Spoetzl Brewery

Spoetzl Brewery is a brewery located in Shiner, Texas, USA. The brewery 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 in San Antonio.

History

The Spoetzl Brewery started in 1909 as the Shiner Brewing Association, 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 Shiner Brewing Association named Herman Weiss as the company's first brewmaster. As the brewery gained popularity in the area, the Brewing Association 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 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.