Stefanie Bayer is the future of the Brauerei-Gasthof Bayer in Theinheim, in Lower Franconia, about 30 minutes’ drive west of Bamberg. The brewery has been here for more than three centuries—the year 1718 proudly adorns its labels—and its flagship Landbier draws hikers, bikers, and beer lovers from across the region.
Many in the Bayer family are brewers. Stefanie’s uncle Helmut is the current head brewer; Helmut’s son is a brewer, too, learning at nearby Brauerei Ulrich Martin in the town of Hausen. Stefanie’s grandfather Hermann was a brewer, too, and so is another cousin of hers.
Stefanie Bayer herself is formally trained, having completed her education at Doemens Academy in 2022. She primarily works in the restaurant and in the office, but she occasionally brews when her uncle is on holiday or the brewhouse is otherwise shorthanded.
What’s a Landbier, Anyway?
Her preferred beer is their Landbier, she says. The word simply means “country beer”—it’s not a clearly defined style.
Much like kellerbier, landbier is more a product of local context than it is any reliably consistent traits. (For more on that, see The Bier from the Keller.) Try to describe the category with anything besides broad strokes, and exceptions inevitably slip out.
Stefanie describes their own Landbier as flavorful, drinkable, and semi-dry. “It’s lighter colored, not as hoppy as a pils,” she says. They don’t call it kellerbier, but she says the Landbier is what people get when they ask for kellerbier in the taproom, and nobody minds. (Franconian beer drinkers aren’t fussy about styles. When pressed, a friend of mine from Bamberg says the one thing that defines kellerbier is that you can always taste all its ingredients.)
Whatever you call this Landbier, you can certainly taste every aspect of it. The components are all there—from lightly toasted Munich malt to the bready pils base, the clean but smooth bitterness, and the soft flavor of some of the finest German Noble hops. It’s bready and malty but also slightly hoppy and snappy—tasting like an export lager but with less alcohol (4.7 percent ABV), and it’s served fresh and unfiltered.
Brewing the Landbier
Stefanie says the beer’s bready base is an 80/20 mix of pilsner and Munich malts from Bamberger Mälzerei, a favored maltster in the region. Its multistep mash includes a single decoction, and there are three hop additions during the boil.
The high-alpha Herkules variety goes in first, providing clean bitterness with a touch of spice. That plays well with the mid- and late-boil additions of Hallertauer Mittelfrüh that add a wonderfully fresh, floral component to the beer, which—combined with a relatively dry finish—gives the beer a refreshing quality.
The Bayers get their yeast from other breweries around the region—lately they’ve been trying different ones—rather than propagate it themselves. Stefanie says they typically reuse the yeast for five or six generations before starting a fresh pitch.
A typical brew day starts at about 6 a.m. They brew two or three batches a week during the busy summer months, Stefanie says, but only brew once a week during the slower winter season. Unlike some breweries that rush beers in the summertime, Bayer Theinheim has the capacity to take its time—thanks to the 40-hectoliter brewhouse installed in the late 1980s and the new fermentation building directly across the street, completed a few years ago.
Stefanie says the family cares about making each batch with the same careful intention that they always have. The quality and the consistency are evident, helping to attract connoisseurs to the brewery from near and far throughout the year.
That new fermentation building owes something to the foresight of Stefanie’s grandfather. Many years ago, he decided to install a single, empty pipe beneath the road in the village, “just in case we needed it in the future,” Stefanie says. That pipe saved them a lot of work when it was time to install the new cellar. Today, they can easily send beer across (under) the street into the modern glycol fermentors.
Well Worth the Hike
The brewery and its restaurant are really the heart of the village; the chef is Stefanie’s father, Michael Bayer. Her uncle also distills brandy on-site, made from local fruits.
Across the village, her aunt Elizabeth Oppelt runs the popular Pension Oppelt—a small inn where many visitors stay so they can fully enjoy the brewery-restaurant when not hiking the trails in the surrounding Steigerwald Nature Park.
Perfect for those hikes, the Bayers also bottle their Landbier—but you probably won’t find it in Bamberg. “Bamberg has enough beer,” Stefanie says, laughing. Instead, they distribute most of their beer to the northeast, toward Schweinfurt.
The pub pours the Landbier, from a tap connected to a serving tank, into steinkrugs. Locals appreciate the nod to tradition. “The stammtisch drink Landbier,” Stefanie says, referring to the regulars who show up at the same times every week like clockwork.
About two-thirds of the brewery’s production volume is Landbier. They also produce an amber lager called Knörzla, with some caramel malt and a sweeter taste than the flagship. The Bayers keep a third tap for rotating seasonals and one-off experiments—such as an occasional doppelbock or even a rare dampfbier. “We serve them until we run out,” Stefanie says, “then we have a different one.”
For those smaller batches, the brewery occasionally uses hops from its own garden, which is located next to the cellar building. They mostly use those as dry hops, adding them to the lagering tanks and lending a modern twist to an otherwise traditional German brewery.
Stefanie heads toward a specific plant and plucks a mature hop cone from the bine. “This one is mine,” she says. “Mandarina Bavaria.”
