Stories From Texas

Loading...

Media is loading
 

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-22-2025

Abstract

In 1909, in the little town of Shiner, Texas, a group of German and Czech farmers decided they missed the beer of the old country. They pooled their money, built a ramshackle brewery, and called it the Shiner Brewing Association.

But they weren’t brewers. They were farmers. The beer was bad – so bad, locals joked it tasted more like medicine than malt. By 1914, the brewery was on its last legs, or last barrels.

That’s when a Bavarian brewmaster named Kosmos Spoetzl appeared. He’d been trained in Germany, worked in Egypt, and landed in San Antonio. He leased the struggling brewery with an option to buy. And buy it he did, with his own savings and no small measure of faith.

Spoetzl brought with him an old-world recipe for a dark lager. He brewed it carefully, stubbornly. And soon, the townsfolk said Shiner beer finally tasted like beer.

Through Prohibition he kept the brewery alive making so-called “near beer”and ice, and even construction materials. By the time he died in 1950, Shiner beer had become the pride of a little Texas town.

But it never got much bigger than that. For decades, Shiner was still a tiny brewery in a town of two thousand souls, barely scraping by, undercapitalized for sure, but ably managed by Spoetzl’s daughter, Ms. Celie.

She held on. She kept it going against all odds. Hers was the only female-owned brewery in America. She even lived in a house on the brewery site to devote all her time to it. She kept it alive, but she couldn’t get it healthy.

Locals were loyal to the brand. Still, Shiner’s market was mighty small. Even after Ms. Celie stepped down in 1966 and Shiner went through a succession of different owners; it never, during the ’70s and ’80s, managed to garner more than one percent of the Texas beer market.

Then along came Carlos.

In 1989, Carlos Alvarez stepped in. He wasn’t German. He wasn’t Czech. He was born in Mexico City. His father ran a little beer distributorship in Acapulco named Corona. You’ve probably heard of that.

Carlos had studied biochemical engineering, worked with Grupo Modelo, and learned the beer business inside and out. He came north, founded his own company, Gambrinus in San Antonio, and made a fortune importing Corona and Modelo to the United States.

With that success, he turned his eyes toward Texas.

Alvarez saw Shiner as a brand with deep roots, good recipes, loyal fans, but no reach – no expanding markets. He bought the Spoetzl Brewery, modernized its equipment, expanded production, and started marketing Shiner statewide.

Before long, Shiner Bock wasn’t just the pride of Lavaca County – it was on shelves from El Paso to Amarillo, and soon after, on shelves from California to New York.

So today, when you raise a cold Shiner, remember this: Texas’s most famous little beer survived not one brush with extinction, but two. In fact, in 2024 it was the number one selling craft beer in Texas, selling 454,000 barrels of beer. One helluva keg party!

The first time, Shiner was saved by a wandering German brewmaster who carried an old recipe in his pocket. The second time, it was rescued by a Mexican-born importer who believed a small-town Texas beer could stand tall in the world.

Two men, two rescues, one legend.

Format

.MP3, 192 kbps

Length

00:04:08

Language

English

Notes

https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/shiner-beer-history-texas-spoetzl-brewery/

Comments

© 2025 William F. Strong. Uploaded with permission of copyright holder.

Download

Share

COinS