In Our Blood
When we started the Black Dog Brewing Company journey, it was a very logical decision. We’ve been successful as small business investors, I’ve had the opportunity to learn from 20 years in the beer business, and both Tiffany and I successfully ran a small business in the past. Add all of that up, throw in a healthy dose of passion for craft beer, and building a brewery was a very logical next step. I should also mention, once you’ve had a taste of entrepreneurship, that desire never goes away. It wasn’t until we got several months into the journey that we came across some history that took Black Dog Brewing Company from “logical next step” to “carrying on a family tradition.”
Now, I’m going to try and go light on the geneaology here but I need to bring you up to speed so bare with me. In the early 1800’s, my Great, Great, Great Grandfather, Frederick Kuntz, came to the U.S. from Dreisbach, Germany. About an hour south of Dreisbach is a town called Wiesbaden, where some of his cousins lived. Those cousins also immigrated to North America in the mid 1800’s but wound up in Ontario, Canada. Fast forward a few years and it’s there in Waterloo, Ontario that brothers David and Jacob Kuntz, Frederick’s cousins, set up the Kuntz Brewery.
The story goes that over the 
course of several years, David and Jacob built the brewery by hand, brick by brick. David, having experience as a cooper, even made the barrels. By WWI, Kuntz Brewery was selling 90,000 bbl’s of beer a year. For us math majors, that’s well over 2.5 million gallons. Unfortunately, the brewery only stayed in Kuntz hands for a couple of generations and was ultimately sold in 1930 to Canadian Breweries, LTD. The Brookston Beer Bulletin did a great article on the brewery which you can check out right here.
While David and Jacob Kuntz would be considered very distant relatives to Frederick’s descendants (me), I find that same passion for great beer, entrepreneurship, and good old fashioned blue collar work ethic is alive and well in the Kuntz blood. Black Dog Brewing Company is the culmination of those things and now you see why it’s more than just another craft brewery. It not only reaches back into the history of the great German “beer migration” to North America with family ties and culture, but as a craft brewery, encompasses that same pioneering spirit that drove David and Jacob. We’re proud to be carrying on the family tradition and raising the Kuntz banner once again as we launch Black Dog Brewing Company.
Authors note: I should also mention that while my Great, Great, Great Grandfather was not a brewer, my Dad told me there’s a very special sauerkraut recipe that’s been passed down over the years. I have a feeling we’re going to have one hell of an Oktoberfest once Black Dog Brewing Company opens its doors!
