The tradition of the Steinbach brothers malting plant began around 1861 in the "beer city" of Erlangen. The Steinbach family ran a brewery in Erlangen with its own malthouse. This malthouse supplied the brewery's own brewery as well as breweries in Erlangen and the surrounding area with malt. As a result of the global economic crisis in 1923 and the resulting deterioration of the situation of the breweries, the Steinbach family decided to stop brewing beer and to "only" concentrate on producing malt.
The Zirndorf malthouse was built in 1959/60 as a new, ultra-modern and progressive malthouse right next to the Zirndorf brewery. Twelve years later, both the Zirndorf malthouse and Grüner Bräu AG Fürth, which also owned the Zirndorf brewery, were transferred to Patrizier Bräu AG Nürnberg. However, Patrizier Bräu AG Nuremberg set other priorities and no longer wanted to operate the malt production in Zirndorf itself.
This led to the lease of the Zirndorf malthouse to the Steinbach malthouse in 1988, and the purchase two years later. Dieter Gewalt, the great-grandson of the company founder Carl Steinbach, managed the Gebr. Steinbach malthouse from 1963, and his son Jörg and his wife Christine have continued this long-standing tradition since 2000 as managing directors of the malthouse with the operations in Erlangen and Zirndorf. His second son Christoph has been continuing the old brewing tradition of the Steinbach family since May 1995 with the commissioning of the Steinbach Bräu Erlangen brewery inn . The Zirndorf malthouse was steadily expanded and converted to become the main operation, and the Erlangen malthouse was closed down at the beginning of 2013. The product range was considerably expanded after the Sonnauer malthouse's facilities were taken over. The new products including caramel malt, malt flakes and malt flour opened up other business areas in the food industry in addition to breweries.