Gustav Lorenz Becker was born in Winona, Minnesota. He was a son of the pioneer Winona brewer John S. Becker, who with his wife Katharine Marie raised Gustav and his siblings in the Becker family brewery on the bluffs of the Mississippi.

In 1892 the Beckers sold the Winona brewery and John S. and Gustav moved west to build a new brewery in the town of Ogden Utah. Despite its proximity to the Mormon enclave of Salt Lake, Ogden was considered a (comparatively) lawless frontier town at the time. It was well situated near Promontory Point, where the Golden Spike had been laid to join America's East and West by rail. The town was dubbed "Junction City" for the connection at Ogden Station of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads.

When the Beckers imagined hundreds of daily travelers, thirsty and bored on their stopovers in the dusty frontier town, they surely thought that the Ogden was ripe for a brewery. On June 6th, 1892 the Becker Brewing & Malting Company was established with $50,000 in capital stock, of which John S. Becker and Gustav controlled about $15,000. Gustav's younger brother Albert came in from Chicago the following January and took his place among the brewery managers.

The brewery was, as expected, a great success, and when Temperance forces threatened production in Utah the family erected a second Becker plant just over the border in Evanston, Wyoming.

The Ogden brewery was indeed closed in 1918 by Utah State Prohibition but reopened upon repeal. Despite the restrictive Utah liquor laws the brewery was a regional powerhouse for another 30 years, sending beer to the coast of California and into all of the mountain states.

Gustav Lorenz Becker died on the 12th of January, 1947 at age 78 years. The brewery was shuttered in 1965 and its flagship brand Becker's Beer was sold to the Tivoli Brewery of Denver, Colorado, which produced it until its own demise in the mid 1970s.

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