The German, Austrian, and Swiss Heritage of Cerveza

Today both the Mexican and US beer brewing scenes are quite similar, reflecting the global phenomenon of Big Beer. In both countries it is difficult to know the true company behind a particular beer brand, even if you think you know the answer.

The Grupo Modelo concern is one of Mexico’s two dominant breweries, along with Heineken. It began operations in Mexico City in 1925, gradually expanding to take over many other well-known Mexican beer brands, including Corona, Pacífico, Victoria, Leon, and Montejo. PHOTO: Hyde Flippo

The truth is, no matter where you are, the beer you’re drinking probably came from one of two beer brewing giants: AB InBev (Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV) or Heineken. AB InBev, the world’s largest beverage firm (by revenue in 2022), is based in Belgium, although it has offices in many world cities. Dutch-based Heineken, the number two giant in the beer world, owns many beer brands besides its namesake Heineken label.

Are you a fan of Mexican Modelo beer (Modelo Especial, Negra Modelo)? Modelo is owned by AB InBev. Or maybe you prefer Dos Equis or Tecate – two very different beers! Both are owned by Heineken, the world’s second largest beer company. (In case you’re wondering, number three and four by revenue are Japanese: Ashi and Kirin. Source: zippia.com*)

But it wasn’t always like this.

In the 19th century, German-speaking beer brewers came to the United States and Mexico to brew European lager beer. Most of them migrated to the US, but a few ended up in Mexico, sometimes via Texas. In the US, these German-speaking “beer barons” often had fellow European immigrants as customers, but also tried to win over the natives. They usually named their breweries after themselves: Anheuser, Busch, Pabst, and Schlitz – to name a few. And it was going pretty well for them until the disaster of Prohibition arrived, lasting from 1920 until 1933.

Creating a Market for Cerveza
In Mexico it was different. There was no big market for beer, despite the fact that the first European beer brewery was established in New Spain (later Mexico) long before any such thing happened farther north. Around 1542, the Spaniard Don Alfonso de Herrero obtained royal rights and established the first European style beer brewery near Mexico City. Export taxes, supply expenses, a weak market, and other problems limited his venture to no more than four or five years. No one today even knows exactly where his brewery was located. It would be centuries later, before beer was a popular drink in Mexico.

Long before the arrival of European colonial powers in New Spain, the indigenous people had their own fermented, alcoholic beverages made from corn (tesgüino), agave (pulque), and honey (tepache). To this day these homemade drinks are still popular in segments of Mexican society.

With the gradual arrival of more Europeans, including Germans, Austrians, and Swiss brewers, Mexicans were introduced to a new drink called cerveza. When New Spain threw off its colonial masters after winning the Mexican War of Independence in 1821, it created the opportunity to develop a Mexican beer industry. Freed of Spain’s restrictions, beer brewers, mostly Europeans began establishing breweries. But it did not happen overnight.

Small breweries began to appear in Mexico City and other cities: Del Hospicio de los Pobres by Justino Tuallion (1824), Cervecería de la Pila Seca by Bernhard Bolgard, a Swiss citizen (1825), Cervecería de la Candelaria by Baden-born Friedrich (Federico) Herzog (1845), Cervecería San Diego by Peter Streemater (1860), La Compañía Cervecería Limitada by Karl Fredenhagen (1849), La Cruz Blanca by the Alsatian Emil Drecher (1869), among others.

Habsburg Emperor Maximilian I ruled briefly over the Second Mexican Empire (1864-1867). It did not go well. PHOTO: Public Domain, Library of Congress. Photographer: Andrew Burgess, one of Mathew Brady’s operators.

But it was during the ill-fated and brief Second Mexican Empire (1864-1867), under the rule of the Austrian Archduke Maximilian I, along with the arrival of more German-speaking immigrants in Mexico, that beer brewing got its real start. In 1865, the Swiss-born Augustín Marendazand founded the Cervecería Toluca y México, S.A. in Toluca. Only two years later, on 19 June 1867, Emperor Maximilian was executed by a firing squad at the Cerro de las Campanas (“Hill of the Bells”) in Santiago de Querétaro, ending Mexico’s occupation by European powers. (One of the Austrian soldiers who was part of the emperor’s military forces, Teobert Maler, decided to remain in Mexico, and set up a photo studio in Mérida, as well as conduct photographic expeditions of Mayan ruins. He probably also enjoyed a cerveza from time to time.)

Mexico’s First Industrial-Scale Brewery
Almost a decade later, in 1875, the Toluca brewery became Mexico’s first industrial-scale brewery, under the new ownership of Zurich-born Santiago Graf (1845-1904). By 1882, Graf was importing German brewing equipment to produce bottom-fermented pale lager beer (Toluca Lager). Previously most Mexican breweries had brewed top-fermented dark beers. It was only with the introduction of new refrigeration technology that large-scale, bottom-fermented beer production was possible in Mexico’s warm climate. Graf was the first successful brewer of lager beer in Mexico and pioneered the “Graf” style of Vienna lager, one of the two styles of Vienna lager today. He had continued brewing ale until the opening of an international railroad link with the United States made it possible to import the first large ice producing absorption machines from Germany in 1882. The new brewing method was so successful that Graf had to seek outside investors in order to increase production.

Bottom-fermented lager beer brewing was invented by the Austrian Anton Dreher (1810-1863) at his Schwechat brewery near Vienna. You may recognize the name Schwechat as the town where Vienna’s VIE international airport is located today. The first large-scale layering tanks were developed for Gabriel Sedelmayr’s Spaten Brewery in Munich by Carl von Linde in 1870. “Lager” is German for storage/storeroom, required for the fermentation process.

In 1890, master brewer Wilhelm (Guillermo) Hasse arrived in Mexico from Germany. He founded the Cervecería Guillermo Hasse y Compañía in Orizaba, Veracruz in 1894. Three years later, in 1897, Hasse changed the firm’s name to Cervecería Moctezuma and, to celebrate the impending arrival of the 20th century, he produced a beer named Siglo XX (“20th century” with Roman numerals). The beer label was later renamed Dos Equis Ambar (“two x amber”). Hasse’s approach was to use Mexican-produced ingredients to brew German-style recipes.

The Moctezuma brewery in Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico around 1905. In 1985, Hasse’s brewery would merge with the Cervecería Cuauhtémoc in Monterrey to form the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma brewing firm, since 2010 a subsidiary of Heineken. This was an appropriate new name, as the two leaders were related and had both resisted Cortés. Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor, was the nephew and son-in-law of the late Moctezuma II. PHOTO: Public Domain, by Charles Betts Waite (1861-1927), courtesy of DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

Around that same time, in 1890, the Cervecería Cuauhtémoc was founded in Monterrey by José A. Muguerza, Francisco G. Sada Muguerza, Alberto Sada Muguerza, Isaac Garza Garza, and Joseph M. Schnaider, starting with the Carta Blanca brand. This brewery would merge with the Hasse’s Moctezuma brewery in Veracruz in 1985, forming the germ cell for the creation of the Fomento Económico Mexicano (FEMSA) beer conglomerate in 1988, and combining many beer brands. The Dos Equis, Superior, Sol, and Noche Buena brands were added to the Carta Blanca, Tecate, Bohemia and Indio brands. FEMSA would thus become the biggest rival to Modelo, founded in Mexico City in 1922.

Mazatlán’s German Community
In Mazatlán, on Mexico’s Pacific coast, the Cervecería del Pacífico brewery was founded in 1899 by three Germans: Jorge G. Claussen, Germán (Hermann) Evers, and Emilio Philipi (Emil’s/Emilio’s surname varies, depending on the source). The first Pacífico beer was produced in 1900 or 1901. The Pacífico brand remained little known outside of Mexico until California surfers discovered Mazatlán and its beer in the 1970s. The Pacífico brand later became part of Grupo Modelo (1982), which then had the following brands under its umbrella: Corona, Negra Modelo, Modelo Especial, and Pacífico (for export); and Victoria, Leon, and Montejo (domestic market). It was 1985 before Pacífico was exported to the US.

An ad campaign for Pacífico Clara beer, brewed in Mazatlán. PHOTO: Stacey Wei, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Mazatlán had a sizable German community in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Even today you will see the Claussen name in the city (Paseo Claussen). Besides being a co-founder of a local brewery, Jorge G. Claussen was a major actor in the city’s civic affairs, acting as president of the Mazatlán Improvement Council. Of the dozen or so commercial trading houses in the seaport city, about half were German run. As with most things German, the advent of the Nazi regime in the 1930s made Mexico a less welcoming place for citizens of the Reich. For awhile they were as unwelcome in Mexico as they were in the USA. But their positive impact can still be seen, if you know where to look – or listen. Mexico’s Banda Sinaloense music has German and European influences. Of Mazatlán’s nine sister cities, one is Hamm, Germany.

With the end of Prohibition in 1933, Mexico suddenly had a new big export market to its north. In 1935, Modelo took over the 60-year-old Toluca brewery, Mexico’s oldest at the time, and that had been owned and controlled for many years by the Swiss brewer Santiago Graf.

Craft Beer in Mexico
Today Mexico is one of the world’s largest exporters of beer, with its primary market in los Estados Unidos. But as in the US, the Mexican beer landscape is also undergoing change. Although not as big as in the US, Mexico’s craft beer brewers are making inroads with Mexican beer lovers, especially among the young generation. Artisanal beers in Mexico got started in the mid-1990s, and since 2000 have become a small but growing part of the cerveza market. With a philosophy directly opposite of the major brewers (who control 90 percent of the Mexican market), the motto is quality over quantity.

Notable craft brews include a pale ale by Cervecería Minera in Guadalajara, Chupacabras pale ale by Cervecería de Baja California in Mexicali, and a traditional weissbier by Cervecería BayernBrau in Puebla. Since 2009, to encourage Mexican craft brewers, the American BJCP has certified an annual professional competition called the Copa Cerveza Mexico.

As the times change, world brewers – large and small – carry on the brewing craft, with and without German/European influences. But Mexico has an interesting beer history, reflecting the efforts of German-speaking immigrants. Prost! ¡Salud!

– HF

*Top 10 world beer producers ranked by beer output (in million hectoliters) in 2022: 1. AB InBev (518; 27.4% of world beer volume), 2. Heineken (256.9; 13.6%), 3. China Resources Snow Breweries (122.2), 4. Carlsberg (Denmark; 102.4), 5. Molson Coors (US/Canada; 82.3), 6. Tsingtao (China; 79.6), 7. Asahi (Japan; 59.3), 8. BGI/Castel (France; 43.7), 9. Yangjing (China; 37.7), 10. Efes Group (Turkey; 34.0). Note: In the top 40, Germany has six breweries by volume: Radeberger (22nd), Oettinger (25th), TCB (26th), Krombacher (29th), Paulaner (30th), and Bitburger (31st). For the complete list see: vinepair.com; data by BarthHass, a German hop trader.