Spoetzl Brewery bids farewell to longtime brewmaster Jimmy Mauric

Spoetzl Brewery underwent a major changing of the guard last weekend when longtime brewmaster Jimmy Mauric officially retired, having devoted some 43 years to the little brewery in Shiner.
Brewery staff, company executives, a host of local dignitaries and scores of friends gathered at the brewery Saturday afternoon to give Mauric a proper sendoff, an occasion they marked with what organizers said was an inaugural event for the brewery, a music festival they dubbed Summerfest 2024, which came complete with all the Texas swelter you could stomach.
For Mauric, however, it was much more than simply a retirement party or the launch of an all-new concert series by his former employer. 
It also happened to be his birthday as well, a birthday that as it so happens, he and his predecessor both had in common, before former brewmaster John Hybner succumbed to his battle with leukemia toward the end of the first decade of the new millennium, Jimmy and John celebrated their birthdays together, especially during the many years they worked together.  
Mauric joked Saturday that he interned under Hybner for just 27 ½ years before he finally got to move up the ladder. Sadly, that was barely a drop in the pan compared to the four decades his own replacement put in before he finally moved up as well.
Taking Jimmy’s spot as the new Shiner brewmaster is none other than John’s own son, Greg Hybner. 
He becomes the Spoetzl’s seventh brewmaster in the more than a century-long stretch it’s been around, surviving floods, droughts, the Great Depression, Prohibition and even pandemics that if you didn’t know any better, you’d swear were somehow inflicted by a rival beer company. 
That short line of brewmasters can trace itself all the way back to Kosmos Spoetzl himself, Shiner’s first brewmaster, who founded the place and began bottling Shiner beer here back in 1909.
Mauric grew up in Shiner and started working at the brewery when he was just 17. In that respect, Greg may have him beat as well. You see, with their dad being the brewmaster, Greg said he and his siblings pretty much grew up around the brewery.
So much so that when filmmaker Frank Binney put together his Oscar-winning documentary about the Shiner brewery back in the late 1970s, Binney actually made use of the young Hybner siblings as part of the show’s opening sequence.
Remember that old rattletrap truck, tooling its way right up to the front door of the brewery and a whole parcel of kids pile out to run inside. One of those little boys trailing along after his dad happens to be a much younger Greg.
“We called it the old Malt truck,” Greg said in a follow-up interview Monday. “It was what we used to haul off the spent grains we used to brew the beer.”
What was left over, they fed to the cattle using that very truck. So clearly, Greg’s been hanging around the brewery since well before he could see over the dashboard.
It was back when they used to crawl those huge beer vats and scrub each one clean with a brush, Greg recalled, something he still did for years after he started working there. Nowadays that’s all done by computers and chemical solutions, he said.
That wasn’t the only thing that was computer run these days, Jimmy said. In cleaning out his office for impending retirement day, he said he ran across his old handwritten notes from days attending the Siebel Institute of Brewing technology in Chicago, where he earned his brewing technology degree in 1992.
Of course, there wasn’t much you could pick up out of a book that you wouldn’t have already gotten for 27 years of actually doing that kind of work under somebody like John,” Jimmy said. Still, that didn’t stop him from continuing his book learning once he got back from Chicago. 
He took night courses over at Victoria College, where he earned an associate’s degree in process technology in December 2002, graduating with honors. He later attended Texas State University in San Marcos, where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in occupational education.
Degrees he used starting June 1, 2005, Jimmy assumed the position of brewmaster/plant manager for Spoetzl Brewery.
You stick with something for 43 years, you’re bound to pick up a thing or two, and in that respect, Jimmy became a walking billboard for everything Shiner be it the beer or his hometown. 
He even launched a few charities that followed in the footsteps of traditions launched by the brewery’s own namesake.
It’s said that Kosmos, while out on his rounds making deliveries to various places, would often stop whenever he saw farmers out working in the fields, and leave a cold beer waiting on the fence post as a surprise treat for thirsty field hands whenever they got to the end of a row. 
In a much similar fashion, Jimmy made sure the scores of Shiner volunteers who worked the church picnics, or the FFA sale, or whatever fundraiser might be taking place someplace about town never wanted to drink as well. 
It was actions like those, Mayor Fred Hilscher said, that prompted he and other city officials to present Jimmy with a key to the city and officially declare June 15, 2024, as Jimmy Mauric Day in the City of Shiner. He’s the second person ever to have such an honor bestowed onto him by the city, the mayor said.
Chamber president Egon Barthels also presented him with a certificate of appreciation from that organization as well. 
Mauric admitted that the brewery had discussed doing away with the local brewmaster role altogether after he retired. 
Then, just days before Saturday’s shindig, he got a call from the Gambrinus Companies out of San Antonio, the parent company to the Spoetzl, a company founded by Jimmy’s longtime employer and friend, the late Carlos Alvarez.
Alvarez was a man who cut his teeth in the beer business, learning the ropes from the ground up as a boy helping his father with deliveries to the posh resorts near their home in southern Mexico. 
He worked his way up in that company rather swiftly, eventually finding his way to Texas, where he set about turning the Corona beer label into a household name here in the states.
It took a few years, but soon, the once unknown, regional Mexican beer climbed to the top of the U.S. import market. That task done, he set about looking for a new project, which is how he found his way to Shiner in 1989.
“We were about to close the doors and shut down for good,” Mauric told the crowd gathered Saturday. “Until Carlos Alvarez came along, that is. He single-handedly saved this place, and he did so by doing things I never would have dreamed were even possible.”
News of his passing away, earlier this year, was a bitter pill for Mauric. Not only had he lost someone he greatly admired and respected, but he’d lost someone he’d come to call his close personal friend as well. 
So, when the call came from the San Antonio company Alvarez created, Mauric wasn’t exactly sure what it might involve.
“They asked me what I thought about doing away with the brewmaster position, and then they listened,” he said. 
“Without going into every detail, they wound up doing pretty much everything I suggested. And I tell you what, I couldn’t be more pleased with that decision or prouder of the man they picked to replace for that job. I’m sure John’s probably smiling down, too.” 
Jimmy was busy canning pickles when I caught up with him Monday, a skill he says he picked up from his mother growing up. 
He and his wife Lisa live on the farm where he grew up, too, about two miles from the brewery. Between the garden, barbecuing and fishing when he can, Jimmy says he intends to stay busy in his retired life.  
He’s even known to go to Vegas every so often. In fact, when this story was published today, that’s exactly where he said he’d be.