All About Beer Magazine - Volume 28, Issue 4
September 1, 2007 By

In the early 19th century, Gabriel Sedlmayr of the Spaten Brewery in Munich, and Anton Dreher from Vienna, embarked on a six-year grand tour of the leading brewing nations. The technical and scientific advances in Burton left a deep impression. The two brewers even engaged in industrial espionage. They used thermometers to measure the temperature of fermenting beer and took with them hollowed-out walking sticks with hidden valves in which they kept samples of fermenting beer for later analysis. They were especially impressed with the new methods of kilning grain in Britain to produce pale malt. They returned to their breweries and Dreher produced an amber beer dubbed Vienna Red, the first relatively pale beer seen in central Europe, where lager beers were dark in color. When the Burghers’ Brewery, now called Pilsner Urquell, opened in Pilsen in 1842, the first golden lager was produced with the aid of a malt kiln imported from Britain.