SHINER, TEXAS

We left the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) today and headed back to H-town.  We sure hated to leave.  We have such a BLAST when we are down there.  There are dances, entertainment shows, get togethers, visits to Mexico, more dances ........you name it.  We also got to visit with some great friends that we met last year. James and Diana are from north Texas and are so much fun! One of the great things about this life is all the great people you meet. But, all good things must come to an end.  So, we headed out of the park at 8:00 this morning. 

Mr. W decided that he didn't want to go straight home, so we decided to spend the night in Shiner, Texas.  We have never been to Shiner, but if you have ever been to Texas, you have probably heard of Shiner beer and Shiner is where they make Shiner beer.  I know, surprise!, right?  So, Mr. W likes Shiner beer and wanted to take a tour of the brewery.  He researched it and found out that they do tours daily at 11:00, 1:00 and 3:00.  He figured if we left Harlingen at 8:00, we would get to Shiner around 12:30 and we could make the 3:00 tour.  His plan worked like a charm. 

When we find a gem that isn't well known, I hate to start telling everyone about it because word takes off among RVers.  But, we found a gem of a park in Shiner.  It is a city park.  It has 12 sites.  Eight of the sites have full hook-ups and 4 have water/electricity. They are in a well manicured, well taken care of park. Each site has a concrete pad and there is a dump station if you happen to not get the full hook-up site. There is a playground, a walking trail, a Veterans' Memorial, a picnic area, and fishing.  We were the only RV here for the night so we had the pick of sites.  We took one of the full hook-up sites and it was only $20 per night.  Shhhhh! Don't tell anyone.

The river runs right behind us

The Veterans' Memorial

We pulled in around 12:30. We got set up, ate lunch, and headed to City Hall to pay for our site and then on to the brewery.

The brewery is the oldest independent brewery in Texas. It produces a diverse line of Shiner Beers, including their flagship Shiner Bock, a dark lager that is now distributed in every US state except Hawaii. 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. 

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.

Shiner Bock – Spoetzl's flagship beer. Bock has been brewed since 1913, almost as long as the Spoetzl Brewery has been in business. However, it wasn't until a few decades ago that Shiner began producing a bock beer year-round. Shiner Bock was considered a Lenten beer, and therefore was only made around that season. Today 73% of the beer made at the Spoetzl Brewery is bock beer.

Our tour guide was one of the 120 employees Shiner has today.  The company only had 11 employees when the company was sold to the current owner in 1989. They have expanded quite a bit and continue to expand. 

They have a gift shop and a tasting space.  The tour is free and even if you don't go on the tour, you can stop by a free tasting. Yes, I said free.  They give you a small cup of 4 different brews. They also have several picnic tables set up on the nice grounds under some beautiful trees and they play music and have corn hole games set up.  Well worth a trip by if you are in the area and like beer.

This is where the beer is brewed.

Can you see all the bottles heading into the labeling machine and the ones coming out with labels?
They now bottle 1200 bottles per minute.

The picture at the top is the box machine.  It folds the boxes and sends them out on the conveyor belt to get loaded with a case of beer.

Picture of 24 bottles being loaded into a box to ship out. The white things at the bottom keep the bottles straight so they will load correctly in the box.