Schuster Brewing Co. 1871 Mug

Henry Schuster emigrated with his family from Germany to Wisconsin at the age of 12 in 1847. In 1862, he and his wife moved to Rochester, Minnesota where, working as a blacksmith, he made enough to buy an interest in the Joest Brewery. By 1866, he was working at Joest, which produced nearly 500 barrels a year, and in 1870, he bought out his partner, renaming it Union Brewery. A year later, the brewery burned down, and Schuster began construction on a new three-story plant, which included a single-story, solid brick structure housing the furnaces. The new brewery opened in 1871 as Schuster Brewing Co. and focused on both brewing traditional German beers and non-alcoholic malt and hop tonics that sold in drugstores as medicinal remedies.