Brewery at Klein-Scwechat, Near Vienna.

Engraving of the birthplace of pale lager beer.

Anton Dreher (7 May 1810 in Schwechat near Vienna – 27 December 1863 in Schwechat) was an Austrian brewer, business magnate, philanthropist of Danube Swabian ancestry, the founder of the Dreher Breweries and who was an important figure in the development of pale lager.  In 1840, he introduced a beer that combined the crispness of lager with the paler hues of the English ale; this new style of beer became known as the Viennese style and was called Schwechater Lagerbier.

After his father’s death in 1863, Anton Dreher continued the work on the brewing process. He started to export this beer first to the Netherlands, then to Trieste, where it was known as Birra Dreher, and then to Germany. In 1871, known as the winter without ice, Dreher constructed a cooling machine to process the beer. He continued to develop the brewery, the mechanization, and the fields, and by 1897 the brewery was producing 739.639 Hectoliters of beer, which was more than double the amount produced under his father in the company’s most productive year.