The town of Havlíčkův Brod gained the brewing right as early as in the 14th century. Since then, the production of beer was thriving. At first, each burgher used to brew their own beer. After that, they gradually began to form companies and found large breweries. The Burgher´s brewery was established in 1834 and its modern history and modern production of beer dates back to the end of the 19th century.
1834 — Founding of the brewery
On 18th October 1834 burghers with brewing rights bought the Bukovský ´s knight house where they used to have a small manually operated brewery. We have been using this building up to now. Upstairs, there is the administrative department of the brewery and downstairs, there is a brewery inn.
1880 — Consecration of the brewery
The capacity of the brewery was not enough to satisfy the demand. That is why a decision on the first large reconstruction was made. After the reconstruction, the brewery was consecrated on 12th October 1880. An extensive reconstruction continued even at the turn of the 19th and 20th century and was completed in 1905 when the brewery reached the most modern level.
1912-1945 — Wartime and restriction of production
The production was limited a lot in wartime, not only due to the shortage of workers, but also due to the lack of raw materials.
1948 — Nationalization
The brewery was nationalized and came under the enterprise “Horácké pivovary Jihlava“ until 1990. After that, it came under the enterprise “Východočeské pivovary Hradec Králové“.
1956 — Fire of the malt house
The production of own malt was suspended several times. In 1956 it was due to the fire, between 2004-2008 due to necessary reconstructions and investments and in 2020 due to capacity reasons.
1964 — Origins of Rebel
Josef Bouda, the brewmaster, announced a competition among employees to invent a name for a dark 14-degree beer. The condition of the competition was that the name was supposed to be connected to the town or an important person. The name Rebel became the winner from a large number of ideas. It was Karel Havlíček Borovský, well-known politician, journalist, economist and particularly the rebel of his time, who was the inspiration. The name gradually became a brand for all beers produced by the brewery.
1990 — Opening of the branded store
1995 — Property restitution to the original owners
A dispute among seventeen natural persons over the property rights was resolved in 1995 and the brewery came into the hands of the original owners´ descendants. These founded the joint-stock company Měšťanský pivovar Havlíčkův Brod, a.s. on 24th January 1995.
2000 — Volume of beer produced at record level
At the turn of the millennium we produced nearly 167 000 hl of beer.
2008 — New KEG line
In 2008, a new KEG filling line was completed and put into operation. This led to building a new hall, keg storage warehouse and administrative premises for expedition.
2018 — Rebel in cans
In April 2018, the first yellow can Rebel XI saw the light of the day. A year later, the second blue can Rebel 0.0 and the third pink one Rebelka, flavoured beer for girls, followed. In 2020, we extended our can product line with a flavoured non-alcoholic beer Rebel 0.0 Citrus.
2019 — Rebel´s new image
We stopped using NRW beer bottles and changed to a modern type of bottles called “Czech beer”. The change of the packaging was a perfect opportunity to unification of different looks of labels. We moved from shiny aluminium labels to a clean paper design. Each of our beers can be easily identified according to a specific colour, which helps to better identification of the beer and brand at points of sale.
