Our founder Oli Lemke had already abandoned a degree in business administration and had graduated from a brewing degree when he decided to set up his own brewery. Even more important: He gained experience, around the world, whilst working for large enterprises in Venezuela and building breweries in Japan. And with all that experience under his belt, he welded his first own brewing plant in a friend’s garage in 1998. 

With a little help from
my friends

Infected by Oli’s euphoria, his friends turned into builders and helped to transform a derelict S-Bahn unit at the Hakescher Markt into a brewery. On the 21^st November 1999 his dream became reality: The Brauhaus Lemke opened for the very first time.  During the first few months we completely overwhelmed our guests with more than 50 kinds of beer, made a lot of mistakes, but learned new things every day. And survived.

We are 

growing

The Tiergartenquelle had been a popular institution with the students for over 80 years, when it closed to everyone’s surprise in 2003. We decided to take it on and continue this institution to sell our Lemke beer. At that point the operations at Hakescher Markt were running at peak level, and it became increasingly difficult to keep up with demand. Fortunately in 2004, Leopold’s Brauhaus at Alexanderplatz became available, which we reopened as the Brauhaus Mitte. In 2007 another Berlin institution joined us: the Louisenbräu in Charlottenburg. This, the oldest micro brewey in Berlin, was also the brewery where our founder gained his first brewing experiences as an intern.

The same year we doubled our Hackescher Markt location in size. The last extension took place in 2010, when the Tiergartenquelle was complemented with a beer garden, which has been extremely popular from day one.

OLI ON THE RUN

We, the Lemke-Team, now worked together like a well oiled machine, which meant that our restless founder could follow his other passion every now and again: building breweries. Needless to say, that German soil was not enough to satisfy his thirst for adventure; Tenerife and Mongolia wanted to brew good beer too. Thereby the greatest challenge for the colleagues lay within his return, as he always came back with a head full of new ideas.

The next step

We decided to start bottling our beers. A small step for mankind, but a huge step for a small brewery. To prepare for this next stage we set up our own laboratory including a yeast bank. The original brewery at Hakescher Markt was converted into the trial brewery where from then on approximately 200 different brews were undertaken, solely for the purpose of product development. This is how we make the most exceptional beers.  At this point however, they were still waiting to be bottled.

LEMKE take out

After years of planning and lengthy conversions it finally happened: simultaneous with our rebranding, our own bottling department was being installed. From then onwards our most popular beers were available in bottles. Our logo might be new, but our beer remains what it was and what it always will be: hand crafted from pure natural ingredients in Berlin.

Neue Heimat
der Brauerei

Nach 2 Jahren aufwendigen Umbaus wird das ehemalige Brauhaus Mitte als Brauhaus Lemke am Alex wieder eröffnet. Auf 2 Etagen mit 600 Sitzplätzen können unsere Gäste unterschiedliche Craft-Bier-Welten entdecken und erleben.
Das Interieur, ob im Kaminzimmer am warmen Feuer, im Jagdzimmer, im großen Gastraum oder in unserer neu geschaffenen Barrel Lounge, schafft dabei eine individuelle Atmosphäre, so vielseitig wie die ständig wachsende Zahl unserer handwerklich gebrauten Biere.