LUZERNE COUNTY, Pa. — It's was a busy day Wednesday at Susquehanna Brewing Company in Jenkins Township as crews packaged beverages and filled orders.
Soon, something else will be making its way through the production line, something the folks at SBC are very familiar with.
"My great-great-grandfather Charles Stegmaier founded Stegmaier Brewing Company in 1857," explained Fred Maier, SBC co-founder. "Events going on in the mid-70s, same thing, commodity price spikes, and they just couldn't survive it. So my father Ed Maier closed the brewery and sold the labels to the Lion Inc."
Recently, the family got a call from the Lion Brewery with an offer to bring the label home.
"I'm like, 'Well, you know, I'm a member of a family, but I'm talking to the wrong Maier. Let me go get my dad,'" explained Maier. "I kind of knocked on the door and 'Do we want to buy back the family farm?' I looked at him like, 'I just got off the phone with the Lion. They're interested in selling us the brands back.'"
Ten years ago, Fred Maier co-founded SBC because he says brewing is in his blood. It's surreal for his family legacy to now come full circle.
"It's really funny, my sister, and I always talk about it like, it was a closed chapter. It was gone. It was done. It was there, was a proud heritage of our family, but there was it was the past. So we just grew up, you know, moving forward," he said.
Maier says the beer under the Stegmaier label will complement the SBC showcase, and he's very thankful The Lion initiated the deal.
"They were very gracious to deal with and a lot of paperwork, a lot of time in between, but everything you get when you sign on that line, we got the recipes, we got the name rights, the imagery, like just everything, like here you go. It's like getting your family heirlooms back," added Maier.
There is still a lot of paperwork to do before you'll see Stegmaier back on the shelves, but the folks at SBC are hoping for the homecoming comeback to take place this fall.
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