Beer history · Bavarian
Josef Groll
Brewed the first pale lager at Plzeň in 1842 — a combination of Bavarian technique, English malting and Bohemian water, rather than an invention.
Credited with
Inventing pilsner, and with it lager.
What the record supports
Brewed the first batch of pale bottom-fermented beer at Plzeň’s new burghers’ brewery in 1842. What he brought was Bavarian cold-fermentation technique, which was centuries old; what Plzeň supplied was exceptionally soft water, pale malt made possible by English indirect kilning, and Saaz hops. The result was a genuinely new thing — nothing had looked like it — and it was a combination of existing elements rather than an invention. He did not invent lager, which long predates him, and he was employed for a season and dismissed; his father is said to have described him as the rudest man in Bavaria.
Why it matters
The first pale lager, and therefore the ancestor of the most widely brewed beer style on earth. Worth carrying chiefly because the popular version of his achievement is so much larger than the real one, and the real one is more interesting.
Groll is a good illustration of how brewing innovation usually works: not a flash of insight but the right existing techniques meeting in the right place, with local water doing a quiet and decisive amount of the work.
The technology
The claims attached to this name
Connected
Dated events: The first pale bottom-fermented beer is brewed in Plzeň
Styles: Czech premium pale lager
Places: Pilsen
Last reviewed 2026-08-29.