Josef Groll (; 21 August 1813 – 22 November 1887) was a German

brewer Brewing is the production of beer by steeping a starch source (commonly cereal grains, the most popular of which is barley) in water and fermenting the resulting sweet liquid with yeast. It may be done in a brewery by a commercial brewer, ...

, best known for being the first brewer of

Pilsner Pilsner (also pilsener or simply pils) is a type of pale lager. It takes its name from the Bohemian city of Plzeň (), where the world's first pale lager (now known as Pilsner Urquell) was produced in 1842 by Pilsner Urquell Brewery. History ...

beer. He is sometimes called "the Father of the Pilsner". The world's first-ever

pale lager Pale lager is a pale-to- golden lager beer with a well- attenuated body and a varying degree of noble hop bitterness. In the mid-19th century, Gabriel Sedlmayr took British pale ale brewing and malt making techniques back to the Spaten Bre ...

, Pilsner Urquell was highly successful, and served as the inspiration for more than two-thirds of the beer produced in the world today.Brewery tour of Pilsner Urquell
University of Economics Prague

Brewing the first pilsner

In the late 1830s, the people of

Plzeň Plzeň (), also known in English and German as Pilsen (), is a city in the Czech Republic. It is the Statutory city (Czech Republic), fourth most populous city in the Czech Republic with about 188,000 inhabitants. It is located about west of P ...

(),

Kingdom of Bohemia The Kingdom of Bohemia (), sometimes referenced in English literature as the Czech Kingdom, was a History of the Czech lands in the High Middle Ages, medieval and History of the Czech lands, early modern monarchy in Central Europe. It was the pr ...

started to prefer less expensive imported bottom-fermented beers to local top-fermented beers. As a result, many of top-fermented beers from Plzeň were not being sold fast enough, got spoiled and the casks had to be poured out. In 1839 the burghers with brewing rights decided to build a new brewery capable of producing a bottom-fermented beer with a longer storage life. At the time, this was termed a

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

n beer, since bottom-fermentation were popular mostly in Bavaria. For bottom-fermentation it is necessary to keep the fermentation tanks cool between 4 and 9 degrees Celsius. The climate in Bohemia is similar to that in Bavaria making it possible to store winter ice and sustain bottom-fermentation year-round. The burghers of Plzeň not only built a new brewery, but also hired Josef Groll, a Bavarian brewer with lager-brewing experience. Josef Groll's father owned a brewery in Vilshofen an der Donau in Lower Bavaria and had long experimented with new recipes for bottom-fermented beer. On 5 October 1842, Groll brewed the first batch of '' Urquell'' beer. The use of soft Plzeň water, barley

malt Malt is any cereal grain that has been made to germinate by soaking in water and then stopped from germinating further by drying with hot air, a process known as "malting". Malted grain is used to make beer, whisky, malted milk, malt vinegar, ...

prepared in indirectly heated English-style kiln and Saaz hops, resulted in golden color and herbal, floral taste. The new beer was first served on 11 November 1842 and was very well received by the local populace. The demand for the Pilsner beer grew strongly. Soon the brewery expanded and started to export to many countries. Josef Groll's contract with the brewery ended on 30 April 1845. Groll returned to Vilshofen an der Donau and later inherited his father's brewery.

Death

Josef Groll died on 22 November 1887, aged 74, of a heart attack in the house of his daughter Kathi Hutter in Vilshofen an der Donau.

Brewery

The Groll brewery no longer exists. Parts of the brewery, however, were acquired by ''Wolferstetter'', another brewery located in Vilshofen an der Donau. ''Wolferstetter'' still produces a ''Josef Groll Pils''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Groll, Josef 1813 births 1887 deaths People from Vilshofen an der Donau People from the Kingdom of Bavaria German brewers