Spoetzl Brewery

History

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.

Sales growth

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.

As of 2017, it is the fifth-largest craft brewery and tenth-largest overall brewery in the United States.

Products

Spoetzl created "Devil Beer" in 1987, sold to fans of the Arizona Sun Devils. The brewery also licensed the Boulder Brewery of Colorado to sell its "Boulder Sport" in the late eighties.

Spoetzl currently produces nine Shiner beers year round and four Shiner seasonal brews per year.

Active beers

Seasonal beers

Previously offered beers

Anniversary celebration

In 2005, Spoetzl began producing an annual brew in a progressive, anticipatory celebration of its 2009 centennial anniversary. The centennial program developed and produced one yearly special beer in small batches. The name of each such specialty beer corresponds to the age of the brewery: Shiner 96 was the specialty beer of 2005, Shiner 97 for 2006, and so forth. For the first two years, Spoetzl brewed Shiner 96 and Shiner 97 only from September through mid-December. In 2007, Shiner 98 was released four months earlier – in May – while Shiner 99 (2008) entered the market another two months earlier, in March.

Shiner 100 had the longest run of all the anniversary beers, seeing production all year long in 2009. After each beer's specified production run has ended, that year's beer is retired. However, Shiner 97 proved to be so popular that in 2008 Spoetzl brought the beer back as Shiner Bohemian Black Lager and made it a permanent offering. The Spoetzl Brewery originally intended to conclude its centennial beer production in 2009, but decided to continue the annual program indefinitely.

For 2009, Spoetzl changed the neck label for all their beers. The labels proclaimed Spoetzl's 100th anniversary and include the tag line "Here's to a century of independent brewing. Prosit!"

The annual brews and their respective styles are:

Shine On

Shine On is a coffee table book by Dallas author Mike Renfro, which documents the Little Brewery's history in photos as well as story. The book follows the brewery from 1909 to 2008. In addition to the history on the brewery, Shine On also includes the history of the town, as well as a look at some of the people responsible for making Shiner beer.

ACL

Working with their Austin-based advertising agency, McGarrah Jessee, Shiner's guerilla marketing efforts at the Austin City Limits Music Festival have consistently promoted their brand. In 2010, the company created the "Shiner Beer Local Stage", which featured a two-day lineup of local bands performing on a custom stage constructed under two billboards near Zilker Park. 2012 saw the creation of a beer garden, complete with a replica of the Spoetzl brewery facade.

In popular culture

Georgia country artist Jason Aldean was forced to change a reference to Shiner Bock in his 2012 song "Take a Little Ride". The original lyric, "grab a little Shiner Bock" was replaced with "grab a couple Rocky Tops" due to the fact that he was in the process of signing a sponsorship contract with Coors.