A brewing family from Oberegg settles in Appenzell.

Appenzeller Bier is the brand of Brauerei Locher, a family brewery in Appenzell, in the Swiss canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden. The family had brewed before it came there. The Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), in its article on the Locher family by Ivo Bischofberger, says Johann Joseph Locher began brewing beer in Oberegg in 1852, and that his son Johann Christoph Locher began brewing in Appenzell in 1886.

The company tells how that happened. In 1886, its history says, the brewery in Appenzell was put up for auction, and Johann Christoph Locher bought the property, which included the brewery with its maltings and cellars, a house with a restaurant, a covered skittle alley, a garden, stables and an ice cellar. The company says his son Karl Locher-Streule took over in 1898 and modernised the plant with a steam engine driving a small generator. In 1908, it says, Karl and his brother Oskar formed the partnership Gebrüder Locher, Bierbrauerei, Appenzell; the HLS adds that Oskar acquired the cooperative brewery in Buchs, in the canton of St. Gallen, in 1927. The brewery at Oberegg was given up in 1974, the HLS says.

The company names Karl Locher-Elser as the third generation from 1928, and says the business became a company limited by shares, Brauerei K. Locher AG, in 1963, when he handed the management to his sons Karl Locher-Rickenmann and Johannes Locher-Marmy. Today the brewery describes itself as run by the family in its fifth generation since 1886. It says it had 11 employees in the early 1990s, six of them family members, and about 200 at its Appenzell site now; the HLS counted around 60 in 2006.

Spring water, a full moon and a village fire.

The brewery’s growth came with the end of a cartel. The company dates a new era for Brauerei Locher to 1992, the year the Swiss beer cartel ended, which it says was also the year Quöllfrisch was born. Its current campaign for the beer runs under the line “Vo Appezöll fö alli.” German Wikipedia, citing figures the company published, says beer output grew fivefold between 1997 and 2007.

Many of the beers carry a story in their names. The company says Naturperle was the first Swiss beer to carry the Knospe (bud) label of Bio Suisse, the organic farmers’ association, a point German Wikipedia repeats. The organic Vollmond beer, the company says, is brewed only on nights of the full moon. BrandLöscher, a name that translates roughly as “fire extinguisher,” was brewed in 2010, the company says, to remember the fire that burned the village of Appenzell in 1560. Birra da Ris is a gluten-free beer brewed with rice; German Wikipedia says the rice is grown on the Maggia delta in Ticino. In March 2022, German Wikipedia says, citing the regional news site FM1Today, the brewery launched Bünzli Büx with the retailer Coop, a beer made only from Swiss ingredients, and the company says an alcohol-free Quöllfrisch followed in 2024. To keep up with demand, it says, it opened a new, modern brewhouse on the edge of Appenzell in 2005.

Labels are part of the storytelling. The company says the bottle of its Vintage Quöllfrisch, sealed with a cork, is labelled in a vintage design that recalls the time before today’s Quöllfrisch. When it introduced the Locher Craft beers in March 2023, it said their labels recall stories of people and their experiences in the Alpstein mountains. Visitors can see the brewing process in the Brauquöll visitor centre, which the company says opened in 2011 and reopened enlarged on 10 December 2022 on the Brauereiplatz in Appenzell.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are Austrian and Swiss beers: Puntigamer, Schremser and Murauer from Austria, and Feldschlösschen, Calanda, Appenzeller Bier and Eichhof from Switzerland. Their ownership runs from global brewing groups to families and a cooperative. German Wikipedia records that Puntigamer’s Graz brewery is part of Brau Union Österreich, which Heineken has owned since 2003; that Heineken has owned Calanda in Chur since 1993 and Eichhof in Lucerne since 2008; and that Carlsberg has owned Feldschlösschen in Rheinfelden since 2000.

The others are independent. German Wikipedia says the Brauerei Schrems in the Waldviertel has belonged to the Trojan family since the nineteenth century, that the Brauerei Murau in Styria has been a cooperative since 1910, and that both were among the founding members of an association of Austria’s independent private breweries in 2021. Appenzeller Bier is made by the Brauerei Locher in Appenzell, a family company; the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland says Johann Christoph Locher began brewing beer in Appenzell in 1886.

A beer brand’s identity is usually carried by a label, a crest or an emblem and the town it names, because the company behind it may have changed hands or moved some of its production elsewhere. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the brewery says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its beer is brewed and bottled and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Barley, whisky and the brewery’s by-products.

The family has pushed the brewery well beyond beer. Until 1999, German Wikipedia says, Swiss law forbade distilling spirits from grain or potatoes; the ban was lifted on 1 July 1999, and the same year Brauerei Locher began distilling Säntis Malt, which reached the market in 2002; the company says the whisky is first matured in old wooden beer casks. The company says it brought malting barley back to Swiss fields in 1996, working with mountain farmers, and that since 2018 it has turned spent grain into snacks, followed in 2021 by the upcycled-food brand brewbee.

It has also taken stakes in other brewers. German Wikipedia, citing the Berner Zeitung, says the Albert Egger brewery of Worb outsourced its bottling to Appenzell in August 2020 and that in February 2024 Brauerei Locher bought land in Worb and subscribed shares in Egger. Citing the Tages-Anzeiger, it says Locher took a majority of the Winterthur brewer Chopfab Boxer in March 2024.

The name needs care. “Appenzeller” is also the name of the region’s cheese and of Appenzeller Alpenbitter, an herbal liqueur made by a separate company; the beer brand’s own site is appenzellerbier.ch.

For a design guide, Appenzeller Bier shows how a family brewery can turn a village, a dialect and a calendar of local stories, from a full moon to a sixteenth-century fire, into a range of beer names and labels. Compare it with Calanda, the Heineken-owned beer from Chur, and Appenzeller Alpenbitter, its neighbour in Appenzell. For this guide we use brewhouse red, Alpstein green and malt cream with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Appenzeller Bier’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.