Ottakringer has been owned by the same family since it was founded in 1837. It is the last large brewery left in Vienna and one of the last independent breweries left in Austria.
The Darreturm: The famous Ottakrringer logo is derived from the kiln that was initially used to create malt. While Ottakringer no longer produces malt in house, the building is still used for events such as clubbing and weddings.
The events room in the Darreturm.
Ottakringer produces over 50 million liters of beer per year. 96% of beer is just water. Through countless innovations, Ottakringer was able to decrease the amount of water needed to produce one liter of beer from 9 liters to 4 liters. Ever since the beginning in 1937, Ottakringer has used Viennese ground water which gives the beer its unique taste. Currently, Ottakringer produces 14 types of beer, which have different tastes and colors because of the temperature at which they dry the grain.
The Ottakringer cellar was one kilometer long. Workers needed to go in the celler in order to manually go in the barrels and wash them out. As it was in underground and so long, the workers could not use a candle to check whether there was enough oxygen. Instead they used birds. If the bird suddenly stopped chirping, it was time to get out.
Beer production can no longer keep up with the increased productivity of the bottling machines. In order not to have the machines idle, the Ottakringer brewery is also licensed to bottle other products such as RedBull and Pepsi. It is the only big bottling facility left in Vienna and bottles 22 bottles (or 11 liters) per second.
After the Second World War, because "lager" was used for short instead of concentration camp, Lager beer was renamed to Märzen beer. They chose the name Märzen because March (märz) was the last month that you had ice to store the beer at -1 degree Celsius.