Spoetzl Brewery
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| Founded | 1909 |
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| Headquarters | Shiner, Texas, USA |
| Owner |
The Gambrinus Company Founder: Kosmos Spoetzl |
| Website | www.shiner.com |
The Gambrinus Company
Spoetzl Brewery is a craft brewery located in Shiner, Texas, U.S. The brewery is the oldest independent brewery in Texas. It produces a diverse line of Shiner Beers, including their flagship Shiner Bock, a dark lager that is now distributed in 49 states. The brewery is owned by the Gambrinus Company, a family-owned company based in San Antonio.
The Spoetzl Brewery started in 1909. It was originally named "The Shiner Brewing Association," (SBA) and was founded by German and Czech immigrants who had settled around the central Texas town of Shiner. Unable to find the type of beer they had known in their home countries, they decided to brew their own. It is the oldest independent brewery in Texas and one of the oldest independent breweries in the U.S.
The leaders of the SBA named Herman Weiss of Galveston as the company's first brewmaster. Shiner was originally a "Lenten" beer, only available in the spring. As the brewery gained popularity in the area, the SBA began to look for a trained professional brewmaster. They found one in Bavarian-born Kosmos Spoetzl, a onetime soldier who had trained as a brewmaster in his native Germany. Part of the package that lured Spoetzl to Shiner was potential ownership of the brewery. In 1914, he co-leased it with Oswald Petzold with an option to buy in 1915, which he did, giving the brewery his own name but continuing to call the brews Shiner Beers. Spoetzl had attended brewmaster's school and apprenticed for three years in Germany, worked for eight years at the Pyramids Brewery in Cairo, Egypt, and then worked in Canada. He had moved to San Antonio in search of a better climate for his health, bringing with him a family recipe for a Bavarian beer made from malted barley and hops.
During Prohibition, Kosmos Spoetzl kept the brewery afloat by selling ice and making near beer. After Prohibition, only five of the original 13 Texas breweries were still intact. Following Prohibition, Spoetzl kept things small and simple, never going more than 100 miles for business.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the brewery's Shiner Premium Beer and Shiner Bock accounted for less than one percent of the Texas beer market. In 1983, Spoetzl produced 60,000 barrels of beer; in 1990, only 36,000. Sales improved after Carlos Alvarez of San Antonio acquired the brewery in 1989. Production grew to 100,000 barrels in 1994, and over the next ten years, production nearly tripled. The company now has 120 employees.
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