"Three leading men in the Berlin brewing industry, Friedrich Goldschmidt, Armand Knoblauch and Richard Roesicke, were the ones who, together with Prof. Dr. Max Delbrück, signed the founding protocol of the Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei in Berlin on December 19, 1882, in Goldschmidt's apartment in the headquarters of Patzenhofer-Brauerei A.-G. in Berlin" 

The founding minutes to which this report refers to are unfortunately lost, but this is how it was reported in the contemporary publications of the VLB. The foundation was also supported politically  by the Ministerial Director in the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture and member of the German Reichstag, Privy Councillor Hugo Thiel (a contemporary bust of him now stands today in the atrium of our new building  side by side with the bust of Max Delbrück).

According to the descriptions, the VLB started work on 1 January 1883. Initially in the laboratories of its sister institute, the Verein der Spiritusfabrikanten (later VLSF), founded in 1874, in the Agricultural Institute in Dorotheenstraße. The first general meeting was held on 11 March 1883 (see illustration). There, Richard Roesicke, General Director of the Berlin Schultheiss Brewery, was elected the first chairman of the VLB.

The VLB expanded rapidly: by the end of its first founding year it already had 150 members. Space became scarce, so in 1884 they moved together with the spirit manufacturers and the Verein der Stärkeinteressenten (association of starch producers) into a new laboratory building on the premises of the Kgl. Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule on Invalidenstraße in Berlin-Mitte. In the same year, the first issue of the "Wochenschrift für Brauerei" was published.

In the following, VLB began planning its own experimental and educational brewery ("Hochschul Brauerei"). The foundation stone was laid on 20 September 1889 on the  site at Seestraße 13 in Berlin-Wedding - this is where the VLB is located  until today. It was commissioned in May 1891, after which all the experimental facilities of the Institute of Fermentation moved there.

The first general meeting was held in March 1883, but the founding minutes were signed as early as December 1882.

"Correspondenz": the first publication of the VLB appeared on 24 February 1883