Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,0, Mount Union College, language: English, abstract: Spezial Bräu Bamberg is one of about 530 German medium-sized breweries. The first documentary evidence of this brewery goes back to 1536. Since 1898 it has been privately owned by the Merz family. It is assumed that the name “Spezial” has its roots in the German word “Spezeln”, which means “pals” or “buddies”. A specialty of this small brewery is the so called smoke beer for which Bamberg is famous and which has been produced here for over 465 years according to the same procedure. The required smoke malt is produced with a centuries-old manufacturing process by the brewery. Hereby, the malt is dried over a beechwood fire where it gets its special aroma; a mild, fine, smoky taste. The company offers the following types of beer: Lagerbier (a mild smoke beer with 4.7% vol.) Märzenbier (a mild smoke beer, only available in March with 5.9% vol.) Spezialbräu-Weißbier (a crisp wheat beer with 5.3% vol.) Ungespundetes (a dry hopped beer, naturally cloudy) Bockbier (a strong smoke beer, only available from November until Christmas with about 8% vol.) The annual production output spans 6,000 hl and includes all the different types of beer mentioned above, whereas the lager is the one with the highest sales volume.