The 5 Brewery Beer Bar You Can’t Miss in Munich
Munich doesn’t really have a “beer bar scene” in the search-for-a-cocktail-list sense — what it has instead
is a small number of institutions, most of them older than the Reinheitsgebot romanticism built up around them,
that have quietly stayed exactly what they always were: a brewery’s own tap room, a beer garden planted under
trees for shade rather than atmosphere, a hall built to hold thousands of steins at once. We went through every
brewery and beer bar with a Google Business listing across the old town and the Englischer Garten, filtered out
the ones that turned out to be ordinary restaurants with a beer list, and weighted each one’s rating against how
many people actually left it, because a 4.4 from forty thousand reviews and a 4.4 from two hundred are not making
the same claim. Five came out clearly ahead, and between them they cover most of what a Munich beer institution
can be: the single most name-recognized tavern in Germany, the flagship restaurant of a family-run wheat-beer
brewery, the literal birthplace of the city’s oldest brewery, its overflow beer garden across town, and the beer
garden built around a pagoda in the middle of the English Garden.
Hofbräuhaus München, Altstadt
The one name on this list a visitor has probably heard before ever landing in Munich: Hofbräuhaus München, 4.3★ from 109,611 Google reviews — more than the other four
venues on this list combined, several times over. Its own site describes itself flatly as the “world’s most
famous tavern,” and the scale backs the claim up: eight distinct rooms under one roof, from the ground-floor
Schwemme hall to the Bräustüberl, Wirtsgarten, Festsaal and the wood-panelled Erkerzimmer, each with its own
Stammtische for regulars who’ve been claiming the same table for years. Musicians play through the halls, the
beer runs through Original, Dunkel, Weisse and seasonal releases, and none of it varies by the day of the week —
every day the same 11:00 AM to midnight, kitchen open until 10:00 PM, on Platzl in the old town.
Weisses Bräuhaus im Tal, Altstadt
Two minutes from Hofbräuhaus and a different kind of institution entirely: Weisses
Bräuhaus im Tal sits on the original site of the Schneider Weisse brewery and has run as its flagship
restaurant for more than 150 years, built around the wheat beer the brewery is known for rather than any other
style. What sets the kitchen apart is Kronfleisch — a nearly vanished Munich tradition of using the whole
animal, organ meats included, prepared from an in-house butchery sourcing regional farms rather than treated as
an afterthought. The Weißwurstfrühstück, its white-sausage breakfast served every morning until noon with brass
music on Sundays, keeps the old rule of eating it before the church bells ring midday. 4.4★ from 16,388
reviews, open daily 9:00 AM to 11:30 PM, on Tal.
Augustiner Stammhaus, Altstadt
Augustiner Stammhaus isn’t just a tavern that serves Augustiner — it’s the
building the brewery itself started in. Munich’s oldest brewery operated out of these halls under the Wagner
family from 1817 to 1884, and the venue still carries that history physically: the 1897 Muschelsaal (Mussel
Hall), a newly restored set of Wagner Salons that were once the family’s own private rooms, and an
Arkadengarten for anyone who’d rather eat outside. The kitchen runs its own butchery, sourcing from the
affiliated Gut Granerhof farm for homemade Weißwürste alongside standard Bavarian and international dishes.
4.2★ from 23,729 reviews on Neuhauser Straße in the pedestrian old town — open 10:00 AM to midnight most
days, closing earlier at 10:00 PM on Sundays.
Augustiner-Keller, Maxvorstadt
Its own homepage bills the site as a “historically interesting location” carrying traditional Bavarian
atmosphere, and Augustiner-Keller spreads that across more separate rooms than
anywhere else on this list — a Lagerkeller, Bürgerstube, Jagdstube and Festsaal indoors, plus outdoor terraces,
all pouring the same Augustiner beer as the Stammhaus across town. What’s distinctive here is that it doesn’t
shut down once the outdoor season ends: from November to February it runs what it calls “Winterzauber,” ice
stock shooting — a Bavarian relative of curling — out of traditional Schäferwägen wagons and an Almhütte
alpine hut, rather than just closing the terrace and waiting for spring. 4.4★ from 39,898 reviews on
Arnulfstraße, open daily 10:00 AM to midnight.
Biergarten am Chinesischen Turm, Englischer Garten
The one on this list that’s a park before it’s a tavern. Biergarten am Chinesischen
Turm has been run by the Haberl family since 1974 under the trees of the Englischer Garten, built directly
around the pagoda-shaped Chinese Tower itself — a brass band led by Mathias Achatz plays from the tower on a
fixed weekly schedule (Wednesdays 4pm, Fridays 3pm, Saturdays 2pm, Sundays noon), which is as close as this list
gets to a live-music venue. The kitchen cooks everything fresh on-site from regional ingredients: an
Ochsensemmel beef sandwich, homemade Obazda cheese spread from a Haberl family recipe dating to 1970, and
Steckerlfisch grilled on a stick over the coals. It pours Hofbräu München beer exclusively and partners with
Regenbogen Arbeit, a nonprofit employing people with disabilities. 4.4★ from 16,395 reviews, open daily
10:00 AM to 11:00 PM.
All five, on the map
The interactive map has every qualifying brewery and beer bar we found across
Munich’s old town and the Englischer Garten, these five marked and numbered, and a button that hands the
walking-and-transit route between them straight to Google Maps on your phone.
Getting the most out of a Munich brewery crawl
These five sit in two clusters — three of them (Hofbräuhaus, Weisses Bräuhaus im Tal, Augustiner Stammhaus)
are a ten-minute walk from each other in the old town, while Augustiner-Keller and the beer garden at the Chinese
Tower each need a tram ride or a proper walk to reach. If you’re visiting rather than living here, a local eSIM
from Airalo means Google Maps and Munich’s MVV transit app both work the
moment you land, and a booked transfer from Welcome Pickups takes the
guesswork out of getting from the airport into the city in the first place. A litre stein at four or five stops
in one day adds up fast, and paying in euros without a foreign transaction fee on every round makes a real
difference — a Wise card is the simplest fix for that. And if the beer halls are
one stop on a longer Munich itinerary, Tiqets covers skip-the-line tickets
for the Residenz, the Deutsches Museum and the rest of what fills the days between beer gardens.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the best brewery or beer bar in Munich?
By rating weighted against review volume, Augustiner-Keller and Biergarten am Chinesischen Turm both lead
this list at 4.4★, though on very different review bases — 39,898 for Augustiner-Keller against 16,395
for the beer garden. Hofbräuhaus, at 4.3★, still carries more reviews than the other four venues here
combined, which is its own kind of answer to “best known.”
Which Munich beer hall is the most famous?
Hofbräuhaus München, by a wide margin — 109,611 Google reviews against the next closest name on this list at
under 40,000. It’s also the one most visitors have heard of before they land in the city.
Are these venues actual breweries, or just bars that serve the beer?
Mixed. Weisses Bräuhaus im Tal sits on the original Schneider Weisse brewery site and runs as its flagship
restaurant; Augustiner Stammhaus is the building Munich’s oldest brewery, Augustiner, actually started in.
Hofbräuhaus, Augustiner-Keller and the Chinese Tower beer garden are taverns built around a brewery’s beer
rather than brewing on the premises themselves.
Can you visit these beer gardens in winter?
Yes, though the experience changes. All five list the same year-round opening hours in Google’s current data,
and Augustiner-Keller specifically runs a “Winterzauber” season from November through February with ice stock
shooting in heated wagons and an alpine hut rather than closing its outdoor space entirely.
Do I need a reservation?
Not for the self-service sections of the beer garden at Biergarten am Chinesischen Turm or Augustiner-Keller’s
outdoor terraces, but the indoor halls at Hofbräuhaus and the Stammhaus fill with Stammtische regulars and tour
groups — check the individual listing on the map before turning up as a large group.
- 1. Hofbräuhaus München — Platzl 9, 80331 München
- 2. Weisses Bräuhaus im Tal — Tal 7, 80331 München
- 3. Augustiner Stammhaus — Neuhauser Str. 27, 80331 München
- 4. Augustiner-Keller — Arnulfstraße 52, 80335 München
- 5. Biergarten am Chinesischen Turm — Englischer Garten 3, 80538 München
