Newspaper Page Text
Page 18
"Flagpole Magazine
April 22, 1992
William Orten Carlton = CRT.
Special Correspondent For The Flagpole
America's remaining small breweries are
concentrated in three regions: Pennsylva-
nia/New York, Wisconsin/Minnesota/Iowa,
and Texas/Louisiana. Relatively long-estab
lished local or regional firms that have thusfar
resisted consolidation and/or liquidation,
these are not to be confused with
microbreweries that seem to be springing
up practically everywhere. Fortunately there
are still labels out there that are worth trav
elling a distance to try, such as: Point Spe
cial. Stegmaier, Utica Club, Dubuque Star,
Cold Spring, Dixie, Huber, Gibbons, Straub,
Stoney's, Schell's, Esquire, Leinenkugel’s,
Matt's, Lone Star, Yuengling, and Shiner...
it is the last of these remaining “locals’ that
concerns us at the moment, because it has
just arrived in Athens, and you need to know
about it.
The name cf the town fascinated me
from the first time I ventured into the gym at
Clarke Junior High School and spied the
baskets labelled as to their manufacture:
Kaspar Wire Works, Shiner, Texas. Of course
I was a kid, and weird enough even then: but
I had never heard of Shiner Beer: treasures
awaited me.
Years later, University Of Georgia stu
dents demonstrated to win, among other
things, the right to consume alcoholic bev
erages in their dorm rooms (assuming they
were of legal age). I knew this guy from
South Texas then, and visiting his Russell
Hall room one night, he offered me a cold
Shiner: it was fresh stock: straight from
Victoria, he offered, and mighty good I took
a taste and concurred I was hooked: it was
love at first swig
A brewery was built on the banks of
Boggy Creek in 1909 by a local group of
farmers who christened their enterprise The
Shiner Brewing Association. The population
of the area is predominantly of Czech and
German ancestry, with .a few Poles here and
there; more Catholic than Lutheran; a sig
nificant Black minority exists indigenously,
as does a smattering of folks with Spanish
surnames. The Shiner Brewing Association
was not doing so weil: one of the Czech
farmers remembered someone from his
native area who was a master brewer: per
haps he could be induced into coming to
the New Country? He was contacted, and
made the trip: Kozmas Spoetzl arrived in
Shiner in 1911. In short order he ended up
owning the brewery due to his expertise and
largesse, and it was renamed The K. Spoetzl
Brewery. Unfortunately, no sooner than he
had made the place profitable did the spec
tre of Prohibition rear its head: Texas went
dry in 1916; thirsts were to last for 17 years.
Spoetzl kept going in those lean years by
brewing beer as usual, then boiling off the
alcohol to conform to the Federal standard
of alcoholic content: 0.5% His consumers,
of course, were free to insert whatever they
chose once they got the product home, and
many did Realistically, nobody could ex
pect hard-working German and Czech farm
ers to do without beer in the hotlands of
Southern Texas, law or no.
Such an idea could not last: Texas be
gan selling alcohol again by local option
after Roosevelt raised the ceiling of allow
able alcoholic content from 0.5% to 3.2% by
executive decree in April, 1933. Spoetzl
was back in the real-beer business, and
Shiner went back on the market, slaking
thirsts from Wharton, Texas west to Beeville
and north to the
Bastrop area. A
number of other
local brews
graced shelves
at that time: the
ubiquitous Pearl
and Lone Star, to
be sure; but others such as Grand Prize,
Southern Select, Falstaff, Progress (from
Oklahoma), and even Mitchell's (from El
Paso) could be had. But Shiner was a local
favorite, partly because it was a quality
brew, but also since Kozmas Spoetzl made
it a point to know the owner of every outlet for
his product, visiting as often as possible.
Spoetzl passed away in 1960 at an ad
vanced age, leaving the brewery to his
daughter, Cecelia. “Miss Cecie," as she
came to be called, continued her father’s
work, becoming ‘‘one of the boys," assum
ing the full responsibility of the place. She
became the first female brewery president
since repeal. During her 18-year tenure, the
marketi ng territory was slowly and judiciously
expanded, and the famous Shiner Bock
began year-round production.
Bock beer, you see, is traditionally
brewed to herald the coming of Spring. In
other heavily German regions of the U S ,
winters are far more severe than those in
South Texas: with a growing season of circa
300 days, there is little winter weather to
herald and celebrate an end to when
shirtsleeve days abound in mid-January' it
was a wise dec'sion for Shiner Bock to
become available year-round: the little brew
ery never managed to make enough, ana
was forced to elongate the bock beer sea
son by a week or two a year, brewing a little
more each annum. By 1976, the demand far
exceeded supply, and the availability of
Shiner Bock was expanded to all year. (An
other time, I’ll tell you about why there is a
goat on the bottle: that didn'tstart in Shiner)
Miss Cecie sold the brewery in 1978 to a
group of investors and retired. Since then
Shiner’s territory has grown to include ail of
Texas and an outpost of sale in California
Territorial expansion into Georgia came m
mid-April when General Wholesale acquiree
the rights to sell it here, and it is available in
Athens at The Mellow Mushroom on East
Broad Street (both the regular and the bock)
and at Murphy's on College Avenue (the
regular only). A couple of package outlets
plan to stock it soon, as well as some othe r
bars and restaurants... when I find out about
them, I'll let you know here. Now you car
support a small brewer that makes fine all
natural products carefully brewed in one o*
the smallest commercial brew kettles in the
country and handcrafted far more than any
mass-produced beer could be.
It makes me very happy to be able tc
report this, and to tell you the truth, I hac
wanted to do a column on Shiner for a long
time. Here it is. along with the beer, ana
here's to both you and it. Cheers! (30 )
© 1992 William Orten Carlton
Bock beer, you see,
is traditionally brewed
to herald the coming
of Spring...
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