Bavarian Family Tree

One morning last summer, our brewery phone rang. I answered hastily, annoyed at the interruption.

However, instead of a telemarketing call, it was a guy named Brent Larson from Minnesota. He and his wife would be coming through in a few weeks.

“Is this Lisa?” he asked. “This may sound crazy, but I think we’re related.”

That got my attention.

Brent told me about how his 90-year-old mother, Jeri Bodger, had grown up without knowing any of her extended family. Recently, she had done some genealogical research and discovered our brewery blog post about our mutual relatives.

[Read the original post: Anchor Brewing Co. to Close]

Could we meet? Could I introduce him to other family members? Absolutely.

Here's the spoiler: Yes, there's family resemblance (looks and traits!) and enough compatibility to justify three different visits already!

[Click READ MORE for the backstory.]

Here’s the backstory: Back in the late 1800s, my Great-grandfather Louis Kraus and his family immigrated to the United States from Bavaria. His two sisters and two brothers – all young adults or teens – and their parents came to this country in the final decades of the century.

​One brother, Joseph Kraus, attended the Siebel Institute in Chicago, where he learned the art and science of brewing. He was eventually at the helm of Anchor Brewing Co. in San Francisco, California -- both before and after Prohibition -- through the early 1950s.

His younger brother, my great-grandpa Louis, followed him to Chicago for brewing school and then apprenticed under him in San Francisco around the turn of the century. Later, his brewing career took him to Wilbur, Nebraska, to Bucyrus, Ohio, and eventually to Hastings, Nebraska. He was the head brewer and an owner of Hastings Brewing Co. from its establishment in 1908 until “the axe fell,” with statewide Prohibition in 1917. Having lost his career, his investments, and his wife to tuberculosis, he remarried and moved west with his three small children to start a farm near Madrid, Nebraska.

Their sister Barbara married another brewer and lived in California. Brother Wolfgang and sister Francis both settled in Wisconsin near their parents. Brent and Jeri were descendants of Francis.

From there, branches of the family tree diverged, separated by the realities of early 20th-century life and connected by occasional written correspondence.

Now, some of those branches have been reconnected by internet research and a story told here at our brewery.

Getting to know Brent – my third cousin – has been a true pleasure. After he and his wife’s first visit to Nebraska, he returned with Jeri, my dad’s second cousin. They had never met, but really hit it off!

Just this spring, my parents took a road trip to visit Brent and his family in Minnesota. Along the way, they even looked up some of the other long-lost cousins in Wisconsin.

Learning and telling the story of Louis and Joseph, the Bavarian Brothers who made their mark in American beer before Prohibition, has opened doors to new family connections and new stories that we’ll continue to tell for the next generation.

Cheers to a great beer – like the Bavarian Brothers German Pils – and the great people connected by it.
We’re happy to have it back on tap now in anticipation of Oktoberfest 2026 on Saturday, September 26! And we look forward to getting together with our extended family once again sometime soon.