Most Texans today know Shiner for its beer. For more than a century, these production facilities have turned out Czech and German-style beers, which today are some of Texas’s best-known exports. Kosmos Spoetzl, an immigrant from Bavaria who’d become a braumeister – or master brewer – took over the brewery in 1915, bringing to it a professionalism that was lacking before. His kegs were tapped in every saloon in Texas – right up through Prohibition, when the brewery made and sold a non-alcoholic “Near Beer.”
Today, the brewery boasts that every bottle of the beer is made in Shiner – population, 2,069. Every year, six million cases of Shiner are shipped to all 50 states, bringing the German-Texan brewing tradition to the masses.