170 years of brewing tradition, a regional family heritage and modern brewing operations, Licher is among the best-known breweries in the country.