Brewing in Laško can be traced back over 170 years. In 1825 Franz Geyer, producer of mead and ginger bread, used the building of the the previous Valvasorjev Špital for brewing purposes. For fifteen years this first brewer in Laško probably brewed stone beer (Steinbeer) in the Carinthian way. Possibly he also knew how to produce Bavarian beer, which was technologically more complicated to produce. In 1838 the brewery was bought by Heinrich August Ulrich, known today as the founder of the reputation of Laško beer.
Being the owner of the baths in Rimske Toplice, he must have served his beer to his foreign guests. He also used his Trieste origins for distributing his beer in Trieste, a city of trade, where the customers were demanding a high quality of beer and cuisine. As a wholesaler, he put even more effort into it and his beer was also drunk in India and Egypt.
Anton Larisch, the next owner, built a new brewery in 1867. It was situated at the foot of the hills Sv. Krištof and Šmihel. Records show that his brewery was the largest in Spodnja Štajerska (Lower Styria). The owner did not only personally supervise the quality of the beer and took care that it did not deteriorate, but he also improved it and increased the capacities of the brewery.
Larisch's son Julij suffered an accident and lost his sense of taste and so could not supervise the quality of the beer himself, which caused the bankrupcy of the brewery. Or perhaps things were simpler and the young man wanted to modernize the brewery because of keen competition and got swallowed by the investment. Whatever truly happened – the story proves that the quality of the beer that had been brewed in Laško must have been excellent.
In 1889 the brewery was bought by a brewer called Simon Kukec from Žalec. He was a good organizer, financier and economist and he was especially inclined towards innovations. All this made him the most important personality in the history of Laško Brewery. Above all he was also distinctively patriotic towards Slovenia.
Connected with his name is not only the new sort of beer, but also the first trademark name of Laško Beer, which lives on today in one of its versions – "Thermal Beer". Simon Kukec's tests proved that the thermal water had a good effect on the taste of beer. His enterprising spirit helped him attract customers with unusual novelties. He started to brew both pale and dark thermal beer which in both cases was stronger.
Today we would say that he was advanced in his methods. To advertise, he announced his new products in the magazine Glasnik Gostilničarske Pivovarne (Innkeeper's Brewery Gazette):"The other speciality that will be a surprise to beer drinkers is thermal beer, which will lead us to the world. It will be brewed from the famous thermal water of Laško and will be exactly like the beer from Pilsen as far as taste and colour are concerned."
Apart from thermal beer, Kukec also brewed "ležak" beer. The word comes from the Czech language. Documents from that time show that the anti-German orientated owner employed Czech master brewers. The quality beers they were producing enabled him to retain Egypt as his export stronghold. He also widened the export range and started to export beer to Budapest, which was dominated in those days by Bavarian and Viennese beer. We can only imagine just how good the beer from Laško must have been in those days. It is known that along with these novelties Laško Brewery also brewed Porter and around 1900 documents confirm that Bavarian beer and Märzer beer were also brewed.
With the porter, Laško Brewery tried to compete with the Slovenian Union brewery and its beer "bok", but because there were doubts about the foreign name of the beer they started to advertise it as Laško Dark. In spite of great success, the competition was so fierce that Laško Brewery did not survive it. In 1924 most of the shares were secretly bought by the competing Union and three months later Laško Brewery brewed its last beer.
That was the end of the Kukec era, while the Union Brewery impertinently continued to sell its own beer as Laško Beer on the Croatian market.
The closure of the brewery hurt many of inhabitants of Laško, their pride and their sense of struggle. The initiators of an idea about reopening the brewery began by motivating inn-keepers and in 1929, representatives of the inn-keepers associations decided to form a new
inn-keepers- joint stock brewery. After many complications and wild objections by the opponents,
the Laško Brewery d.d. was opened in 1938. The new beer from Laško was again delighting beer drinkers with its taste. A reporter from a beer tasting in Upper Carniola wrote that "at every better company's table the only beer that was noticed was Laško Beer".
Even the German invaders kept the trademark "Laško Beer" because of its quality.
In 1944 Allied bombs that were intended for a nearby railway bridge totally demolished the Laško Brewery.
Production did not start again until 1946. From this period we get the popular green Zlatorog bottle labels. Today, despite a modern corporate image, these labels represent a special aesthetic and quality standard on bottles which contain famous beer which leave tradition by Zlatorog.
A consequence of those tough times, as well as the bomb damage, prevent us from obtaining information about who was or were the godfathers of the name Zlatorog.
Some stories claim that one of the founders of the Inn-keepers Society who had agitated for the renewal of the brewery, hotelier Majcen from Celje,
writer Janez Jalen and some of the other share-holders from Upper Carniola, took a trip to the mountains one day. There they all enthusistically excepted Janez Jalen’s proposition that
Zlatorog (Goldhorn) should become the trade mark of Laško Beer. The characteristics of this beer are its clear and full flavour, its thick froth, and its piercing taste combined with the bitter taste of hops.
These are the main characteristics of the whole range of beers that come from the Laško Brewery.
The quality of these beers is definitely at a level where all the secrets of the greatest brewing masters are known and mastered. All the beers that come from the Laško Brewery today prove this:
Zlatorog,
Zlatorog Club,
Temno Laško (Laško Dark),
Export Pils,
Lahko Laško (Laško Light),
Netopir,
Roler and the hop beverage
Gren.
Another development strategy which ensures top quality are the investments in modernization of the production process technology. The key characteristic of the post-WWII history of the brewery was its exceptionally large development. In the three decades since 1960 the brewery enlarged its production and sales twentyfold. Beer sales have grown from 50,000 hl (1,100,000 gallons) to more than 1,000,000 hl (22,000,000 gallons) of beer. In this period the brewery enlarged and stabilized its share of the Slovenian market, from 25% to more than 50%. All investments were realized exclusively with our own resources. With technical equipment and capacity the Laško Brewery ranks among the biggest European beer producers.