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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.〔(Shiner website )〕〔 〕 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. 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 70 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.〔(Interview with Spoetzl Brewmaster ); Drink Nation article; 〕 As of 2015, it is the fifth-largest craft brewery and tenth-largest overall brewery in the United States. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Spoetzl Brewery」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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