Mühlen

Mühlen

The Brauerei zur Malzmühle on Cologne's Heumarkt is the home of Mühlen Kölsch and is among the most traditional brewhouses in the city. It was founded in 1858 by Hubert Koch as the «Bier- und Malzextract-Dampfbrauerei Koch, Cöln», and the first cask was tapped in the house on the Heumarkt. In 1912 the brewer Gottfried Joseph Schwartz took over the business and gave it its present name, and since then the brewery has been owned by the Schwartz family, which today runs it in the fifth generation with Melanie Schwartz. In the Second World War bombing raids destroyed the brewhouse, with only the old portal surviving, yet by 1948 Sybille Schwartz was brewing beer again, and from 1960 Annelise Schwartz took over management and made the brewery a healthy medium-sized company with a good reputation far beyond Cologne.

The Brauhaus zur Malzmühle is regarded as one of the most popular meeting places for friends of Cologne's Kölsch drinking culture, with its tapper, its Köbes waiters and the old confessional serving as Thekenschaaf, and it also gained fame through prominent guests: in 1999 the then US President Bill Clinton is said to have remarked «Ich bin ein Kölsch» after enjoying Rhenish Sauerbraten and Kölsch during the G8 summit. The brewery continued to grow, opening a brewhouse in the Historic Town Hall of Pulheim in 2013, the Hotel zur Malzmühle in 2015, and taking over the traditional Cologne brewhouse Em Kölsche Boor in March 2020, where Mühlen Kölsch has been poured ever since. On 1 January 2022 it acquired the Brauerei Gebr. Sünner in Cologne-Kalk, founded in 1830 and the oldest brewery in Cologne, and moved its production there, so that both traditional houses are united under one roof in the BRAUWELT Köln.

Mühlen Kölsch is a top-fermented, pale Kölsch that has been brewed since mid-2022 at the Clogne-Kalk site using a craft brewing process in accordance with the German Purity Law of 1516, under the direction of master brewer and plant manager Andree Vrana, who began his apprenticeship at the Malzmühle in 1986. Like all Kölsch brands it is subject to the Kölsch Convention of 1986, which stipulates that Kölsch may only be brewed in Cologne and served in the Kölsch-Stange glass. Outside the house the beer is sold in the unconventional, very traditional bottle shape that has earned it cult status among Kölsch brands, and with Sünner Kölsch the brewery today counts two Kölsch brands in its range. As one of the oldest Kölsch breweries in the world, the Malzmühle stands for craft-brewed Kölsch from family hands and for a piece of Cologne brewing history that is still lived today in the heart of the city.