Jacob Weisbrod was born in Eppingen, Baden-Württemberg, Prussia, and was educated in his home country.  In 1852, at age 21, he married Maria Margretha Beller.  But tragedy struck the next year when both she and her baby died in childbirth.  Within three months of his loss Jacob sold everything he had, boarded a steamer, and left his home country, bound for the United States.

He settled in Rock Island County, Illinois, and worked in a brewery there.  Wthin a few years he met and married fellow German emigree Margaret Littig. They moved to Winona Minnesota where they built a small brewery of their own behind the bluff in East Burns Valley.

The brewery was successful and the Weisbrods soon relocated to the city side of Sugar Loaf, a location better suited for a large plant. The Weisbrod family grew as well, with child number five arriving in 1868.  In 1869 the Weisbrods hired fellow Prussian emigre Peter Bub as foreman.  The addition of Bub to the payroll only increased the Weisbrod's successes. Unfortunately he was unable to enjoy them for long, as just two years later Jacob Weisbrod contracted typhoid and died on August 11th, 1871.  He was 40 years of age. 

Upon Weisbrod's death Peter Bub took over the brewery, married his widow, and became father to her children.  This was a relatively common practice in German brewhouses of the era.  After a fire the next year left Bub with uninsured losses he partnered with local hotelier John Burmeister to finance rebuilding.  The new state-of-the-art brewery, now named the Sugar Loaf, was a money maker from the beginning and Bub was able to buy out Burmeister's stake just two years later. Bub managed the company until his death in 1921. The brewery Jacob Weisbrod founded in 1856 ultimately closed in 1969.

Peter Bub was born in Germersburg, Bavaria. He emigrated to America in 1862 and some time thereafter took an opportunity in the Ph. Best Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In 1869 Jacob Weisbrod hired Bub away to be foreman in his newly expanded brewery under Sugar Loaf rock in Winona, Minnesota. The 27-year-old rose to the occasion and when two years later Weisbrod died of typhoid fever Bub took over the brewery, and later, married Weisbrod's widow Margaret. The very next year the Weisbrod Brewery burned down and uninsured losses forced Bub to look for a backer. In a testament to the reputation Peter Bub had cultivated in his three short years in Winona he immediately found a willing partner in local hotelier John Burmeister. Bub renamed the firm the Sugar Loaf Brewery and the state of the art manufactory soon turned a profit. Within two years Bub bought out Burmeister's share, then ran the Sugar Loaf as sole proprietor for the next 35 years.

Peter Bub died at age 69 on December 22, 1911. His brewery continued into Prohibition as a bottling plant manufacturing root beer but was closed for Volstead Act violations in 1931. The company was resurrected upon Repeal as the Peter Bub Brewery and was run by various managers until it was shuttered in 1969. Their flagship brand, Bub's Lager Beer, was sold to the Walter Brewery of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who continued the brew until the early 1980s.