a regional brewery based in the town of Einbeck in Lower Saxony, Germany with an annual output of 800,000 hl (681,734 US bbl). The company claims to date back to 1378—the year when exports of Einbeck’s beer were first documented on a receipt issued in the town of Celle, about 130 kilometers (80 mi) north of Einbeck. The Einbeck tourism board claims that the burghers of Einbeck had started brewing long before that and that a professional brewer had been employed here as early as 1351. The popular medieval tales that revolve around the trickster figure “Till Eulenspiegel” include one in Einbeck where the brewmaster falls victim to one of his not-so-funny pranks. According to that tale, the brewmaster tells Till to add hops to the brew but he throws the brewer’s dog (which is also called “Hop”) into the kettle instead. This very unlikely story earned Till a statue in Einbeck’s town square just across from today’s brewery. Einbeck has built its reputation on bock beer and Einbecker Brauhaus still produces three varieties: the golden ur-bock Hell, the dark ur-bock Dunkel, the Mai-ur-bock (a maibock), and as the most recent addition a dark winter bock at doppelbock strength with 18.2° Plato. While these strong beers hold up the old tradition of the style that made the town famous, the brewery’s best selling beer, as in most other breweries in northern Germany, is the pilsner, branded “Brauherrn Pils” in Einbeck. In recent years Einbecker Brauhaus has acquired two more regional breweries, Göttinger Brauhaus AG (1988) and Martini Brauerei in Kassel (1997).