The Frankenmuth Brewery

A German town would not be complete without beer, and Frankenmuth has been brewing it for a very long time. In eighteen sixty two, two cousins, William Knaust and Martin Heubisch, founded the Cass River Brewery along the river here, marking the official birth of brewing in Frankenmuth. In eighteen seventy four a man named John Geyer bought it and renamed it Geyer Brothers Brewing.

It has made beer on this site under several names, which makes it one of the oldest breweries in Michigan. Its survival has not been easy. A bankruptcy sale in nineteen eighty seven and a tornado in nineteen ninety six each destroyed large parts of the building, but each time it came back.

In two thousand three the brewery reopened with a modern multi floor operation of roughly twenty seven thousand square feet on the same historic ground beside the Cass River. Today it pours house brewed lagers and ales, including an Oktoberfest lager that nods straight to the town's heritage. More than a century and a half after those two cousins fired up their kettles, Frankenmuth is still making its own beer where the river bends.