Update: Sold to Ravinder and Manjit Minhas in 2006 and renamed to the Minhas Craft Brewery. Along with City Brewing Co., Minhas contract brews beer for their Mountain Crest Brewing Corporation in Canada. They are also making beer for Dixie until they can reopen their brewery.
Joseph Huber was brewmaster for the Blumer Brewing Company, of Monroe, Wisconsin, when he acquired a controlling interest in the company in 1947. The company was sold to S and W in 1985, who sold off the Augsburger label and prepared to shut it down, but has been back in friendly hands since 1989 [Apps].
All of Huber's cheap deposit-bottle beers feature great deal of precision and consistency in their labelling (GIF coming).
Huber makes three different bocks!
Originally made for the Berghoff tavern in Chicago, Berghoff brewed in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and sold to Falstaff in 1925. When the brewery went to S&P, Huber picked up the line, first brewing for the Berghoff and now distributing Berghoff throught the midwest. Varieties range from good to very good (I liked their red), and some seem to have only been available at the tavern, including their weiß and holiday beers.
See Tim Tassler's Brewing in Fort Wayne, Indiana at the American Breweriana Journal.
I've never had regular Huber, although I hear rumors that it exists. Huber Bock [***] is a competent cheap beer. Huber Light is a new innovation.
``Refreshing as Wisconsin's North Woods.''
The Rhinelander Brewing Company of Rhinelander, Wisconsin,
was founded in 1882, and were sucessful through the early 1960's.
In 1967, the company closed and Huber purchased their line.
In any case, Rhinelander beer is presumably a descendant of
Rhinelander Export, and is a drinkable, somewhat light product.
Rhinelander Bock [****] is much better, seems to be available
nearly year-round, and has about the color of Coca-Cola.
I'm assuming that Rhinelander production will actually return, so I'll leave this entry here, instead of below.
The light version of Rhinelander. Well, now that there's a Rhinelander Light it's a bit more confusing than that.
I haeven't tried this one, but reader George Zahrobsky (geozah@interaccess.com) quotes the label for me:
Andechs special hell lager is faithfully brewed for North America under exclusive rights granted by the Benedictine Monks of the Kloster Andech Monastery, Bavaria, Germany, solely by the Joseph Huber Brewing Co. Inc.
Huber acquired the Augsburger name from the Monarch Brewing Company in 1971, and refined the line until it was sold to Stroh's in the late-1980's.
The Potosi Brewing Co.'s origins date to the Albrecht & Hail brewery, opened in 1852. Potosi was purchased by the Schumacher brothers in 1886 and the brewery remained in family hands until it closed in 1972, suffering from a lack of family members to carry on the business. Joseph Huber bought the Bohemian Club, Potosi, Holiday and Alpine lines, but I don't know if any of these are still produced [Kroll].
... and Braumeister Light. An old Peter Hand label.
An Irish-ish beer made under license, after the original Dublin microbrewery failed [Jackson-2].
"Bavarian Style Beer"
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